Posted on 05/07/2009 8:03:40 PM PDT by Gomez
Improving performance is one of Microsoft's design goals with Windows 7, and many early reviewers (including ours) have said that the new OS seems peppier than Vista. But tests of the Windows 7 Release Candidate in our PC World Test Center found that while Windows 7 was slightly faster on our WorldBench 6 suite, the differences may be barely noticeable to users.
We loaded the Windows 7 Release Candidate on three systems (two desktops and a laptop) and then ran our WorldBench 6 suite. Afterward we compared the results with the WorldBench 6 numbers from the same three systems running Windows Vista. Each PC was slightly faster when running Windows 7, but in no case was the overall improvement greater than 5 percent, our threshold for when a performance change is noticeable to the average user.
The largest difference was 4 points--102 for Vista versus 106 for Windows 7 on an HP Pavillion a6710t desktop. Our other two test machines showed similarly minor performance improvements: A Maingear M4A79T Deluxe desktop improved by 1 point (from 138 on Vista to 139 on Windows 7), and a Dell Studio XPS 16 laptop improved by 2 points, from 97 on Vista to 99 on Windows 7.
(Excerpt) Read more at pcworld.com ...
I’m a Mack but my husband is a PC.....
He has no desire to try Windows 7, he is real happy with Vista...
Vista is crap.
God, I hope Windows 7 isn’t just a repackaged Vista.
(I haven’t tested it yet)
“That answers that question.”
I've mentioned this before, but I'll repeat it because it is so remarkable. I have a 3 year old Dell that I just put Ubuntu 9.04 on with the new ext4 filesystem. It now boots from the bios to a sign-on in 15 sec, and from password to usable screen in another 10. I'm amazed.
I’ll stick with my Kubuntu....
It is however Much much lower on resource usage.
So netbooks that barely crawl in tortured agony under Vista function fine with windows Seven,
Expect it to take over from Windows ME, err Vista fairly quickly.
Have you seen this? Make sure you click on the “close to play” and not the “click here” area as that will take you to advertisers.
“I can’t remember MS ever releasing an OS that was faster and/or less resource hungry than its predecessor. “
Windows XP is faster than Winows 2000. There were serious enhancements to the kernel in XP over 2000.
Ext4 doesn’t seem all that much faster for reads. But sequential writes are impressively fast.
http://www.linuxinsight.com/first_benchmarks_of_the_ext4_file_system.html
Speedboot can make quite a difference, but it is unfortunately disabled on my laptop for some reason. Many users report similar. Machines that can use it see an improvement of say 7 seconds out of 20 (around 30%).
I always hear complaints about Vista, but it works great on my computer.
It appears these tests were run without the multiple or the humongous, all-encompassing-bloatware antmalware programs running that the typical windows user installs to somewhat protect a system. Expect significantly slower benchmarks in the real world.
It runs great on much less hardware than Vista requires. It launches apps faster, starts and shuts down way faster then even XP did. It's better with power management. My laptop docking/undocking issues are gone finally. It isn't prone to those weird freezes (with the little spinning icon) that I get with Vista. It's rock solid and uses the existing Vista drivers just fine. The UI is improved, and there are lots of little improvements too numerous to recount here.
I listened to people who said "I don't see any big changes, why should I upgrade?". Then these people tried it, and they all, without exception, love it.
People like to bash Microsoft, but Microsoft is just an organization made up of regular people. The engineers, once unencumbered from the bad management that led to Vista, worked very very hard to create a great product. Instead of cutting things down that you haven't even tried, why don't you give it a try and see for yourself? The Release Candidate is a free download and you can use it for free until June 2010.
I agree.
With the exception of the Loony Toons default color scheme, I think XP is better than 2K in every way. ...and I REALLY liked 2K.
I don’t expect speed increases from operating systems but from hardware and drivers.
I just overclocked an XP box from 3GHz to 4GHz CPU speed tonight. Wow. What do you know. It’s “snappier”.
A newer hard drive with a lower access time and double the cache. Hey. It’s “snappier”.
