What kinds of settings are you worried about? You can generally optimize any Windows operating system for performance v. appearance. There's also a list of processes that Sony recommends you turn off to maximize Vegas performance. While these are XP processes there appear to be many of the same ones in Vista. But I'm not sure how much any of these impact Vegas performance in real life.

I have Vegas 7e installed on a Vista laptop. Other than the Media Manager issue (which I just unistalled - FYI you can hit "cancel" during the initial installation routine when it shows Media Manager being installed and you'll be OK) it seems to run fine. I can't compare render times on this machine since I never had XP installed.

My suggestion is just install Vegas without Media Manager and enjoy your new laptop. If there are serious issues you'll become aware of them soon enough.

And to get the same very sweet search function in XP, just run the free Google Desktop. Many of us here have been using this for years and can't live without it. Instant results, it never gets in the way, it never slows down the machine (which the Vista indexer sometimes can do).

http://desktop.google.com/features.html

I can't speak to any sort of deep tweaking but then I never bother with that with XP either.

On our test system here I went through the motions of reducing the interface back down to something close to win2k (which is the first thing I do with XP as well). It's still a multi-step process:

1. Find "my computer" in the start menu, rigth-click on it and select "properties". Now select "advanced properties" and then in the "advanced" tab click the "performance" button. Select the "adjust for best performance" radio button to disable everything and then if you are using an LCD screen re-enable the "smooth edges of screen fonts" check box. (Note: You can also get at the Page File settings from this panel but we'll ignore that for the purposes of just simplifying the display.)

You should now have a fairly simple desktop but there's more you could do.

2. Now change the theme to Windows Classic. Right-click on the desktop and select "personalize". Now select "theme" and then choose the Windows Classic theme. You might also change the Desktop background to a solid color.

3. Finally, right-click on the Start menu and select "properties". Choose the "classic start menu" radio button and then click its "advanced" button. Check the "Small Icons" box. Review the rest of the settings and then save the settings.

You should now have a spritely Windows interface that doesn't suck memory like an alcoholic at happy hour.

Rob Mack

will quicktime now interface .mov files fine with vista? That was one thing holding me back from buying a new laptop with vista. If that and media manager could get working, I'd give it another try.

Sean
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broadcast voiceovers

Excellent suggestions!
I've also incorporated some of the suggestions from here:

http://www.tweakvista.eu/
- They have a section that is set up for Performance Tweaks.

Since incorporating some of the mentioned tweaks... my machine feels a little more responsive & smooth. May just be my imagination though. I haven't BenchMarked it or anything.

I was told to also look into how Vista uses 'Thumb Drives' as extra RAM. Especially since you can get USB Thumb Drives for so cheap nowadays.

My system is:
Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 2GHz
2GB RAM
32 Bit

After working with Vista on a new laptop, I can say with certainty that I absolutely hate it.
Where can I buy XP any more?

www.newegg.com

Yup Vista sucks donkey's ass. My laptop with Vista is used as emailc omputer ratehr then editing system as it constantly crashed Vegas and is too slow for premiere.

Is your Vista also too slow when you change everything to the Classic Style?

Mine seems to be doing fine so far running the Sony Suite, Adobe Suite, Boris, and the other Apps I run. Of course this is after I've turned off some of the aforementioned processes.

My XP runs @ 30 processes on startup...
Vista runs @ 70 processes on startup.

I think minus all these processes Vista would be cool... but then again, if it aint broke... don't fix it. XP runs all my Apps without many; if any, tweaks.