Is Windows 7 Faster Or Just Smarter? 619
Barence writes "The Windows 7 unveiling garnered largely positive coverage, with many hands-on testers praising it for being faster than Vista. But is it actually? To find out, this blogger ran a suite of benchmarks to see just how much quicker Windows 7 really is — and the results weren't quite what he expected. 'The actual performance gap between Vista and Windows 7 is ... nada. Absolutely nothing. Our Office benchmarks and video encoding tests complete in precisely the same time regardless of which OS is installed. [...] It's tempting to see this as a bit of a con. They've sped up the front end so it feels like you're getting more done, but in terms of real productivity it's no better than Vista."
Trick Question (Score:5, Insightful)
Is Windows 7 Faster Or Just Smarter?
I don't like either of those options, how about "just more of the same Microsoft software?"
I understand the article points out that they went with simply a "more responsive interface" paradigm (Web 2.0/AJAX, anyone?) and probably didn't really fix any serious problems. But at the same time this headline reeks of either marketing or hilarious lawyer type questions. Examples:
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Yes or no, has Steve Balmer stopped beating his wife?
Yes, I asked her last night -- he stopped around mid-June.
Re:Trick Question (Score:5, Funny)
Yes or no, has Steve Balmer stopped beating his wife?
Yes, I asked her last night -- he stopped around mid-June.
Please, it's a simple yes or no question. We don't need details or explanations, if the witness would just stick to the facts we could move forward.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
This is a new world we live in. We have to know more information about it so we can cater a program specifically to you for fairness and equality. If we don't gather specific information about the events, race, sex, sexual preference and hair color of the persons involved, how are we to make sure they get an equal* resolution.
* equal in used in this context is shorthand for "fair and equal according to the person involved"
(there goes my Karma...)
Re:Trick Question (Score:5, Funny)
Yes or no, has Steve Balmer stopped beating his wife?
Yes, I asked her last night -- he stopped around mid-June.
Please, it's a simple yes or no question. We don't need details or explanations, if the witness would just stick to the facts we could move forward.
Farmer Joe decided his injuries from the accident were serious enough to take the trucking company (responsible for the accident) to court. In court, the trucking company's fancy lawyer was questioning farmer Joe. "Didn't you say, at the scene of the accident, 'I'm fine'?" said the lawyer. Farmer Joe responded, "Well, I'll tell you what happened. I had just loaded my favorite mule Bessie into the......." "I didn't ask for any details," the lawyer interrupted, "just answer the question. Did you not say, at the scene of the accident, 'I'm fine!'" Farmer Joe said, "Well, I had just got Bessie into the trailer and I was driving down the road..." The lawyer interrupted again and said, "Judge, I am trying to establish the fact that, at the scene of the accident, this man told the Highway Patrolman on the scene that he was just fine. Now several weeks after the accident he is trying to sue my client. I believe he is a fraud. Please tell him to simply answer the question."
By this time the Judge was fairly interested in Farmer Joe's answer and said to the lawyer, "I'd like to hear what he has to say about his favorite mule Bessie." Joe thanked the Judge and proceeded, "Well, as I was saying, I had just loaded Bessie, my favorite mule, into the trailer and was driving her down the highway when this huge semi-truck and trailer ran the stop sign and smacked my truck right in the side. I was thrown into one ditch and Bessie was thrown into the other. I was hurting real bad and didn't want to move. However, I could hear ole Bessie moaning and groaning. I knew she was in terrible shape just by her groans. Shortly after the accident a Highway Patrolman came on the scene. He could hear Bessie moaning and groaning so he went over to her. After he looked at her he took out his gun and shot her between the eyes. Then the Patrolman came across the road with his gun in his hand and looked at me. He said, "Your mule was in such bad shape I had to shoot her - how are you feeling?"
I'd give the attribution but I forgot where I found this. Apologies to the author, wherever you are.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Who is June?
And why did he stop part-way through beating her?
This is a can of worms!
Re:Trick Question (Score:5, Insightful)
Does anybody else remember when the greatest thing in Windows was After Dark, with it's screensaver of flying toasters? what we really need now is a repeat of that, but with chairs instead.
Worse than that. (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't define "faster" to include the response time of the interface.
But most users DO include the interface response time in their opinion of which is "faster".
I think Microsoft made a big mistake with the "fade in" menus. Just turning them off gives the user the impression that you've made their machine "faster". Even though email works at the same speed as before. As does Word. As do their games.
Re:Worse than that. (Score:5, Insightful)
But most users DO include the interface response time in their opinion of which is "faster"
Indeed, and that's a pet peeve I have with Linux. I use Linux - a lot. Heavily on servers at work (but generally CLI only there), and then at home I have a Linux Mint desktop that I use in addition to my Mac and Windows systems.
