How to speed up Windows Vista on your laptop

New laptops should have a high enough specification to run Windows Vista at a reasonable speed, but if you’ve upgraded your existing laptop from XP and are starting to regret it, there’s some help from an unlikely source – Microsoft. It’s published a 14-page PDF document that details how to improve Windows Vista’s performance and while much of the information has been common knowledge for a while, it’s good to get it straight from the horse’s mouth.

Microsoft’s overview for the guide states:

Windows Vista and SP1 focus on delivering greater performance and overall system responsiveness. By striking a balance between speed and responsiveness, Windows Vista and SP1 deliver a level of performance that has the greatest positive impact on the system’s usability. This guide looks at the following areas of performance improvement:

• Making configuration changes that help a computer feel more responsive when you use it.
• Using hardware to boost the actual physical speed of a computer.
• Making configuration changes that help a computer to start faster.
• Making the computer more reliable may help increase performance.
• Monitoring performance occasionally so that you can stop problems before they get too big

Of particular benefit to laptop users is the advice on customising the Vista power plan and exploiting its hybrid sleep mode to speed up start-up times, but Microsoft isn’t afraid to get technical and the guide even goes so far as to recommend which Windows Services to disable. Alas, it stops short at recommending the reinstallation of Windows XP.

[ Microsoft Overview Series: Windows Vista Performance and Tuning]