XP downgrade vs. Vista

Lol. I was referring to the local vista tweaking guide and reinstall and bloatware removal guide. That blackviper thing gets a bit extreme. The local one is pretty straightforward and safe.

 

Says who?

I had a look at it. It advises you to turn of transparency of Windows Aero to speed up the computer (which does hardly affect the performance, if at all), suggests to change the look of Vista to "Windows Standard" to decrease the load on the CPU (which actually incerases the CPU load in most cases), suggests to turn off UAC without even telling what exactly UAC does and extensive warnings... I'm sorry - I just can't call that responsible tweaking. And these are just some examples.

I don't want this to be seen as a personal attack by anyone, as it's not meant to be one. It's just... If I read all those people's replys on that thread, it makes me... really sad. Because they don't understand what they did for they trust the guide.
And I know that I should help to improve that guide instead of just pointing out mistakes - but I just don't have the time, and I guess I wouldn't have the enthusiasm to do it either, as there are plenty of similar guides out there...

So I'll just say: In my opinion, it's not the right way to tune.
If you want to use that guide, do it! But please, listen to me - whenever you are uncertain about what consequences a setting has, at least ask google.

Well... actually, the web. If you read something on Wikipedia or any other website, who will tell you that it's true? Most people trust in the information being the well-researched truth they want it to be, just like they did with encyclopedias. They copy the information, and by that, more people will find it and believe it's true. Somewhen, the information will be all over the web, and THEN try to claim it's wrong! See: copy-paste-syndrome.

It's not the website you think it is. You should visit the link.

 

No problem, Christoph.Krn. I don't take it that way.

I also would not suggest anyone blindly follow any guide, etc. without researching what it is telling you to do. For example, before disabling certain services, I first went out to figure out what they really did, rather than accept "you don't need this".

Also, unless you have some overriding reason to do so, I'd not suggest turning off UAC. The most annoying thing to me about UAC was it blocking programs at startup that I wanted to run (such as HWmonitor, HWMonitor tray app, Core Temp, and RMClock). You can easily get around UAC blocking issues with those by using Task Scheduler appropriately configured.

I agree with Christoph.Krn, make sure that you read and UNDERSTAND what is being said. Use your own judgement before committing yourself to something that may end up breaking certain functionality.