I then put three of those hard drives in a Raid 0 and more than tripled my throughput. Hey. It’s “snappier”.
Computer tech writers are in permanent cranial/rectal inversion mode.
Nice!!! I'm considering a move to Linux myself. I haven't been doing any PC gaming since getting my PS3 last year, now there's really no reason for me to even run Windows.
My husband found when he installed Vista on an old machine it did not work very well but when he bought a new computer with Vista already installed, it has been problem free.
I still like my Mac better but I do like Vista when I use his machine.....
"Search" - all by itself - ruins the entire Vista experience.
Ubuntu 9.04 faster than 8.10? I just recently switched from Kubuntu to Xubuntu...
What reason or incentive do I have to "upgrade" to W7?
Yes, I have been trying out Ubuntu 9.04 as a virtual machine and it is nice.
What don’t you like about it in Vista?
Fairly bogus story. Many of the slashdot boys take it to task:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1225563
Can my MS-Office 2003 software run on Ubunto?
Win7 is Vista SP3
If you upgrade you MIGHT find more friendly features. Things might be a tad easier. I use XP and have no desire to move unless there is a compelling reason.
After I bought a Visduh laptop, saw what a pig it was, and sold it quick, my wife and I upgraded our aging machines with 2 new desktops and a new laptop at bargain prices from Dell Outlet, a few months b4 XP went bye-bye. So we are good to go for 4-5 more years.
We also recently started using the free Safari browser for PC. It’s a free beta download, works great, and the reason we are switching over to it is that it renders web pages much much faster than IE. Do a search, download it, and give it a go — the increased speed is very very noticeable from IE.
After our XP machines wear down, we’ll see if M-soft is offering a decent OS. If not, maybe a used Mac (new ones are way too expensive for my blood). Yes, yes — and Linux will be a possibility. I have the G1 Android phone (Android is Linux based) and love it.
One reason people like OS X so much better, and that it seems faster than Windows, is because Apple puts a lot of work into improving subjective performance. Those are those little quarter and half second waits you experience all the time that make the OS seem slow. Apple will sacrifice actual, benchmarked, under-the-hood performance to improve the subjective performance the user experiences. I don't use benchmarks in my daily work, I use the OS, so that's what I want to run fast.
I think MS did this a little with Windows 7, because in my experience it has far better responsiveness (subjective performance) than even XP.
Close. Windows Vista is NT 6.0, and Windows 7 is NT 6.1. It's a dot release, just a bit more than a service pack. For comparison, Windows 2000 was NT 5.0 and XP was NT 5.1. Vista was built off the NT 5.2 branch, which was 64-bit XP and Server 2003.
Honestly, Vista didn't deserve a whole number release, NT 5.3 would have sufficed. It was planned to be much more that would have deserved such a release, but Microsoft scaled it way back. Development had already been going for five years with nothing to show for it yet, so they had to release something.
Say as of SP2 and we agree. Except I call it the Crayola color scheme. I immediately downgrade to the 2K scheme or switch to the silver scheme whenever I get on an XP box.
You haven't been using a Mac. Every OS X release makes things run "snappier" on the same hardware. I upgraded from Tiger to Leopard (in place upgrade!) and I'm happy about the speed improvement, and I can't wait to extend the life of my iMac even further by installing Snow Leopard.
Download and install the free RC and see for yourself. You may find it worth the upgrade, you may not. Either way you're not out anything.
1. Do I need to do a clean install and reformat the hard drive?
2. Can I "upgrade" back to XP easily?
You should either wipe your system or dual-boot. An in-place upgrade is not a good idea, and you can’t downgrade afterwards.
Guess we’ll find out. I’m downloading RC now.
So, how does Apple make succeeding versions faster?
I bought a Mini when they first came out. I upgraded the memory and hard drive as soon as I could as Apple went as small and as slow as they could on both. Performance was a little better after that but nothing to put a smile on my face.
Now as it’s an antique with a PowerPC chip I can’t even throw a new processor in it. It would be a door stop but occasionally need it to run some Mac client stuff with.
And don’t *even* plan on using one of those old Minis as a Folding client.
