Windows Vista secret

Much of Vista's problem comes from a background program called "Superfetch." This is supposed to monitor your program usage, note which programs you use the most and when, and then keep those programs pre-loaded and ready to start instantly when you call them up. MS boasts that there's "no need" to turn Superfetch on - it's on automatically, all the time. Needless to say, this is a major memory hog - and one of the biggest reasons why Vista needs more RAM to function properly than prior operating systems did. And the actual savings in time to the user when opening a program, is in mere fractions of a second. Not worth it, IMO. Plus, it has no user-configurable interface. In other words, you're stuck with it whether you want it or not.

Actually, no you're not. Click on START, then RUN, and enter the following command:

net stop superfetch

My husband and I are running laptops with Vista, and with a bit of non-techie tweaking here and there (including turning OFF the auto Windows update) we have both laptops running like souped-up XP machines.

Neither of us misses Superfetch at all.