On Fri, 9 May 2008 00:50:10 +0000 (UTC),
(the wharf
rat) wrote:
>In article <>,
>Steve Thackery <> wrote:
>>
>>This is a good thing - it speeds up the responsiveness of your computer.
>>
>
> This is a good thing provided Microsoft guessed right.
Which to no surprise to anyone with intelligence does NOT work as
often as it does. The concept was good, however like most things
Microsoft does the implementation is poor.
PreFetch was born in XP. Vista builds on that to bring us SuperFetch.
The idea, while good...preload what you'll likely use based on what
you did in the past suffers from a fatal flaw, actually two.
First if you ever wonder why Vista seems to take forever to settle
down and is sluggish after it has successfully booted and is showing
the Desktop, blame Superfetch. The reason your hard drive is likely
grinding away for the first 30 seconds or more with the CPU and Memory
gage Gadgets on the Sidebar trying to pin the needle to the right,
that's Superfetch.
Second if you decide to break your workflow and do something different
and new then Vista will first have to unload all the crap it just put
in memory to make room for what you actually plan on doing.
The result is at best a mixed bag. Here's why:
1. Boot your computer.
2. Vista will prefetch based on history of your work habits.
3. But wait... today you're going do something new and
different.
4. SuperFetch now must note the applications that caused the
prefetched data to be moved out to the page file.
5. Now it has to undo it's guess of what it thought you would be
doing and move it out to Virtual Memory.
6. Once you're done, Superfetch will again bring the prefetched data
it thought you would need back into memory.
All of the shuffling of course takes time.
If anyone thinks executing more steps speeds things up, there's a
bridge in Brooklyn I have on sale this week I can let you have real
cheap. Let me know.