Basically, lots of optimization, not even counting better leveraging of the GPU.
Now as it’s an antique with a PowerPC chip I can’t even throw a new processor in it.
The platform switch did nail some people. I'd been following the ups and downs of PPC for years, and refused to buy a Mac until they had processors on par with Intel and AMD, plus a good OS. When the PPC was better, the OS sucked (OS 9). Then OS X was out and good, but they had at most the G5 and the software wasn't optimized for it (the PPC970 requires a lot of specific software optimization to reach its potential). The perfect storm came when they released the aluminum Intel iMac with Tiger. Then I upgraded to Leopard and the speed boost did put a smile on my face.
I just finished setting up the RC in a VM on the Mac. Still more responsive than XP, and a bit more stable than the beta. Unfortunately I’m still seeing through the lipstick.
And what utter moron decided that UAC and prompts to install apps should disable the whole UI? I’d hoped they’d fix this by now.
I just received a used Thinkpad A30. I think the CPU is 1 Ghz and 256 megs of RAM. What flavor of Linux would you suggest I install?
Question: When you download the RC are you downloading an iso file to burn to a DVD or what?
Burn to DVD to install, or as I did hook the ISO file up to a virtual machine as the attached CD and install from there.
In Windows 2000, I can right click on a directory, scroll to search, and then search on a bunch of different parameters which narrow things down and let me find exactly what I want [which is typically in a hidden "System" file].
In Vista, I have to go to the search entry thingamabob, enter my search term, wait half a day while Vista searches both all file names and ALL FILE CONTENTS, then I have to scroll all the way to the bottom of that set of results to get to "Advanced Search", with which I can finally perform the kind of search [to include searching hidden "System" files] that was available to me seamlessly in Windows 2000.
The Windows Vista user experience is so awful it's as though it was designed by a committee of baboons to be used by a customer base of orangutans.
I just checked my times because I thought mine was pretty fast. Mine boots from the bios to a sign-on in 18 sec, and from password to usable screen in 20 more, maybe less if I wasn't counting the wireless card connecting.
My motherboard burned out last month and I had a choice. Buy a new box that would most likely have Vista or rebuild the one I had. Since I had a new 350GB SATA HD, and all the other hardware was still in good shape, I went for buying a new mobo, CPU and RAM. I reinstalled the XP SP3 I had and I'm very happy with the results. I'm not seeing Vista or W7 in my future.
UAC can be disabled in Vista, can it not be disabled in this RC? And how does it disable the UI? And what do you mean by "seeing through the lipstick?" Enquiring minds need to know......
I believe he's invoking the "You can put lipstick on a pig..." saying.
However, sometimes I just want to find a file, not search contents, or it's in a folder that you don't want to search. I don't have Vista installed to try this, but I know on Win7 you can type filename:xxxxxx, where xxxxxxx is a value within the name of the file for which you are searching. This will restrict the search to the file name, and not the contents. It looks for the string anywhere in the file name, not an exact match. There may be a way to do th exact match, but I have to do some research to see. There are other prefixes you can use other than "filename:", like "size:" or "Date modified:". Looks like a neat, semi-documented feature.
Another option, and one that I am sure works on Vista, XP, Win7, etc. - go to a CMD prompt, change to the directory under which you want to search, and type
DIR /S /B file_to_search_forThis is even faster than the previous method, and it can do exact filename matches.
It probably can, but that's not the point. Why even include it as a security feature if it sucks so much everybody turns it off?
And how does it disable the UI?
Whole screen dims, waiting for you to click something in the box to get it back.
And what do you mean by "seeing through the lipstick?"
Much of it is the same UI with a different paint job. There are some dialogs I recognize from back in the NT days, just with prettier colors that you could pretty much achieve with XP using a theme utility. This is especially true for many administrative utilities, with the main pleasant exception of the reworked Performance Monitor.
It probably can, but that's not the point. Why even include it as a security feature if it sucks so much everybody turns it off?
Because then you can blame it on the users when the OS gets owned by a trojan.
"Hey, we built a secure system, its not our fault the user chooses to drive without seatbelts..."
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