I love the concept of OSS, and for someone who when they were growing up saw a compiler as something that cost hundreds of dollars, the whole concept of having such a nice development environment is just amazing.
That said, while actually going from point A to point B probably isn't any slower, the interface just makes the system feel draggy. All the little pauses and and graphical oddities when moving a window around just take their toll, but the actual OS is fine (as obvious when I try to do something like say, compress video or something, where the Linux system holds it's own quite nicely).
Hopefully Wayland will take off and help in that regard. Mac OS X has shown what a slick, responsive UI can do for a Unix-like backend. It just sucks that it's tied down to only a subset of available hardware.
Re:Worse than that. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Worse than that. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm using Gnome with Metacity. The problem isn't the window manager itself though. That effects the general menu system and window decorations and such. For instance just opening/closing tabs in Firefox (an operation independent of your window manager) feels much slower in Linux because you hit close and there's a bit of "clunky" period for a fraction of a second where you see everything happen that you shouldn't. The tab lingers for a brief instant after pressing the button, then disappears, the tab listing blinks out for a split second and updates, and the window content blinks quickly and then updates again. In Windows or Mac the same operation is much more seamless. I hit close, and everything instantly appears right. While there probably isn't much appreciable time difference involved between the start and finish of the operation, there's a clunkiness that gives the appearance of a slower system.
BTW, I've used fast window managers before. My favorite used to be WindowMaker which I programmed in heavily. However, I've gotten past that phase. My computer is many times faster, and Windows and Mac give me a fairly responsive UI with all the menus and such of a modern system. Shaving off that functionality (which I do want) to supposedly regain performance that I'd already have with another platform isn't a viable option.
Re:Worse than that. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Tip for you: (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't use the eye-candy effects.
Then you'll have no effects which you've already stated are why modern UI's are all slow.
That's the thing - modern UI's AREN'T all slow.
It's not the effects - I generally keep those off anyways (why I'm using Metacity rather than Compiz/Fusion). Apple's OS X for example uses tons of effects and doesn't have the same slow feel to it. It's the smoothness and rendering that's an issue. When I do something on Windows or Mac, it either happens instantly, or there's a very smooth transition from one state to the other. On Linux it's often a bunch of blips where crazy things happen in that area and it all ends up correct at the end, but it had a klunkyness to it that created the perception of slowness.
For example, if I maximize a window: I consider it fine if the window either instantly appears at the new size (no effects), or does a smooth transition from one size to another (effects). What I don't like though is when I hit the maximize button, and I catch a brief glimpse of the window frame jump to the new size, after which the window background color expands to fill the window, and then the icons and other widgets all expand out to fill the new size of the frame.
All that stuff might occur in the same timeframe as a smooth effect would have (most LCD displays these days run at 60hz, so with 60 frames sent out to the display every second it's pretty easy to notice multiple frames doing odd things even if the actual time of the operation occurs very quickly), or on a no effects system it might have just delayed that long before updating. On the Linux system though, I'm subject to a constantly plethora of such displays.
Re:Tip for you: (Score:4, Informative)
Interesting. When I used to use the dev snapshots of Beryl they were lovely and quick (AMD64-3200+ with GeForce 6800). Unfortunately either the compositor or the window manager would crash at least twice a day, so it was a bit unnerving.
On a box at work (Old P4@3Ghz, crappy GeForce 5 series) I can notice windows redraw, tabs pause before disappearing, the works. It is very annoying, although I suspect that the driver is not installed properly and I don't have root on that box. I also don't have the time to explain to our sysadmin how to fix it :(
I used to use BlackBox a few years ago. I love that snappy feeling, and a few milliseconds in the wrong place completely destroy a user interface. But at work I put up with the slow annoying rendering - because metacity is rock solid and it doesn't crash on me ever.
At home, I ditched linux the day that I decided that I wanted a unix laptop with properly working hardware support (like hibernation that works the way it should do). So I bought a mac :) I agree about the perception issue, there are exactly two ways that it can be correct: instant snappy response, or smooth transitions in-between. Any noticeable redraw/overdraw lag is too much.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Unfortunately, in some cases, UI responsiveness directly affects actual performance.
I was surprised to discover one day that running builds with lots of compiler output in a gnome-terminal (I believe KDE's terminal was the same) was significantly slower than running it in a text console. (Actually it was a Windows friend who was pointing out one of the deficiencies in Linux, but that's another story).
Anyway, turns out xterm is still probably one of the best X terminal programs out there, especially in term
Re:Worse than that. (Score:4, Interesting)
You're very right there. I always use xterm or rxvt (which is also very fast) for my terminal windows. Konsole and the Gnome Terminal are both much, much slower.
