Posted 06/06/2008 at 10:00:22pm

I understand completely not giving credence to subjective measurements and terms. And 10% is NOT very fragmented in my experience. I didn't read the introduction of this article as Vista-specific. And I reject the idea of Vista as part of the majority of your readers' platforms. Your average power-user still runs XP with no default auto-defragging service. After a few months they are often heavily fragmented - at least, this is my (subjective) experience. I don't believe the average business desktop gets as fragmented as quickly and heavily as a gaming and multimedia power-user's PC. Perhaps I misperceive the HP you mention, but it didn't sound like much of a multimedia gaming rig to me. I appreciate the fact you've looked into Vista's defragmenter and third-party defrag products. Given your refocusing my attention to the fact this was a very specific test with a very narrow focus, I simply believe your test is useless to the majority of your power users.

Posted 06/06/2008 at 01:14:34pm

I have to call BS on this. Let me list the reasons why: 1) Vista? Who uses Vista? I'd venture to guess the installed base of your readers is at least 80%% XP. 2) Been running Vista's defrag weekly? How about getting a truly fragged-up disk to run this on? How about somebody's home rig that's been installing and de-installing games, utilities, scouring the 'net, while still running their favorite titles they installed two years back? 3) Just measuring boot-up? That's a damn tiny percentage of what I do with my PCs. 4) Why does this frost me? Because I've been using defraggers on Win9x and XP for, well, at least a decade now, I guess. And the reason I have is because it works. I let my kids (PC gamers, demo-tryers, and web surfers extraordinnaire, 14 & 18yo) run their rigs for months and then walk by with, in my case, Diskkeeper. I run the boot-time defragger first, then the normal defrag from the desktop. I've not measured results because I don't have to do so. Now, there are times I don't seem to recover much when I reboot, but apps do run much better. Hell, in running Hellgate London through all the patching, etc. I could tell the differences after a defrag if I'd been playing a while and had one or two patches come my way. This review is useless because it doesn't give anywhere near a decent, reader-like testbed situation. Try again, please! But I do love your mag - boot subscriber here...