Windows Vista and SP1 focus on delivering greater performance and overall system responsiveness. By striking a balance between speed and responsiveness, windows vista and SP1 deliver a level of performance that has the greatest positive impact on the system’s usability.

This guide looks at the following areas of performance improvement:
• Making configuration changes that help a computer feel more responsive when you use it.
• Using hardware to boost the actual physical speed of a computer.
• Making configuration changes that help a computer to start faster.
• Making the computer more reliable may help increase performance.
• Monitoring performance occasionally so that you can stop problems before they get too big.

Improve Performance Quickly and Easily.
This guide focuses on performance improvements on a single computer, but also takes a look at some of the tools used in enterprise environments to help make performance tuning manageable on a much larger scale.

Download: Windows Vista Performance and Tuning

In the last video, Esther told you all about how Instant Search makes her day-to-day life easier. Today, she's going to talk to you about Live Icons, which makes searching even faster by letting you see a preview of the files you're searching for. If you're a visual person you'll especially appreciate seeing icons instead of file names or folders, and not having to open each file individually, which saves a ton of time.   

Video: Windows Vista Demo: Live Icons

There appears to be a shift taking place in the PC industry: the move from 32-bit to 64-bit PCs. We've been tracking the change by looking at the percentage of 64-bit PCs connecting to windows updates, and have seen a dramatic increase in recent months.


The installed base of 64-bit Windows Vista PCs, as a percentage of all windows vista systems, has more than tripled in the U.S. in the last three months, while worldwide adoption has more than doubled during the same period. Another view shows that 20% of new Windows Vista PCs in the U.S. connecting to Windows Update in June were 64-bit PCs, up from just 3% in March. Put more simply, usage of 64-bit Windows Vista is growing much more rapidly than 32-bit. Based on current trends, this growth will accelerate as the retail channel shifts to supplying a rapidly increasing assortment of 64-bit desktops and laptops.

64-bit PCs running 64-bit editions of Windows Vista typically have 4GB of memory or more. Compared to 32-bit systems, which top out at around 3GB of memory, 64-bit PCs can offer added responsiveness when running a lot of applications at the same time and have the potential for greater performance and new experiences as next-generations applications are written to take advantage of this new platform.

What started out as a gradual (some would say "glacial") movement toward 64-bit PCs, driven primarily by technology enthusiasts, seems to have turned into a swift transition, likely fueled by the falling cost of memory and consumers' desire to get the most out of their PCs.

This change begs a few questions:

Is the 64 bit market ready to go mainstream?

Will consumers realize the benefits from larger chips and 4GB or more of memory?

The answer to both of these questions is yes - but a qualified yes.

Preconfigured 64-bit PCs obtained from retailers or PC manufacturers should work quite well. This is in stark contrast to the experience of many technology enthusiasts who built their 64-bit PC from scratch and may have had to scour the Web looking for drivers. So, unless you really love to tinker with your PC, we suggest you buy a pre-built 64-bit PC at retail or directly from a PC manufacturer.

you plan on using with your new PC. Any hardware or software product displaying the ‘Works with Windows Vista' or ‘Certified for Windows Vista' logo must be compatible with both the 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows Vista in order to warrant the use of the logo. If you don't see the logo, visit the Windows Vista Compatibility Center and check the 64-bit compatibility status. Hardware and Beyond the box, you also need to consider the hardware peripherals and software programs software vendors continue to test and improve their products. Please note that the Windows Vista Compatibility Center is currently in beta. In some cases it is possible that a device may be marked as not compatible when in fact it is. I recommend that you also check with the device manufacturer to see if the compatibility status of your desired device has changed.

On the performance front, 64-bit PCs can provide a more responsive experience when running many applications simultaneously. websites such as Bit.Tech.Net and Tom's Hardware have published performance benchmarks detailing some of the improvements realized from running the 64-bit PCs. In addition, PC Accelerators built into Windows Vista, such as Windows SuperFetch, improve performance by keeping commonly used programs in memory, even when the program is closed. More memory capacity on 64-bit PCs allows SuperFetch to do its job more efficiently.

But if you only use your PC for a few tasks, and rarely do them at the same time, then you're unlikely to realize a measurable performance benefit today. Of course, buying extra capacity for your future, unplanned needs is always worth considering.

In the future, we expect both compatibility and performance of 64-bit PCs to continue to improve. Most hardware devices have 64-bit drivers today and most software products work unmodified because of the 32-bit emulation technology in 64-bit Windows Vista (called WOW64). But there are some gaps, especially in the long tail of the market, but we expect rapid improvement now that 64-bit PCs are getting so popular.

Moving onward from windows xp service Pack 3 and windows vista Service Pack 1 to Windows 7, Microsoft is gearing up for the death of 32-bit versions of the Windows client. On the server-side, Window's transition to 64-bit only architectures is almost complete, with Windows Server 2008 being the last server operating system from Microsoft with support for 32-bit CPUs.


On the client-side, the evolution from x86 to x64 is still a long way from the finish line, but the Redmond company is starting to witness the first signs. According to the software giant, the adoption of x64 Vista is growing at a pace superior of x86, a trend which is predicted to accelerate.

"We've been tracking the change by looking at the percentage of 64-bit PCs connecting to windows update, and have seen a dramatic increase in recent months. The installed base of 64-bit Windows Vista PCs, as a percentage of all Windows Vista systems, has more than tripled in the U.S. in the last three months, while worldwide adoption has more than doubled during the same period. Another view shows that 20% of new Windows Vista PCs in the U.S. connecting to Windows Update in June were 64-bit PCs, up from just 3% in March," explained Christopher Flores, Director Windows Communications.