As a side note though, it's the screen updates that kill your performance. I get similar problems when compiling over an SSH session where network latency limits how much can be written out at a time. My little fix there is to simply redirect the output to /dev/null. That way the regular text doesn't have to be sent back (speeding up the process), but error text (which is written to a different buffer) is still shown. emerge --sync on my Gentoo boxes runs noticeably faster when doing this.
Re:Worse than that. (Score:4, Informative)
man screen, it does wonders on ssh especially on a slow line.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Oh you're right it was rxvt not xterm that was indeed the fastest. Here's some simple performance numbers I got:
yes | dd of=/tmp/y.txt bs=1024 count=10240
10485760 bytes (10 MB) copied, 0.271632 seconds, 38.6 MB/s
(for calibration purposes)
dd if=/tmp/y.txt of=/dev/null
10485760 bytes (10 MB) copied, 0.0366388 seconds, 286 MB/s
gnome-terminal: dd if=/tmp/y.txt
10485760 bytes (10 MB) copied, 22.3385 seconds, 469 kB/s
xterm (jump): dd if=/tmp/y.txt
10485760 bytes (10 MB) copied, 57.5998 seconds, 182 kB/s
konsole: dd
Re:Worse than that. (Score:5, Insightful)
Can't be too surprised about that - most people are much more concerned about the apparent UI responsiveness than whether they'll shave a few seconds off of a video encode. And given that most people see Vista as very slow and unresponsive, Microsoft would do well to change that perception unless they want to be known for the TWO biggest software disasters in the 21st century.
Re:Worse than that. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Worse than that. (Score:5, Insightful)
Having worked in marketing and well as puely technical roles it is clear as a bell what is going on here.
When new product uptake isn't up to projections the marketing dept. has a few options. One of the options in its arsenal is to "relaunch". Windows 7 is clearly a "relaunch" of Vista. With all the development time and Money put into Vista don't think for a second that they can develop yet another code base in a fraction of the time. It is the same product with a different name.
Relaunches are used when there is a perceived problem in the marketplace and the engineering dept.says the product is sound.
Re:Worse than that. (Score:4, Interesting)
I have always stripped out all the "enhancements" except shadows under the fonts on the desktop, and always used "classic" gui for this exact reason. I also configure NO system sounds. It isn't about "faster", it is about "more responsive". My XP looks like 95. As for Vista, never bought it, never will. The wife has it on a laptop with modest amounts of eye candy settings, and I can't stand to use it. The OS is supposed to run applications, it isn't supposed to be k3wL. ~~~~
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
True story:
I worked at a place once where they had a bunch of Macs running System 7. People used to complain that they were dog slow, and indeed they were compared to the Win95 boxes we had because, hey, they were about three years older.
In an effort to at least show willing when asked to "do something" - I'd turn off extensions and stuff in an effort to get them to run a bit better. One day, I turned off the default menu "flashing" on a couple of machines to see if that made any difference. That was the on
Re:Worse than that. (Score:5, Interesting)
Can you give some examples of OS X being "slow" and unable to be turned off? Windows aggravates me to no end, but I can't think of any graphics "gimmicks" in OS X then get in the way (or at least that I still have enabled)
And yes Macs cost more and are of higher quality than bargain bin PCs. This has nothing to do with the article or the quality of the OS. If you had a real point you just killed it by trolling.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I much prefer using SSH or an SSH tunnel personally, I only use remote desktop as a "last resort".
Also, I fully expect a full-desktop GUI to be slow and somewhat bandwidth heavy and unresponsive. Remote Desktop is like this, but I don't hold that against it.
The problem with Remote Desktop is that (at least in Vista) the Windows key regularly gets 'stuck' down on the remote machine. This is apparently a known and ignored yet huge bug. The only way I can un-stick the key is using the Accessories->On-Scr
Re:Worse than that. (Score:5, Informative)
Yes. I doubt that the CPU or GPU are of differing quality. Except, of course, that the Mac has a much faster CPU than the eMachine, which is also where some of that cost comes in.
Uhh. NO. While Apple's case designs are *much* better than most third party cases that are available, they still use Seagate/Maxtor HDD's (just going by some G3/G4/G5's I've had my hands into), and standard off the shelf RAM, even off the shelf CD-ROM's.
Continuing...
I built my own PCs for a long time, but finally got fed up with low quality, buggy components. I don't have spare RAM, mobos, and PSUs lying around to troubleshoot crappy hardware to figure out which piece is bad or incompatible with some other random cheap crappy piece. I still buy PC desktops, but my last several computers have been barebones kits from Dell and Shuttle. When I buy RAM it's always from a reputable company, as I've had as many unusable sticks of Kingston and the like as have actually worked.
