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 ...
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.
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