I am using Windows less and less these days. I have a dual boot server at home that runs Ubuntu most of the time, but I have to boot back into Windows (XP Home) to sync my iPhone with iTunes. I wish I didn't have to use Windows or iTunes, but that's a rant for a different section here. I love my iPhone. Best damn appliance I have bought since the home computer, so don't suggest another phone. While it may not be perfect for everyone, it's perfect for my needs, so that's that.
The problem is iTunes is sluggish and slow. I have a dual-core AMD with 4gb RAM (although, due to BIOS limitations, XP Pro sees only 3gb, but big whoop). Everything else on this box is fairly snappy and I had no problems. Half Life 2 in max resolution runs fine, even if Firefox is running. Before I switched to Ubuntu, the BOINC SETI stats on this system were the highest in my cluster. In short, this box is pretty screaming until iTunes loads. Then it acts like a Pentium III laptop that has been dropped too many times.
I ran task manager on this system to see how bad it was. When iTunes is running, it spikes the first processor at 90% when I start playing music, then drops to about 60% until I turn off the music, or spikes to 90% when it goes to the next song. At idle, it runs about 30% processor. The second proc is always 0%. The RAM is never that high, it uses at MOST 256mb out of the 3gb it sees, but generally idles at 127mb. Firefox also takes about that, unless it's playing a flash video, and then it may spike up to 200mb, but that's rare.
But iTunes is dog slow. And it doesn't seem to matter what system its on. It runs the same performance on my laptop, which is only a Celeron with 512mb RAM. It also runs slow on a Pentium 2.57 ghz box with 2gb RAM on XP Home (my wife's).
Symptoms are:
- The spike in proc and RAM needs
- It makes other applications run slow unless it's at idle
- Clicking on songs, buttons, or any other UI of iTunes tales about a second or so for it to respond, and it often "buffers" the clicks so if I click more than once (usually wondering if I clicked or the machine forgot), I often highlight the song list title like I am going to rename it.
- Once in a while, it wipes out my music database. Like, it will tell me it can't find a song, and remove all my playlists. It will ask, "Do you want to find this song?" and will open a file manager to the directory the song is in, and highlighted. It will make a duplicate entry, like it saw it for the first time. Five times this wiped out all my music on my iPod/Phone when I did a sync. Not my photos or apps, just the music and podcasts. And while it never touched the files on my server, that's annoying to have to re-add them all.
I tried defragging the drives, and that was pointless. I wonder if it's the fact all my music is on a network share? But when I install it before I show it the music collection (as in fresh install), it's slow then, too.
So am I to conclude iTunes for Windows is THAT bad or can it be tweaked somehow?
The problem is iTunes is sluggish and slow. I have a dual-core AMD with 4gb RAM (although, due to BIOS limitations, XP Pro sees only 3gb, but big whoop). Everything else on this box is fairly snappy and I had no problems. Half Life 2 in max resolution runs fine, even if Firefox is running. Before I switched to Ubuntu, the BOINC SETI stats on this system were the highest in my cluster. In short, this box is pretty screaming until iTunes loads. Then it acts like a Pentium III laptop that has been dropped too many times.
I ran task manager on this system to see how bad it was. When iTunes is running, it spikes the first processor at 90% when I start playing music, then drops to about 60% until I turn off the music, or spikes to 90% when it goes to the next song. At idle, it runs about 30% processor. The second proc is always 0%. The RAM is never that high, it uses at MOST 256mb out of the 3gb it sees, but generally idles at 127mb. Firefox also takes about that, unless it's playing a flash video, and then it may spike up to 200mb, but that's rare.
But iTunes is dog slow. And it doesn't seem to matter what system its on. It runs the same performance on my laptop, which is only a Celeron with 512mb RAM. It also runs slow on a Pentium 2.57 ghz box with 2gb RAM on XP Home (my wife's).
Symptoms are:
- The spike in proc and RAM needs
- It makes other applications run slow unless it's at idle
- Clicking on songs, buttons, or any other UI of iTunes tales about a second or so for it to respond, and it often "buffers" the clicks so if I click more than once (usually wondering if I clicked or the machine forgot), I often highlight the song list title like I am going to rename it.
- Once in a while, it wipes out my music database. Like, it will tell me it can't find a song, and remove all my playlists. It will ask, "Do you want to find this song?" and will open a file manager to the directory the song is in, and highlighted. It will make a duplicate entry, like it saw it for the first time. Five times this wiped out all my music on my iPod/Phone when I did a sync. Not my photos or apps, just the music and podcasts. And while it never touched the files on my server, that's annoying to have to re-add them all.
I tried defragging the drives, and that was pointless. I wonder if it's the fact all my music is on a network share? But when I install it before I show it the music collection (as in fresh install), it's slow then, too.
So am I to conclude iTunes for Windows is THAT bad or can it be tweaked somehow?
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