It is not the "PC's" fault that you purchased bottom-barrel crap components. Know what Apple uses for motherboards? Slightly modified Intel parts (again, going from what I've seen in some newer machines that went to surplus at my place of work because of how expensive they'd have been to repair). I've never purchased motherboards (even some bottom-barrel priced boards), memory sticks from various companies (though I've settled on G.Skill lately), or other parts that were "buggy". Yes, I've had an occasional DOA part, but that's what warranties are for. Just going by your own words, I'd say you are one of those "Yea, I can be a PC-Tech here for (insert company), because I built my own machine at home!" people I see all over the place. The kind of person that knows *just* enough to assemble a machine, but not enough to make sure all the parts your ordering/spec'ing for a machine will actually work together. This isn't the fault of the aftermarket parts producers -- it's yours.
And to suggest that they're the "same thing" as an $200-$400 eMachines or Dell is a complete farce.
Actually, they *are* basically the same thing. Like I said, you get an awesome Apple designed case, but the parts inside are basically off the shelf PC parts. Hell, I bought an Intel 975xbx2 mainboard that, with pcefi, worked perfectly under OSX 10.4 and 10.5 with vanilla kernel/kexts/etc (of course I did have to keep the couple modifications needed to bypass checks for the silly Apple ROM's, etc).
Having re-read what I typed, it sounds an awful lot like I'm harping on YOU instead of your argument, however, that's not my intention. I'm just really tired of seeing "Nu-uh! Apple uses much higher quality parts than you'll find in a PC, that's why they're better/more expensive!" arguments. If there were any truth to it, I'd be quiet on the subject (or even blast the "pc makers" for the same), however, it's just not true. Now, maybe when you get to the $200 Bargain Basement E-Machine, maybe (though even still, many of the parts *are* the same).
I think the major bits making Apple machines as expensive as they can be are the case designs and the modifications made to the mainboards (it doesn't help that Apple charges ridiculous prices for RAM/HDD upgrades). If Apple pushed the kinds of volume that, say, HP or Dell did, they might get some better volume discounts on the custom parts...
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Trick Question (Score:5, Funny)
Well, that's just deceptive. Amtrak provides neither!
Re:Trick Question (Score:5, Funny)
"If I were to tell you the fact that Windows 7 developers dine on human flesh at their desks to start each day anew, how would you react?"
"That explains everything!"
Even More Importantly... (Score:5, Funny)
I understand the article points out that they went with simply a "more responsive interface" paradigm (Web 2.0/AJAX, anyone?) and probably didn't really fix any serious problems.
I can't believe that no one here has made the obvious connection yet: Microsoft is copying yet another Mac OS feature: *TEH SNAPPY* [google.com]!!!
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Wrong. The correct answer is mu [catb.org], and you are a moron.
Re:Trick Question (Score:4, Funny)
so, I am right.
Re:Trick Question (Score:5, Funny)
Mu.
Mp3 Locking? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Mp3 Locking? (Score:5, Funny)
Depends, that capability will only work in 5 different versions of Windows 7:
Windows 7: Super Extreme Edition
Windows 7: Slightly Extreme Edition
Windows 7: Spectacular Edition
Windows 7: Excellence Edition
Windows 7: Better Than Average Edition
Re:Mp3 Locking? (Score:5, Insightful)
So ... the Better than Average Edition is the basic edition, right?
It's like the popcorn sizes in the movies. Now they're called large, extra large and super size. Funny enough, they're just the same size the old small, medium and large sizes. Only the price changed.
Re:Mp3 Locking? (Score:5, Funny)
"I don't want to start a holy war here
what is the deal with you Windows fanatics?
You're off to a bad start.
In addition, during this file transfer, Netscape will not work.
I hope you are calling Firefox "Netscape" out of habit. I really don't want to know what you are doing using the actual Netscape browser.
I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a Windows 7 box over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems."
It's shiny. And it's not Vista (at least in name).
Marked funny.. (Score:4, Funny)
.. not because people are laughing with you, but because they are laughing AT you.
Obvious old troll was obvious, how could you not have seen it?!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Wait, that's not vista capable?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
But its the 64 bit version of Windows 7 so it's twice as fast, and it has with 64mb of ram. That's a full megabyte of ram for each bit, that should be enough for anyone.
;)
Re:Mp3 Locking? (Score:4, Informative)
I'm actually the opposite. I always heard comments like yours (maybe you're astroturf from MS marketing?) and thought it made sense. Other than the DRM quirks, I figured Vista would be at least as good as XP, with no real problems outside the removal of backwards compatibility.
