----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2007 11:16
AM
Subject: [MSUNAG] Windows Vista Aero
transparency CPU costs
I upgraded to Windows Vista a couple months ago because I needed to
experience it in order to write about it and understand what customers are
going through.
My Thinkpad Z61t has been sluggish compared to running XP, something
documented in the trade press. This morning I was looking at Task
Manager to see what proceses were eating up CPU. A module called dwm.exe
was consistently taking up 12% or so of CPU.
Turns out this is the Desktop Window Manager, which handles the
transparency effects and other new features such as seeing a preview of a
window by mousing over its place on the Taskbar.
I disabled the transparency effect and dwm.exe fell to using about 5-6%
of CPU.
As it happens, I can't stand the transparency effect. It makes it
harder to discern the top edge of the current window and it costs a lot of
CPU. Others using or deploying Vista may want to try turning it
off.
/rich