I noticed that my machine no longer goes to sleep when I tell it starting about a week or week and half ago. At first I thought it to be that hybrid sleep mode was disabled and hibernation was enabled. Nope. I fiddled and I Googled for an hour to two, and finally chucked in the towel after a day of settings changes to no avail. Last night I found the solution. Resident applications running in the background.

I was looking at my System Configuration settings for Startup (found under Control Panel > Administrative Tools > System Configuration > Startup tab) and what I saw was a laundry list of applications. It didn't take me long to identify some I don't need: Adobe Gamma, Logitech Keyboard Mapper, and a couple others. After I turned these off in the applications settings, magically my computer would go to sleep again. Also given the last thing on the list that I installed before my sleep problem was the software for my Logitech G15 Keyboard, I am pretty sure that is the culprit. This isn't the first time I have run into issues with Logitech's keyboard software. I also have a Wireless Desktop (I forget the designation) that when they came out with new software for I had to revert back to an old version because the security of the application wouldn't let me use quick keys in Photoshop. There was some configuration process for it, but it always failed on the last step and simply hung until I force quit.

Consequently my machine boots a little faster now, but it is still slow as hell to boot up – especially after installing SP 1; which overall has improved the performance.

I still have 24 other apps running resident on my machine, some of which are going to get the boot here soon. This is something that most folks don't really think about and maybe they should. These applications can suck a lot of memory, like Adobe's Acrotray which just waits for you to open a PDF file, and helps it along uses almost 3 mb of RAM – to do nothing 90% of the time. Buh-bye.

These types of problems, memory leaks, over CPU utilization or whatever with these little apps is just poor development. I know Software Development can be hard, I know its hard to build to every possible PC and hardware variation – but these in particular deal directly with the OS. Maybe if all these companies weren't always in such a hurry to get on to the next latest and greatest they could spend the time needed to make a solid app, rather than a mediocre app that needs 15 patches in it's lifespan.

And Microsoft is already talking about Windows 7….

I rebooted XP to be greeted by a win32 failure, quickly followed by a host of others things and apps dying which ultimately crippled XP, so I had to reboot. After about 7 or so reboots, a BSOD with only 1 line of text, and numerous other weirdo things I was finally able to get back in to a stable enough point to copy the important stuff to my backup drive and rebuild. My machine was acting kinda weird for a few months, some service would fail every now and again and I would have to reboot – but nothing too major; certainly nothing I had never seen before in XP.

Since I have been having good luck with Vista, I decided to go that route, but figure I would do a clean install and wipe all the drives and start clean with 1 OS, rather than an XP/Vista dual-boot.

Note: If you are planning on buying Vista, don't buy an upgrade. Get a full version – you can't perform a clean install and rebuild partitions from an upgrade.

I found out after I restarted and went to the setup disk that you have to install Vista from the OS you intend to upgrade if that's the disc you have – no clean build for me. But yet… I did figure out that you don't have to enter a product key, and then you select the version of Vista you have and it will let you at all the good stuff on the disc; which could let you perform a clean install. I found an article stating this works fine and all you have to do then is upgrade your system from within Vista and enter your key there, but my install would error out (with 0×80070241 – which seemed to be related only to the beta and a corrupt install ISO) after 9% every time. So I had to install XP just to upgrade to Vista. This is the most annoying, ignorant decision Microsoft has ever made in the history… okay maybe not, but WTF!? This isn't going to prevent piracy, since people don't ever hack upgrades anyway – so the only thing they accomplish by this stunt is to make it harder on people who have to rebuild their machines after Microsoft's crappy software poops out its brain.

I didn't get my machine back until 10pm on Thursday night. If I had just wanted to go back to XP it would have taken less than an hour, which asks for my 98 disc since it was an upgrade too; which is how it should be.

This last experience with MS is basically the straw that broke the camel's back; I'm done. Gates and Ballmer can take Windows 7 and jam in their collective arse for all I care – I won't buy it. In fact, I'm not spending another dime on anything from Microsoft. My next desktop will be a Mac. In the last year that I have had my MacBook Pro, I have had to rebuild my desktop 2 times, and that's not including the 4 times it took me to install Vista initially on my second drive. I have never had a problem with my laptop. Ever. If the Apple store hadn't been 2 hours away, I would have very likely just gone and bought a new machine.

Well, I'm back up and almost 60% reinstalled now, so I'm good for a little while – now I just need to find a way to skin the bots in Quake III to look like Microsoft execs, and I will be happily on a frag fest….

• no screen saver
• turn off monitors after 15 minutes
• set to sleep mode after 60 minutes
• hard drives cycle off after 60 minutes
• Hibernate after 90 minutes. 

I have to give it to Microsoft here though, the sleep mode in Vista is vastly superior to that in XP and I had no trouble coming out of sleep mode the half a dozen times or so I awoke my PC. I turned the screen saver off on this test as well to see if it made any changed in the power draw because I have had my doubts as to whether the screen saver turns off after the monitors turn off, or if it continues to run in the background possibly affecting CPU power usage. After checking the wattage used during sleep with both the screen saver turned on and off – it seemed to make no difference at all.

Another thing I discovered throughout this test was that not all USB devices turn off when your machine is turned off. My keyboard still draws power, and will pass power though it to other devices. I have a small Plasma Ball from Think Geek and while it was plugged into my keyboard the power kept flowing regardless of whether the machine was on or off. This surprised me especial since the keyboards LEDs go dark, and it's plugged into the USB ports on the MoBo, not the PCI Card ports.