My first experience with Vista was when my grandfather-in-law bought a new computer and couldn't run any of his small business' software. He had to downgrade to XP.
Then I got a new job where the boss required us to use Vista. My coworker (started same day I did) was totally against it and only grudgingly gave in. Personally I was excited to give Vista a try and shoot a hole through all the BS whines/complaints.
I found out that Vista sucks. REALLY sucks. It had crashed and bugs I had never even heard of. Because I was working, I only even used a small portion of Vista's software. Yet very basic things like FTP, Windows Explorer, and Remote Desktop had huge and glaring flaws that made working a painful experience. The UI in general is abysmal. The very first day I was installing software I ran into UAC popping up prompts behind other windows, for instance. "Hmm, why is this installer frozen?"
I'm sorry, but Vista really is *that* bad.
I'm now working at another software development company. My brand new Dell laptop they gave me has a Windows Vista sticker on it. It's running Windows XP. Same goes for my wife's new computer from Dell, except I had to install XP myself because it costs $100 extra (on a $400 laptop!) to get XP instead of Vista.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
(w/64 Megs of RAM)
Well there's your problem. I haven't had a computer with 64 MB of RAM since the mid-90s. My phone has 2 GB!
(kidding, of course, I know that post and was hoping that would show up in this thread. However, if you're going to update it for the context, go the full monty!)
Productivity (Score:5, Insightful)
The productivity would actually increase if the front end speed increased since it would allow the user to interact faster etc. The other tests such as encoding etc are really CPU and application dependent and not very much OS dependent, so it's not really a fair test.
Re:Productivity (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly what I was thinking - For most Windows users, the user is a major bottle-neck. By simply responding more quickly to them and allowing them some time to react (even if the system isn't fully ready to react to their next input), you can certainly improve performance. While there are a lot of users that do care about encoding time and Office benchmarks, most users just want IE and Outlook to let them start typing quickly so that they can forward on the latest news regarding Bill Gates paying people for testing their new e-mail system or letting their voice be heard by voting on "Am I Hot or Not?"
Re:Productivity (Score:4, Insightful)
The productivity would actually increase if the front end speed increased since it would allow the user to interact faster etc. The other tests such as encoding etc are really CPU and application dependent and not very much OS dependent, so it's not really a fair test.
Umm encoding is not all CPU and application dependent. Maybe you forgot what an OS does. It schedules when a program executes, where it is located in memory etc. So if Vista puts a program in different places in memory rather then linear or it has a different caching model then windows 7, the execution time will be different. Also if vista does not let the program execute as much as windows 7 the execution time will be different.
Re:Productivity (Score:5, Insightful)
This is very true, but a slow UI is what most people will complain about. If someone fires up handbrake, sees two passes of h264 encoding with 30min+ remaining per pass (and that's what I see on my 8-core/10GB system, so most people will be looking at 2-4x that), they'll put that down to it being a slow application. If they go to click a menu item in Handbrake and there's a perceptible delay, they'll blame the OS.
Is either bit of blame entirely fair or correctly placed? Nope. But that won't stop 99% of computer users.
Re:Productivity (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree. I would like to see the same tests run on XP and see how much of an improvement it offers. I would imagine some, but not a whole lot.
I installed a leaked copy of Windows 7 on a test box and the UI is definately more responsive...not a huge difference but noticable. The dwm.exe (Dreaded Windows Manager, is what I call it) for the UI uses a hell of a lot less memory than it did before. But aside from that, some minor dialog box changes, it just seems like Vista to me. Which is fine, I haven't had any real issues with Vista in the last year now that stable hardware drivers exist for pretty much everything. Granted I don't try to run it on crap systems with less than 2GB of RAM, either. Although my 7 test box only has 1GB of RAM.
I'm waiting for a version with the new taskbar to come out, to see if it's actually worth a squat or not. Oh, they did put the fancy ribbon UI on paint, wordpad, etc. Updated calculator, too. I guess they figured it was time to update them since they remained pretty much the same since 3.1....
Re:Productivity ... Really? (Score:3, Insightful)
The specs you casually throw out are just astounding.
Granted I don't try to run it on crap systems
To use Dell as the brand, you mean I can't run it on a Dimension/Vostro?? I've GOT to spec Precision boxes?
with less than 2GB of RAM, either.
Granted 64-bit is *the* future, WTF is consuming all those resources? I'd guess it's some DRM/crypto nightmare, but I don't know.
Although my 7 test box only has 1GB of RAM.