Microsoft is giving credit not to end users for the increasing shift to 64-bit Vista operating systems, but to its channel partners, especially original equipment manufacturers, who are making the jump to x64 CPUs and machines preloaded with the analog variant of the latest Windows version. The main advantage of 64-bit Vista over its 32-bit equivalent is the ability to handle RAM in excess of 4 GB, and on top of the extra system memory, to also manage a larger number of CPU intensive applications simultaneously. In the end, the user experience will simply benefit from the added performance that 64-bit Vista SKUs will deliver.

"What started out as a gradual (some would say "glacial") movement toward 64-bit PCs, driven primarily by technology enthusiasts, seems to have turned into a swift transition, likely fueled by the falling cost of memory and consumers' desire to get the most out of their PCs," Flores indicated. Still, the transition is far from over. In fact, Microsoft has already confirmed that Windows 7, the successor of Windows Vista, would also be made available in 32-bit and 64-bit flavors. In this context, it seems, Microsoft will only deliver 64-bit exclusive versions with Windows 7 Server and maybe Windows 8, on the client-side.

For the time being, Microsoft is claiming that x64 Windows Vista is growing, and said nothing about the 64-bit version of Windows XP SP2. XP SP3 is of course only available for 32-bit machines.

Trojans are the main culprit for recent spyware and malware infections.

Reports and studies have confirmed that most malware comes from Trojan infections or Trojan files instead of other means. Trojans make up the main cause for the installation of malware or rogue anti-spyware programs on PC’s. BitDefender, a security vender, claimed that 80 percent of malware that infected computers worldwide came from a form of a Trojan on a computer. We know from our many parasite removal guides that malware comes in deferent forms that perform many malicious functions. In some cases it is not the Trojan that steals your personal information or create popups. It is usually the malware that is installed from a Trojan.

Malware may not be very difficult to remove in some situations compared to a Trojan infection. The Trojan that originally installed the malware may hang out on your system and further infect your computer after you remove or attempt to remove any malware. Because Trojans, for the most part, do not actively run process or stand out in the crowd as much as malware, it can go undetected for a long time.

Did you ever think that you completely removed a malware infection or rogue anti-spyware program and the next time you rebooted your system it came back? That’s a common case if you have a Trojan residing on your system and it is not completely removed.

Websites that run scripts and file downloads such as video codecs are a common ways that a Trojan may enter into your system. Adobe Flash ActiveScripts is a familiar form of a script that can spread a Trojan especially with the many flash based websites found on the internet today.

Hackers wish to make money any way that they can. Trojan infections are becoming more dangerous and are starting to sneak more malicious files or software onto computers all over the world.

Ubuntu is a Linux distribution based on Debian Linux. Different Linux distributions target different functional niches. The goal of Ubuntu is to bring Linux into the desktop workspace. To do this, it needs to provide a stable user interface, plenty of office tools, drivers for a myriad of peripherals, and still be user-friendly. Although different groups manage nearly every open source project, Canonical Ltd. provides a central point for development and support. Canonical, along with the Ubuntu community, can answer most of your technical (and not so technical) questions.

Different Linux distributions fill specific needs. For example, although RedHat started life as a unifying distribution, it primarily supported English applications. SuSE was a popular internationalized distribution. Many distributions were maintained by modifying other distributions. For example, Kheops is a French version of RedHat, and the Beowulf clustered computing environment is based on RedHat.

Although RedHat has seeded many different distributions, it is not alone. Debian Linux is another distribution with a significant following. As with RedHat, Debian has been used to spawn many different niche distributions. Although Ubuntu is based on Debian, it is also seeding other distributions.

Different distributions of the Linux operating system are sometimes called flavors. There are over 370 different supported flavors of Linux, each with a different focus. You can see the listing of official distributions at http://www.linux.org.

Ubuntu is the basis for a variety of Linux distributions-most only differ in the user interface, although some do include specific software configurations. The basic Ubuntu distribution uses the Gnome desktop and is geared toward desktop or server systems. Other distributions based on Ubuntu include:

• Kubuntu-a variation of Ubuntu with the K Desktop Environment (KDE).

• Xubuntu-a variation of Ubuntu with the Xfce Desktop Environment.

• Edubuntu-a modified version of Ubuntu that is loaded with educational applications.

• nUbuntu-a modified version of Ubuntu with a security-testing focus.

In all cases, it is possible to switch from one installed version to another. For example, you can install Ubuntu, add in KDE, and remove Gnome and you'll have an environment that looks like Kubuntu. To convert an Ubuntu installation to Kubuntu requires changing the desktop, office applications (OpenOffice to KOffice), and swapping other tools. Instead of modifying one distribution to look like another, you should just start with the right distribution.


To give you an example of the complexity, here's how to change from Gnome to KDE:
1. Install KDE.
sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop kde-core

This requires about 360 MB of disk space. The installation will ask if you want Gnome (gdm) or KDE (kdm) as the default desktop.

2. Log out. This gets you out of the active Gnome desktop.

3. On the login page, click Options (bottom left corner).

4. Select the Sessions menu item.

5. Select KDE from the Sessions menu and use Change Session to accept it

6. Log in using KDE.

7. If you no longer need Gnome, you have the option to remove it by removing every Gnome package on the system.
dpkg --get-selections '*gnome*' | awk '{print $1}' | \
xargs sudo apt-get remove

Many Gnome applications only need the Gnome libraries to run. If you keep both desktops on the same system, then you can use many of the applications under the same desktop.

Source of Information : Hacking Ubuntu Serious Hacks Mods and Customizations