I've just finished reading an article on Computerworld called "12 unnecessary Vista features you can disable right now" which claims that you can "reclaim your PC's performance by turning off a dozen wasteful features." Sorry folks, but more than 90% of this article is bunk.

Let me just run through the "tips" contained in the article quickly and add a few thoughts:

• Turn off the Vista Sidebar - Bunk. Performance gains here are directly related to how many gadgets you have running and the quality of the code.
• Turn off Aero - Bunk. Some notebook users might claw back a small amount of performance (and, more importantly, battery life), but even a lot-spec desktop machine won't benefit from this.
• Turn off various Windows beautification options - Bunk. Offers little to no performance gains.
• Turn off Remote Assistance - Bunk. Gains resulting from this can't be measured.
• Turn off Internet Printing Client - Bunk. As above.
• Turn off Windows Meeting Space - Bunk. As above.
• Turn off Windows Ultimate Extras - Bunk. As above.
• Turn off Tablet PC stuff - Bunk. Again, as above.
• Turn off ReadyBoost - Bunk. As above again.
• Turn off Search indexing - Some gains here, mostly relating to disk access. Depending on the speed of your disk and how many files you have, this might help make your system a bit more responsive.
• Turn off Offline files - Bunk.
• Turn off Windows Error Reporting Service - Bunk. However, it does speed things up following a crash recovery because you don't have to mess about with dialog boxes.

Bottom line, 90% bunk. You might be wondering whether doing all the things I've labeled as bunk have a cumulative effect on performance. Sorry, but that's also bunk.  The difference between a system with all these features running and one with them turned off is usually too small to measure.

Here's a tip. Next time you come across an article promising performance gains, look for any data presented by the author to back it up, even if they just tell you how much RAM they gained on their system, or how much their 3DMark went up by. If you see little or no metrics, that points to a regurgitated article written by someone who either hasn't tried out the tips themselves and is taking everything on face value, or hasn't bothered testing out the claims to see just how much performance gains their achieved.

Here's what Microsoft has planned for us next Patch Tuesday:

• Four Microsoft Security Bulletins with maximum severity of Critical, which include security bulletins for the following:
  - Windows Media Player
  - Windows
  - Windows Media Encoder
  - Office
• These updates may require a restart.

More info on Tuesday

Important news for Sony VAIO TZ owners:

Dear Valued Sony VAIO Customer,

Sony takes pride in the quality of its products. Recently, we became aware of a potential issue affecting the following notebook PC models:

 - VGN-TZ100 series 
 - VGN-TZ200 series 
 - VGN-TZ300 series 
 - VGN-TZ2000 series

The issue involves a small number of units which may overheat due to a wiring problem. Sony has initiated a voluntary program to perform a free inspection and, if necessary, a repair to ensure these units meet our high quality standards.

To find out if your VAIO notebook is one of the affected units, please visit this link: http://esupport.sony.com/fixmypc. You will be prompted to input your product code and serial number located on the bottom of the notebook. It will be checked automatically against the range of affected units. If you find that your PC is one of the affected models, follow the instructions on the website and make arrangements for an inspection. You may also call our VAIO TZ customer hotline at 1-888-526-6219 to determine whether your notebook computer is affected by this issue and whether service is required.

At no charge, Sony will provide an inspection and, if necessary, on-site repair at your home or office. Alternatively, you can ship your notebook to our service center.

The satisfaction of our customers is our number one concern, and we will work diligently to ensure that your VAIO notebook is in top working order. We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your support in this matter.

Sincerely,

Mike Abary,
Senior Vice President, VAIO
Sony Electronics Inc.

If you own a VAIO TS sold between July 2007 and August 2008 (and it seems that there are some 440,000 of them) then click on the above link and get your notebook checked now.

How playing with hacker tools can backfire:

A "Myspace Cracking tool" has recently come to light, though if you're considering attempting to crack some Myspace accounts with this:

....then you might want to think again, on account of it not being quite what it seems. This "cracking tool" is only after one persons details: yours.

No, the tool doesn't help you crack MySpace accounts, it's after your stored passwords contained in Firefox. 

Don't play with hacker tools!

The other day ATI released Catalyst 8.8 drivers for its range of GPUs. These might work for you but I had to roll my system back to the earlier version to get it stable again.

I usually download and install the latest ATI drivers as soon as they are released, and normally I never look back. I either see a performance boost (which makes me happy), or I don't notice anything at all (which also makes me happy). This time around I encountered several issues that forced me to roll back to 8.7. Specifically:

• Second Life viewer (and the third-party OnRez viewer) would crash as soon as I logged in-world
• Poor performance in CoD4 (I'd say a drop in frame rate of around 20%)
• Several lockups

I can replicate these issues on different systems.

On rolling back to 8.7 everything returned to normal. I even completely wiped all traces of the ATI driver from my system and reinstalled 8.8 in case of corruption but that didn't help. There's something bad about these drivers. I'll see what 8.9 are like next month.

Rolling back ATI Catalyst drivers

ATI make is simple for you to roll back to a previous version of Catalyst if you're experiencing problems. Here's how.

1. Fire up Windows Explorer.
2. Navigate to C:\ATI\SUPPORT
3. Inside that folder you'll see one or more folder names. You only need to worry about the numbers at the beginning (such as 8-8 and 8-7).
4. Inside the folder of the newest driver you've installed (which you can tell because it'll be the largest number) you'll find a file called Setup.exe. Run it.
5. Go through the wizard and choose to uninstall the drivers.
6. When the uninstall is complete, reboot.
7. When the system is back up navigate to Navigate to C:\ATI\SUPPORT again and choose the folder containing the previous driver you had installed (go by the numbers).
8. Inside the folder you'll again find a file called Setup.exe. Run this.
9. Install the driver.
10. Reboot.

You'll now be back to using the previously installed drivers and hopefully things will return back to normal.