Vista memory management - SuperBad, or SuperFetch?

My mate Simon constantly goes on and on about how much of a "resource hog" Windows Vista is. In his day-to-day working life he's building and maintaining desktop PCs for hundreds of imaptient users, and as a result "You can never have enough RAM" has become his constant mantra. Up until now I've always agreed with him. That is, until this morning, when I read an excellent article explaining exactly what Vista does with your PC's RAM. I was startled to find that actually, Microsoft have thought long and hard about memory management, and that Vista actually does things rather well - and I quote: "Vista treats system memory like a cache much more aggressively and effectively than any other version of Windows".

There's a new process called "SuperFetch" (a background task), which constantly fetches data that it thinks you're likely to need (based on your previous program selections and menu commands), and buffers it to RAM. The goal is to treat RAM like a system cache, which means that almost all of it should be in use - rather than older versions of Windows, which would regularly leave large swathes of it untouched, just waiting for a user command to trundle off and hit the hard disk for a large chunk of data.

This is really clever stuff - I take my hat off to Microsoft. The only downside is that SuperFetch is always running, so occasionally when you want to focus all the system resources on just one intensive task, you'll get a little irritated that the disk is busy, filling the cache with things that you know you won't need in the immediate future. Best option? Get a fast hard disk, like raided SATA. Maybe my next system will be a Vista installation... whatever next!

Rising costs re-visited

In a previous post, I mentioned that petrol cost £1.10 a litre, and that we could expect it to rise to £1.50 by September. Last night I filled up at the Esso station in Haywards Heath, and it cost me £1.20 a litre, so we've got some way to go, but the general upward trend is pretty clear. In the same period, I've seen a litre of Soya Milk rise from £1.00 to £1.39 in Sainsbury's, and the car parking charge at Haywards Heath station rise from £4.50 per day to £6.00. I'm due to be paying more for my road tax this year, up from the current £170 to £205, which at 20-odd % isn't that bad, considering that my Soya Milk has gone up 39% in the last 3 months. I know that inflation in the UK is at an 11-year high, but I do feel that they've forgotten to carry the 1... 38% would be more like it, 3.8% is just a flight of fancy.

High-definition photography

Chatting to a friend yesterday evening, he casually mentioned that he's getting heavily into "HD (high definition) photography". What the bleep's that, I thought... so he showed me a series of seven photos taken at the village Church. Each photo had been over-exposed on a different setting, to bring out one colour or another - so in one photo all the reds would be violently red, all the blues would be massively "in your face", etc. The idea is that you take a series of photos of exactly the same thing (using a tripod, otherwise you wouldn't be guaranteed to get exactly the same photo each time), all differently exposed, then you use a piece of software to merge them all together into one. The end result - a jaw-droppingly beautiful photo. I was amazed at the results he'd got, from an off-the-shelf digital SLR, and a £33 piece of software called "Photomatix". Check out the user gallery on the Photomatix website - some of the best photos I've ever seen, and they tell you how they took them. I'm itching to give this a try, just need to save a few pennies and get a Nikon D80, or similar.

Computers? Not me, mate...

I often wish I'd never admitted to knowing a thing or two about computers. My life recently has consisted of three things: Work, bowls, and fixing other peoples' computers. The trouble with playing bowls is that an awful lot of bowlers (especially the retired ones) have computers at home, and have little or no idea of how to use them. Every time I pop down to the club, I'm swamped with people asking for advice on this, that and the other.
"My email doesn't work"; "I ran a Windows update and now it won't switch on"; "My printer won't print"; "I think I'm paying too much for my broadband"; "My computer's slow and Dixons advised me to buy a new one" - these are all typical greeting lines which are thrown at me as I scuttle at high speed from the car park to my locker, where I grab my bowls and shoes, trying hard to ignore the queue of expectant bowlers clutching their copies of Windows for Dummies. Only the sanctuary of the green can save me from this modern-day nightmare, as (nearly) all bowlers know not to interrupt someone once a game has begun (the odd couple who tried to talk computers during a game learned the hard way).
Last Monday I counted 14 individual enquiries of the computer variety, fired at me within the 120 seconds it took me to grab my gear and leg it onto the green. The phone usually goes twice a night, with some problem or another. One of these days I'm going to claim amnesia, or just develop an attitude problem, and tell people politely where to get off.

There are, of course, a few people for whom it is a joy to work - people who have done me favours before, like Geoff, who installed my kitchen last year. I'm currently in the process of building him a rather snazzy new PC. For just £350 he's got an Intel Core Duo 2Ghz processor, 2GB of high-speed RAM, a 320GB hard drive, a full tower with a strong PSU, a legal copy of Windows XP, a DVD re-writer, rock-solid Gigabyte motherboard, 256mb of graphics goodness, and more useful applications than you can shake a stick at. That should keep him happy for a while, and at least he's not one of those irritating people who ring me up at work, asking about their Outlook Express settings!

As Withnail's friend once said, "Will we never be set free?". Maybe... once I start charging £1 a minute for giving good advice!