Mandatory Vista Tweaks on the OQO 02

Below is the wallpaper now residing in my OQO 02 courtesy of DeviantArt. If you click on the image you can read the message which sums up everything about what a lot of users think about Vista, myself included.

Readers of this blog know that Vista is to blame for my switching to Mac OS X last March 2007. I bought the OQO with Vista installed thinking that factory installed Vista would be immune from the lock ups and other distractions I experienced before the switch. Well, could I be more wrong? The problems I encountered in the OQO were in fact more serious given the considerably slow processor and memory of the OQO (1.5 GHz VIA with 1 gig RAM) designed primarily for ultra mobile devices.

To cut through the chase, the OQO 02 is now very responsive after applying several suggested Vista tweaks. Let me say that the OQO 02 is now my everyday mobile companion with the Macbook waiting at home always ready for more serious work.

The following were implemented in Vista courtesy of Marcuscake.com:

1. Optimize your page file size. Windows XP sizes the page file to about 1.5X the amount of actual physical memory by default. While this is good for systems with smaller amounts of memory (under 512MB) it is unlikely that a typical XP desktop system will ever need 1.5 X 512MB or more of virtual memory. As a simplified guideline. If you have less than 512MB of memory, leave the page file at its default size. If you have 512MB or more, change the ratio to 1:1 page file size to physical memory size.
2. Edit the registry and change DisablePagingExecutive = 1(see Beginners Guides: 101 Tips and Tweaks for Windows ). This was the single most effective change.
   
3. Edit the registry and disable SuperFetch entirely by changing EnableSuperfetch to 0 (from the default of 3).
   
4. Adjust Visual Effects in Windows Vista: right click on My Computer and select "performance options" and then "Visual effects". Turn off as many of the Visual options as you can. I turned all of mine off.
   
5. Prioritize important processes: you can use Task Manager to set MS Outlook to high and Firefox to "above normal".
   
6. Disable unnecessary Windows Vista services: see Disable unnecessary services the quick and easy way
   
7. Disable Readyboost service
   
8. Stop the 'last access update' from taking up system resources (see Beginners Guides: 101 Tips and Tweaks for Windows )
   
9. Stop real-time operation of Windows Defender.
   
10. There was a time when I like to party naked and work without any anti-virus or firewall. But I now use
    Kaspersky Internet Security 7.0. A virus scan is scheduled to run every day from 12am-3am.
    

Having done all of the above, the OQO 02 now literally looks and feels like the old reliable Windows XP Tablet PC machine. The above tweaks have in fact turned the OQO 02 'from a dog to a star.' Hell, come to think of it, Vista really is nothing more than XP with all the bells and whistles. With the OQO now behaving like the old reliable XP machines that I own, I second the opinion of James Kendrick, the master of all mobile devices, in his blog "JK opinion- Vista will never run well on mobile devices."

The whole Vista mobile experience is very unstable and that is unsettling to anyone who needs to get their work done, and get it done now.  I don't care how pretty the OS is or how much new sophisticated stuff is going on under the hood if it makes my performance unpredictable.  That is such a big step backwards that you have to wonder how it can be fixed in the short term.  I fear it can't.  Say what you will about Windows XP the one thing it is on mobile devices is stable.  Rock-solid stable.  Can anyone say that about Vista on mobile PCs?  I have a very bad feeling about the immediate future of mobile computing on the Vista platform.  And that hits me where I live.

Comments

[Marcus Cake]

This tweak can also improve performance:

edit the registry and change Win32PrioritySeparation = 38 (see Boosting workstation foreground priority and Windows Vista tips tricks and tweaks ). This was an equally significant change. The value 6 worked best for me.

I modified the original article (www.marcuscake.com/oqo.html) so that it does not get missed in the comments.

[Nap]

@Marcus Cake,

Thanks for the heads up. I have changed my registry as you suggested and I totally agree that it does boost the OQO 02's performance :)