Comments on: Top 5 Worst and Useless Features and Programs in Windows Vista

By: Billy Davenport

Billy Davenport — Sun, 17 May 2009 02:26:22 +0000

I agree that Windows has great value to the business world. That is the whole problem with Windows and has been since day one. The small home user has always subsidized the at large business world, when in the best of all possible worlds it should be entirely the opposite.

By: Colin

Colin — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 13:21:19 +0000

I would urge people to read and take note of K’s reply. And turning off UAC is a fantastic way of dropping your computers underpants and having it bend over for malware, spyware and virus penetration. None of this stuff is perfect, but then nothing is and some protection is better than none. I would much rather live with the inconvenience of having to click a button every now and then than with the paranoia that I might have picked up some nasty along the way with no warning.

By: Gerald

Gerald — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 03:35:58 +0000

Protip for Vista performance: “non-techies” Seem to just not know how.

Have fun with your XP guys. I’ll just continue on using my “ULTRA ADVANCED SUPER-COMPLEXZORES” vista. It’s a wonder some people manage to use the internet with any degree of success. I bet they use IE…

*Brace for flame war!!!*

By: Paul

Paul — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 03:09:59 +0000

OK, so many users think that the list is not useful. I am numbered amongst the ‘non-techies’ and am so fed-up with Vista’s poor performance that I prefer to use my 9 year-old laptop running XP to my new $2000 Vista model. What can I do to make it run as well as a laptop with an 1/8 the RAM and 1/4 the processor speed. I’m crippled by this vista rubbish. Please help by posting ways to make it run at a reasonable speed

By: K

Sat, 18 Oct 2008 00:38:37 +0000

For the most part, I disagree with most of this list. Readers beware – following these instructions blindly is likely a disastrous move for your computer.

SUPERFETCH: The recommendation to disable SuperFetch is terrible. SF virtually always provides a performance boost on people’s computers when it comes to running commonly executed application. If memory is limited, Vista auto-throttles SuperFetch’s usage/memory consumption so there’s no need to futz with it… ever.

RDC: The recommendation to disable Remote Differential Compression is terrible. RDC, particularly for home Internet connections or limited bandwidth WAN conections make use of this feature. This is not the infamous TCP autosizing issue – you will virtually never slow your connection down using RDC except in very small file transmissions over very short sessions.

DEFENDER: There’s nothing wrong with keeping Defender running while you have a 3rd party anti-virus product running. AV != Active-AntiSpyware. Anyone that believes that their AV product alone will protect them from Spyware is ignorant. Anyone that believes that a scan-based anti-spyware product is superior to Defender needs to get their head examined. Defender is a great compliment to a layered security approach to malware.

As for User Access Control & Windows Media Center, I’m not going to argue those points because for some people (experts, folks using other TiVO like software) these technologies may be a complete waste of bits & cycles whereas for others it may be very necessary.
(Non-techies, folks without TiVos)

By: Tillmann

Tillmann — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 17:08:22 +0000

Well, I agree these feature’s are neither unwanted nor useless, but perhaps not in place for some people. One really sucking feature which I discovered recently is the option do remove the menubar by double-clicking the panel of the task-manager. This is very disturbing, when happened by mistake.

By: Elliot

Elliot — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 15:01:37 +0000

I agree, these applications are hardly useless.

UAC is!

Superfetch is valuable, because it saves load times, which save you time.

Windows Defender is great (yes it’s basic) but it’s free, and home users wont have to worry about getting another Anti-Spyware program.

WMC is nice, not perfect, but it’s user-friendly. It’s improving, and maybe it will be even better with SP2!

By: gerald

gerald — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 03:41:26 +0000

These applications are hardly useless.

UAC was designed and implemented to annoy people so that program writers would stop coding programs to use administrative privileges.

In any work environment, superfetch is a valuable tool for saving load times, so games irregular tasks be damned.

gigabit Ethernet maybe popular and widely implemented, but why waste valuable bandwidth, consider offices with many terminals. Imagine the congestion you could prevent in peak hours.

Many home users never pay attention to security, defender is a free and basic default, which is excellent for bringing this issue to the table, and at least have the user think about their computer’s safety.

and WMC is nice, I mean, it’s not perfect, but it’s userfriendly and shiney. not everyone knows about foobar and VLC you know. Also: Blueray/ HD… yeah…

By: Jeff

Jeff — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 03:25:30 +0000

Some of these features may be useless to the home user, but have great value to the business world.