Vista on mobile PCs- not for the casual user

I have written about how Vista runs on mobile computers often because it affects everyone buying them currently.  Sure a few OEMs are still offering their mobile PCs (UMPCs) with Windows XP, but most of them are being configured with one of the flavors of Vista.  I still find Vista runs very poorly on mobile PCs without a Core 2 Duo processor and at least 2 GB of memory, but this isn't intended to address that once again.  Let's just say that I am happy with how well the HP 2710p runs on Vista Business, but then it meets my preferred specs for doing so.  No, today I'm addressing something that has been affecting me personally and that's "casual" usage of Vista.

What on earth is that?  Well, it's no secret I have multiple devices at my disposal, Mobile Tech Manor is constantly seeing gadgets coming and going.  This means I may be using 3 or 4 mobile PCs over the course of a week so that I can get a good feel for how each one performs.  Not a problem, this is something I've been doing for years.  But now there's Vista.  I am finding that Vista does not like casual usage.  What is casual usage of Vista?  It can be easily defined as the practice of letting a given device sit for a couple of days or longer and then picking it up to use.  Turn it on or resume from sleep mode and then wait.  And wait some more as Vista does the housekeeping that it apparently does in the background on all PCs, especially those that are slept a lot.  I am sure it is running the search indexer to put all emails and files into the index so you can search them.  It's also getting ReadyBoost up to speed if that's turned on, along with other system functions like Super PreFetch.  All of these take a long time to do and unfortunately on most mobile PCs the hardware is not up to letting much else take place while this is all happening.

Casual usage of Vista can prevent me from picking up a device that hasn't been used in a day if time is tight so it means I often don't pick up device A as I'm heading out the door.  I have to plan 30 minutes or more before I need to leave because Vista is not pretty when it's getting ready for work in this scenario.  Until the background housekeeping is done it can take minutes to just put the device to sleep, and once awakened it's going to finish what it was doing anyway which means the device won't be very useful once it's resumed at the destination.  That's where real work needs to get done and it's bad enough that I just won't take a device with me that's not been used for a while.  I understand the need to do OS housekeeping but it's obvious to me that Vista is doing far too much of it.  Microsoft obviously assumed that users are going to leave their PC on all the time and that's not the case with mobile devices.  So the message here is clear- don't be casual with Vista and you'll probably be OK.  As long as you have stout components in your PC.

Comments

[Mickey Segal]

I leave the computer on overnight with the display off, and all the housekeeping takes place then.

[Nikooo]

Do you think this issue should/could be "fixed" by software update? A simple comand stating "do not use more than X% of the processing power" or "do not start cleaning immdiately upon waking up" should do the trick.

[Jake]

Windows Defender is the worst culprit in my opinion. For some reason it panics if your PC hasn't been used in a few days and nags you until you run a scan of your entire harddrive. Surely it should know that the PC hasn't been turned on at all which should mean that there's no chance of anything "bad" having happened since last time a scan was run.

[Dg]

so what exactly makes u think not using Vista for a few days is causing this?

there should be no difference leaving it off for an hour or a week. once you turn a PC off it is OFF, no files get defragmented, no files get moved, no file contents have changed... so on & so on.

[Tate J.]

I've been following this Vista Mobile theme for a while. I must be one of the lucky ones. I bought a Motion M1400 off of ebay with Vista Ultimate loaded. 1.1 ghz Pentium Processor and 1 gig of ram. It ran great until I loaded Zone Alarm on it. I upped the ram to 2 gigs and it works like a charm with Zone Alarm running. It takes a long time to boot, so I just put it in sleep mode when not in use. It's on and ready to go in 10 to 12 seconds.

So far, Vista on a mobile mobile device is working for me.

Now, if I could just save up enough for one of those Raon Everuns...

[Tate J.]

I've been following this Vista Mobile theme for a while. I must be one of the lucky ones. I bought a Motion M1400 off of ebay with Vista Ultimate loaded. 1.1 ghz Pentium Processor and 1 gig of ram. It ran great until I loaded Zone Alarm on it. I upped the ram to 2 gigs and it works like a charm with Zone Alarm running. It takes a long time to boot, so I just put it in sleep mode when not in use. It's on and ready to go in 10 to 12 seconds.

So far, Vista on a mobile mobile device is working for me.

Now, if I could just save up enough for one of those Raon Everuns...

[Tate J.]

I've been following this Vista Mobile theme for a while. I must be one of the lucky ones. I bought a Motion M1400 off of ebay with Vista Ultimate loaded. 1.1 ghz Pentium Processor and 1 gig of ram. It ran great until I loaded Zone Alarm on it. I upped the ram to 2 gigs and it works like a charm with Zone Alarm running. It takes a long time to boot, so I just put it in sleep mode when not in use. It's on and ready to go in 10 to 12 seconds.

So far, Vista on a mobile mobile device is working for me.

Now, if I could just save up enough for one of those Raon Everuns...

[Guthrie]

How is Vista these days on your Fujitsu P1610? Are you back to XP?

That's my latest dream device and I loathe the OS options. Not much I can do on a mini tablet about that.

Thank god these new MIDs are highlighting linux options.

[Scott_H]

I can't comment on Vista in this regard. My main PC is the Vista laptop, so it gets used regularly. However, it has always bothered me that every program seems to want to do all sorts of "stuff" when you first start up the PC. It is exceedingly frustrating not being able to do anything for 5 or 10 minutes because some utility or other is using up 100% of the CPU. While not the only culprit, Windows Defender is certainly one of the major culprits. Then, there's anti-virus that wants to update and scan immediately. And, that old svchost.exe process consistently hogs major amounts of CPU. I don't know if it's Windows Defender, Windows Update, or some other Windows application searching for updates, but the PC is basically unusable while that's happening.

I'm with Nikooo. There should be an easy, straightforward way to disable *all* of this so everything isn't competing for CPU time at the same time (something easier than trying to configure each application separately or using Task Manager to kill the offending processes -- and hope you don't kill something that causes your PC to barf when you kill it). None of these things seem to be "intelligent" enough to do this on their own.

[Scott_H]

Btw, Mickey, not all of us can or want to leave our PCs on all the time. So, that's not necessarily a viable solution. It's clear, however, that most of these apps expect the PC to be on overnight. Most of them seem to be configured out of the box to do their thing between midnight and 6 am.