Only? I've got a Thinkpad T42 running Debian Lenny and KDE4 will ALL of the eye candy on 512MB R
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Windows caters more to the "regular user", and Microsoft's interpretation of that is "automate everything, and run a lot in the background of the OS"
There are Linux distributions that have at least as many services running as Vista, and in my (somewhat limited) experience, they still manage to run faster. For example, I installed Kubuntu on a PC for a friend last week, and its Task Manager-equivalent had a list about as long as a Vista machine. It also has a UI that seems in the same general category of gra
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The file copying slowness was actually related to something new in their networking stack which I believe was fixed in SP1. If I wasn't lasy I would try to look it up and find links for you. I use a Vista box for copying large numbers of files between servers because the copy dialog actually provides useful information, doesn't cancel on simple errors and the speed seems the same to me. (If it's a LOT of information I use a backup utility).
Ah, wait 5 minutes before posting a comment....so I got a link for
The front end is what's wrong with Vista anyway (Score:5, Insightful)
If they've sped up the front end consistently, then I would be very happy.
My primary complaint with Vista is how long UI operations take. Opening windows, dragging them around, launching applications etc. all seem to take place in something approximating geologic time.
Once I have a high-performance app open (say a game), the game itself runs pretty quickly. It's the getting there that's a problem.
Re:Productivity (Score:4, Insightful)
Ok, in that way then Windows 2000 is 100 times more productive than Windows 7.
They will impress me when they get the responsiveness of Windows 2000 on a 2 core modern machine. It's freaking lightning fast.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
A fair test would exercise the paging and memory system more. Maybe some interprocess communication. Such as having several active applications running, foreground and background, and seeing how fast they get their job done or you can switch between them. Get a long running compiler build in the background (Visual Studio for that mix of computation and visual fluff and memory bloat) and Word in the foreground, Firefox, an Excel spreadsheet, Outlook, Matlab, etc.
Smarter not harder (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally I'll stick with Homer Simpson's motto: "If something is hard to do, then it is not worth doing." Which is my rule regarding installing new Microsoft Operating Systems.
Just to throw out one more gem; "If it isn't broken it doesn't have enough features yet." Which seems to be Microsoft's golden rule.
Re:Smarter not harder (Score:4, Interesting)
Try installing Ubuntu or OpenSuSE sometime. I'll admit the Windows Vista installer is pretty good, but if and ONLY if your system has one hard drive installed. If you have multiple hard drives it'll barf until you disconnect the others. The problem is it only wants to see one possible install target on one interface. I've seen this on multiple systems and the first time I ran into it I thought I did something wrong until I queried google and found many other folks had run into the same issue.
Nothing particularly unusual. Ran into this on the Asus P5Q3 Deluxe WiFi (ICH10 and Silicon Image), P5B Deluxe WiFi (ICH8R and Marvell), and the Foxconn 945P7AA-8EKRS2 (ICH7R and ITE).
Ubuntu, Centos, OpenSuSE, Win2k3, and heck, even Windows XP doesn't have this problem of choking when multiple mass storage devices are installed on multiple interfaces. Only Vista.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I guess it could be painful if you don't know how to reinstall grub or lilo from a downed box and have no way of looking up a document on how to do it.
IME, you just need to boot off your linux install media, go to the recovery mode, enter the command for your bootloader that tells it to reinstall itself to your hard disk then edit the boot list to include windows and your set. Its really nothing too complicated for someone who will be dual booting...
Its always been easier to install windows first because t
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Personally I'll stick with Homer Simpson's motto: "If something is hard to do, then it is not worth doing." Which is my rule regarding installing new Microsoft Operating Systems.
Actually Vista is probably the simplest OS install I've ever done. (disclaimer: I've never built a mac, don't know about that).
Your outlier experience is not welcome here. Can't you see we're busy bashing Microsoft? Please, take your rational thinking elsewhere.
Bad benchmarks for productivity. (Score:5, Insightful)
Video encoding is a terrible metric for "productivity" since it's something the computer can do on it's on while you go get tea. It's pretty much CPU and memory bound. The underlying OS shouldn't be doing anything but getting out of the way.
But UI "tricks" are an improvement. If find it easier to start your video encoder, or can do other resource-light things while the video encoder is running at a small cost to the actual encoding speed, then you're making better use of your meat co-processor. Which really is a "productivity" gain.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Video encoding is a terrible metric for "productivity"
Unless you are encoding it live, straight from the camera.
Re:Bad benchmarks for productivity. (Score:5, Insightful)
In which case, as long as it can do it in real time, you haven't got any problems. Making it faster isn't going to help because the bottleneck is the outside world.
AGREED! (Score:3, Insightful)
For the average user, a lot of time is wasted waiting for the UI, or being afraid or unable to do other tasks while something "heavy" is going on (like reading email, surfing, etc.).
If the system still has the same horsepower, but I'm better able to actually multi-task without slogging through a molasses interface, then it's a huge improvement.
