The other site I have been looking at is http://www.av-comparatives.org/ which seems to employ useful selective methodologies to test aspects of performance rather than just a bland overall assessment.

-Carol Haynes (November 26, 2008, 05:32 AM)

What I do notice as interesting is that NOD32, which has always had superlative overall reports on av-comparatives.org, has been really slipping dowm the charts both for on-demand and retro-active tests this year (it won overall best AV in 2007). Is that because of the shift to Version 3, and/or is it being outperformed by the new generation of malware more than its peers now?

-nontroppo (November 30, 2008, 10:54 AM)

A couple of days ago, the results from the latest tests by AV-Comparatives have been released. IMHO, those are the best AV tests currently available. The amount of detail given about the tests results and the author's methodology seem much better than those of other tests.
Anyway, in a (not entirely) surprising comeback after the slipping that nontroppo mentioned in his post, ESET NOD32 was the only antivirus to reach the maximum certification level (Advanced+) in this test. This was a retrospective/Proactive test where NOD32's heuristics typically shine.
Please visit the site (www.av-comparatives.org) to get the full results as the author has asked for the tests results not to be linked directly.

But beside all the auto- features, my interest got caught by these words:

You can set the “priority” in five levels to adjust the amount of processor power each program gets. You can also specify how many processor cores each program gets to use.

If these features can be combined, you would from my imagination be able to tell Windows Update not to use more than a fraction of a core, even if there are four cores. Or maybe I am getting this all wrong?

-Curt (November 28, 2008, 03:54 PM)

Curt, I think they're just using readily available Windows commands. Through Task Manager, "Processes" tab, right click on any process and you get the option of setting its priority (six options, from "real time", to "low") and its affinity with one, some or all cores of your CPU.
Besides, the donation-ware Process Lasso has the same features:

Process Lasso Features:
# ProBalance dynamic priority optimization
# Default process priorities
# Default process CPU affinities
# Foreground boosting
# Limit number of program instances
# Disallow programs from running
# Process logging
# System responsiveness graph
# Stand-alone core engine
# Available in x86-32 and x86-64 builds
# Much more...

or you can simply use the "start" command

There you go, Shades: DRM in Windows Vista

edit: Credit to urlwolf who posted this link a few days ago in the Living Room forum