Still the best solution is to shut the machine down entirely, and let it draw its 35 watts of power while turned off. For those who want to go a step further, you can get a Smart Strip that will shut off all other devices when the CPU shuts down. It is controlled by a single outlet which shuts the entire strip off when the device plugged into that outlet gets turned off, eliminating excess power drain for devices which should be off. This is great for TVs and home entertainment systems as well. Unfortunately it is still just a power strip which I don't use at home. Once this starts getting into battery backups then I will be more likely to get one for my computer.

Watt meter in hand I unplugged my entire system which is connected to a battery backup, and plugged in my new toy. Here are the results:

 Windows Vista Home Premium (SP 1)

• Spiked to 301 watts during boot (just after log in)
• ran at 279 – 291 watts sitting idle 3-5 minutes after boot
• ran at 182-191 watts while in pseudo sleep mode (monitors off and hard drives off)
• after 24 hours – 4.83 KWH

Windows XP Pro (SP 2)

• spiked to 302 watts during boot (just after the loading screen came up)
• ran at 255 – 265 watts sitting idle 3-5 minutes after boot
• ran at 155 – 165 watts while in pseudo sleep mode (monitors off and hard drives off)
• after 24 hours – 4.53 KWH

Conclusions

If I take these results and factor in the national average for electricity costs of 9.78 cents, then it costs me roughly $175.00 cents a year to run my machine under Vista, and $160.00 under Windows XP. I have both machines set to turn the monitors off after 15 minutes, and cycle the hard drives down after 3 hours of inactivity.

There are a couple of reasons why this surprised me, first being that I have more drives being used under XP with one of my drives not being recognized (since the raid drivers don't work) under Vista. The second being the much expanded power usage controls that Vista has. Being that Vista has the capability to actual control how much of the CPU you use, I would have figured the power draw would be less, but it seems initially that XP handles power better. The biggest difference between the two though is how willing I am to actually allow the computer to go into sleep mode. There is no way I am going to put my XP install in sleep mode, or hibernation – it simply won't come back.

This isn't the truest test either, during both tests I was using my computer normally, but I played no games and didn't have Photoshop open or any of those things, it was only to see what I get for running the whole shebang.

I'm not done yet though, so expect another run at this. I'm going to test my Vista install again only this time set it to sleep after 1 hour. I might also run another set of 24 hours tests where I play some games for a couple hours during the evening, as well as turn of the machine when I go to bed, and before I go to work – which should drop my annual operating costs down to $45.00 or so.

Where it works

I particularly enjoy how it handles the various sounds emanating from my machine. Having the ability to control audio levels from every device connected to it, as well as individual applications is a bonus. This keeps me from being blasted out of my chair while wearing headphones when someone logs in on Google Talk or Messenger.

I would say it is just as fast as my XP desktop too. With a 4 gb thumbdrive installed as RAM Boost, the machine sails right through large Photoshop files and plays all of my favorite games (except one, Halo 2). If the rumors about SP 1 having a performance and memory management gain, Vista will be quite fast. All of the built-in tools I have used perform well, and there seems to be genuine improvements within the operating system itself. I have run into many fewer inherent glitches within the OS; in fact I can’t really think of any. All of my USB devices hook right up and are easily accessible, save one – my Western Digital 500 gb drive. Every now and again it falls off the world and I have to unplug it and turn it off to get it back; something it has never done on XP.

The majority of the applications I use work just fine under Vista as well. WS-FTP hates Vista, and will not run. I initially had trouble with the entire Adobe CS3 suite on an install of Vista Business Ultimate, as well as Flex Builder 2 not working. Those are the only ones I have had trouble with though.

Where it fails

Driver compatibility. Probably 80% or more of the trouble, headaches, and unplanned rebuilds have been due to drivers that flat-out do not work in Vista. I recently made the rookie mistake of updating my audio device drivers through Windows Update – boy that was just dumb. Even though device manager said the device was "working properly", I had no sound. So I rolled back the drivers, and then had to unplug the plugs and rearrange them to get the 5.1 surround to function again. I had to do this originally too, when I first installed it so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise….

I still have no RAID support, but that’s more on ASUS than Microsoft.

Then we come to Halo 2. WTF!? Microsoft sells this game under their own moniker and it hardly works right. Half the time I would get an error message that some Halo app was running and the game would need to be reinstalled; and the other half would work fine 80% of the time or just randomly quit. The I tried to use a LIVE account and hehehe… yeah right. What a joke. Halo dies every time I try and login in to any real or fictional account. After installing the latest patch, the game doesn’t run at all. Way to go guys!

The biggest disappointment is how many incompatibilities in general there are, and when it comes right down to it there is enough blame to go around. It’ snot completely fair to blame Microsoft because every Tom, Dick and Harry is incapable of writing solid drivers for their new OS. Especially an OS so plagued with set-backs and postponed releases; it’s hard to believe that all of these other guys didn’t have adequate time and resources to get their code solid before release time. What lands squarely in their lap is when their own products don’t act right, and fail. Halo is one example, Office 2007 is another. I have fought with Office 2007 and Visual Studio in particular throughout my recent life as a developer. Both products are top notch unless you have trouble. My advice? Clean install. Period. Don’t ever upgrade anything.

All of this garbage combined has led me down the path of deciding if I really want to switch to the Mac platform entirely. I so very seldom have problems on my laptop it’s almost non-existent. The stopping point is the price, but what I guess I have to decide is Microsoft and Windows worth the trouble?

:: side note ::
Maybe your Vista woes are actually nVidia’s fault?