It's just not worth trying to type an email sometimes when it takes 6 seconds to update the UI after each keypress... maybe doing so will slow down your build in the
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Video encoding is a bad metric for "productivity" but it is a
very good means to test how well a system will continue to
respond under high load. If transcoding craters your system
then that's a problem. This particular task might not represent
a "productive" part of your normal workload but it's probably
a good stand-in for something that is.
Personally, I like the fact that I can keep my system completely
busy and not be bothered by it. If I have my own "cloud" at home
this means that all machines on the home net
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"..then you're making better use of your meat co-processor..."
There's a joke in there, but I'm not touching it.
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Not touching your meat co-processor?
You must be new here.
Perhaps this alpha releases uses Vistas kernel? (Score:4, Interesting)
I was under the impression that W7 would have a modified kernel , but if it is nothing more than the Vista kernel warmed over with the same core libraries then nothing much will change so I guess no surprise there.
As is the way with MS , they update all the eye candy first to get the drooling masses interested , then they get down to the core stuff where it really matters later on - ie the exact opposite way round to the way it should be done.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Perhaps this alpha releases uses Vistas kernel? (Score:4, Informative)
I hate to contradict you sir as your points _should_ be entirely true.
Sadly the number one complaint from my users (around 10000, at least 400 complaints) about the new locked-down desktops we installed 18 months ago is that they cannot change their wallpaper (screensavers as they call them...) And to top this, one of they key reasons we chose to force this on them was the sheer amount of work we had to do removing clunky screensaver managers or custom cursors and icons (not to mention the virii accompanying many of these).
I often wonder if my father (an engineer) had the same problem with people wanting to customise their wrench so it had blue handles?
Re:Perhaps this alpha releases uses Vistas kernel? (Score:5, Insightful)
The lipstick on a pig aphorism comes to mind.
W7 is the Vista that Vista could have been. But that may be damning with faint praise.
The sheer obesity of Vista could easily have been improved upon. Somewhere, there is a coder army taking instructions from an idiot. They need to find that idiot and fire that person. Even Gates was better at direction.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
iTunes hanging is probably not Microsofts fault. As sucky as Windows is, iTunes is the app that manages to overthrow Windows and take the throne of shittyness all by itself.
And so, at the end of the article: (Score:4, Interesting)
FTA:
For comparison, the PC Pro benchmarks complete around 22% more quickly on XP than on Vista, as detailed in my feature "Memory Laid Bare" (issue 169, p122).
-sigh-
Wouldn't suppose they'll have an "LTS" version of XP, supporting it past the already-stated cutoff....
Okay, but that's still important (Score:5, Insightful)
I really wouldn't expect significantly different scores for something like an office suite or media encoding. Once the OS gives the process all the memory and CPU time it needs, that's basically it. Maybe for games where there could be significant differences in the DirectX flow, but not in general.
But as the article notes, throughput isn't everything. The "up front" speed and how long it takes for a button push to result in action is equally important if not more so. The responsiveness of applications is something an OS can have a significant impact on, and is probably the most important thing for making the computer -feel- fast, and thus giving a better user experience. Hell I've long considered responsiveness to be justification enough for dual-core processors even when a user isn't multi-tasking or running multi-threading apps. So if it's a good enough reason to get a whole second core, it's a good enough reason for an OS upgrade.
It does sound kinda cagey that they're making this one of the main reasons to get 7, rather than improving Vista. But whatever, it's all academic to me.
Productivity originates from the users perceptions (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm no fan of Windows. But improving UI responsiveness, does greatly improve user throughput when using a system - partly because the user can do what they need to do more quickly, but also because there are fewer jarring moments where you are brought out of the process of creation to have to wait on the computer to finish something. These small interruptions can add up to a big loss of focus over a day.
Re:Productivity originates from the users percepti (Score:5, Informative)
Unsurprisingly, the German magazine C't has just compared XP, Vista and the new one.
They came to a different conclusion - W7 is noticeably faster than Vista and roughly the same as XP.
They found no difference on laptop Battery life between Vista and W7 though.
When it comes down to C't and some blogger, sorry - I'll take C't. Those guys take independence very seriously.
I don't understand (Score:3, Interesting)
If it SEEMS faster, what does it matter what the actual internal speed is? As long as it passes the "God damned piece of shit just give me my web page!" test (as long as you don't say that it's ok) why does a benchmark matter?
I'd rather have a slow app that felt fast than a fast app that felt slow. Our work connection is slug-slow, the annoyance is much more of a productivity drain than the actual (lack of) speed.
