Thank you for your reply. As I told, I already have 2 Gb RAM on the Vista computer. Therefore, what would be the gain with a ReadyBoost Key ? Has anyone used an USB key to improve the speed ? What is the percentage of gain observed (with how many Gb) ?

From what I understand, the effectiveness of the ReadyBoost feature (adding a memory stick) goes down as the amount of main system memory goes up. So you would see a bigger improvement on a pc with 512Mb of ram than on one with 2Gb.

Vista also uses a new prefetch system, which learns the programs that you use the most often, and after repeated use should improve the launch time of these programs.

The slower hard disk in your laptop may be a factor in why it takes longer; also some of the current drivers for Vista are not as efficient as their XP equivalents. A situation that will definitely improve as more manufacturers get themselves sorted out.

 

I perfectly agree with all your points. Thank you for your input MrSparks82

Also, are the antivirus installations different between the machines? Scan-on-access antivirus software brutally kills PC performance, especially disk-intensive stuff like software compilation. My suspicions are that the problems are, in order: a) Scan-on-access AV software b) Preinstalled Dell junk, in general it's a major problem on recent Dell systems. Try a clean reinstall, or check if Dell Decrapifier (Google for it, it is NOT by any means an official Dell product, just designed to improve Dell products. :) ) supports Vista yet. c) 5400 RPM hard drive vs. 7200 RPM. d) Your build environment isn't enabling parallel make (or some equivalent). With a standard "make" utility, the "-j" option changes the number of parallel jobs from the default of 1 to whatever the option specifies. i.e. "-j 2" will cause make to try to keep two compiler instances going at any given time. Without the "-j 2" or something similar, you won't be able to take advantage of the second core in your CPU. (No clue how Visual Studio handles this. I use the standard GNU toolchain under Linux myself, and it is WICKED fast on my E1705, which is essentially the same as the 9400.) Note that some source trees are not necessarily "parallel-make safe". Occasionally there are weird build dependencies between source directories that cause parallel builds to break.