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What you can get right now

Posted on 14 Oct 2008 at 11:19

Of course, there's a limit to what you can remove without crippling Vista, and changes can have unforeseen consequences, thanks to Windows' complex system of interdependencies. Remove the Windows Firewall, for example, and you'll find your networked printers stop working.

And although vLite does its best to warn you about the knock-on effects of disabling core functions, it can't do anything about third-party software that assumes it's running on a full Vista installation. So even if you do create a lean, stable version of Vista, the next program you install could fail inexplicably when it tries to hook into a service that isn't there.

To be on the safe side, we'd recommend only removing features you're absolutely certain you won't miss. Windows Mail? Toss it in the bin. Desktop Window Manager? Best left alone.

Some adventurous souls have taken a different route, and eschewed Vista altogether in favour of Windows Server 2008. As the name suggests, this edition of Windows is intended for servers, and includes various extra server functions; but it shares Vista's look and feel, and almost all of its underlying architecture, so there's nothing stopping you using it on your desktop.

The big attraction of Server 2008 is the ability to enable and disable everyday components at the click of a button. Standard Vista features such as desktop themes, sound, wireless networking and Windows Search aren't only optional in Server 2008 - they're disabled by default. The ability to pick and choose your features without making irrevocable decisions is a big advantage over vLite: if you run into trouble, you can just turn the relevant features back on again.

There are a few caveats to using Windows Server 2008 as your desktop OS. An obvious one is price: a Server 2008 licence and installation disc will set you back around £300. That's a lot to pay for a desktop OS that's fundamentally very similar to the copy of Vista that probably came with your PC.

And while Vista hardware drivers will work in Server 2008, software may refuse to run when it sees it's running on an unexpected version of Windows. As with Vista, you can run applications in a compatibility mode where the OS pretends to be Windows XP SP2, but there's no option to impersonate Vista itself, which could cause problems.

We've also heard of the Home editions of some software refusing to run when they realise they're running on a server OS - forcing users to shell out for more expensive Enterprise editions. Unless the precise package you want is specifically advertised as working with Server 2008, there isn't a lot you can do except pester the developers.

Faster performance

As we prove conclusively in our Memory stripped bare feature, increasing your memory from 512MB to 1GB in Windows XP and 1GB to 2GB in Vista makes a big difference - and it's the single easiest way to make your PC faster.

But there are a number of ways to increase speed for free. If you don't want to go to the extreme of installing vLite, using msconfig.exe to determine exactly which processes, programs and services load up when Windows boots is a simple way to filter out the gunge that can clog up your operating system.

Most people are aware of the disk defragmentation tool built into Windows (if not, head to Accessories | System Tools in Windows XP, or just type "defrag" in the search bar in Vista), but CCleaner (www.ccleaner.com) is arguably the best third-party tool for cleaning a system of redundant files and Registry entries.