Faster interface = improved productivity (Score:5, Insightful)
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seems like it may go over well (Score:3)
considering the biggest complaints that users have about vista is that it is SO SLOW (read: responds slowly), i think microsoft may be going in the right direction (if i understand their changes correctly).
the biggest issues with vista haven't been it's performance in crunching numbers, the problems have related to how fast it seems to be. which brings up an interesting question, was much work really needed when consumer computers are quickly becoming powerful enough to actually run vista smoothly?
at the risk of being modded down... i think vista is a good os, with some tweaking. BUT, only if it's the 64bit version, 32bit is crap. furthermore, microsoft has done a great job combining 64 and 32bit functionality, i applaud that
Thank OLPC (Score:3, Insightful)
was much work really needed when consumer computers are quickly becoming powerful enough to actually run vista smoothly?
We can thank Nicholas Negroponte for this. His One Laptop Per Child project inspired the mainstream PC industry to develop similarly low-powered, low-priced subnotebook computers called "netbooks". Windows XP and Ubuntu run better than Windows Vista on the small CPU and small RAM of these computers.
A Con! (Score:5, Insightful)
So let me get this straight: Windows 7 is only faster than Vista. It doesn't manage to also make third party programs written for Vista magically faster as well.
Betas and RCs of Windows are ALWAYS faster (Score:3, Interesting)
Since 1995 I've had a chance to play with each beta and RC release of Windows, from 98 to Vista. They always run faster than the final release. I've no idea why.
Most recently, I played with Vista at the RC stage on a very modest notebook computer (1.6GHz Celeron, 512MB memory) and it ran like a dream. I then switched back to Linux, my personal OS, and then read all the reports upon the release of Vista criticizing it for being slow and cranky.
Upon buying a new notebook complete with Windows tax, I was able to see that -- sure enough -- Vista (even SP1) was pretty slow.
I just don't know what microsoft do to their software before boxing it. Maybe they pour molasses into it.
Re:Betas and RCs of Windows are ALWAYS faster (Score:5, Interesting)
If it feels faster, you're getting more done (Score:5, Insightful)
They've sped up the front end so it feels like you're getting more done, but in terms of real productivity it's no better than Vista
I take exception to this. Obviously, if the video encoding tests were written well, there will be little speedup. But if a window environment "feels" faster, you actually DO get more done. There is less frustration in waiting, and you can generally multi-task much easier.
There was recently a discussion of a faster X server [slashdot.org]. Frankly, I get plenty done on the old "slow" X server, but if one feels faster, it will actually eliminate a lot of brainpower consumed by waiting on a context switch.
There was recently a discussion on a faster Linux boot-up [slashdot.org], which preloaded your configuration as you're typing your password, and had lots of other fast features... But that doesn't actually speed up Linux, in terms of encoding video. It just makes it "feel" faster.
I like OSS, but I see lots of bad tags being made. Unfair comparisons are simply unfair comparisons. You can't hail a nice feature in one OS, and discount exactly the same feature on a different OS. Without being hypocritical, anyway.
Productivity. (Score:3, Insightful)
Okay here is the big question.
Do many users need a faster PC?
On a clean Windows box when are you waiting on the computer?
I am not talking about games, scientist, or people using CAD/CAM.
I am talking about the average user?
Now when you are waiting how often is it an IO bottle neck?
Waiting for a program to start, waiting for a file to download or some other function like that.
The real answer is that for the most part PCs are quick enough.
Video encoding isn't something that the average users does yet. It will be in the future but right now not so much.
Re:Productivity. (Score:4, Insightful)
You're right. However, you're missing an important point: Hardware and software vendors implicitly collude to create a continuous captive market demand for their products.
Windows version "x" won't run acceptably on anything less than a 2GHz processor with 4GB RAM--time to upgrade your computer!
Video card "y" only has drivers available for Vista--time to upgrade your OS!
Support for application "z" has been dropped, and the new version requires more RAM and Windows 7--time to upgrade everything!!!
Honestly, find a modern computer which can run Windows 2000, and you'll have a blazing fast machine. XP isn't _much_ slower, and has the advantage of newer device support.
Strictly speaking, an OS shouldn't have "features" from the user's point of view. Gluing a GUI to the OS was arguably Microsoft's first act of truly evil genius. Same thing with the web browser. THESE ARE NOT OPERATING SYSTEM FUNCTIONS, but they help increase the hardware requirements (and the hardware requirement delta between versions), and hence sell hardware, which sells software, which sells...
In a just world, Microsoft would have taken the code base for Windows 2000, added support for 64-bit multicore processors, newer hardware and so forth, tweaked the UI a bit (XP has some clear advantages--and some clear disadvantages), and LEFT THE REST ALONE! Most of the serious code changes between versions have been for no reason except adding "features" (i.e. stupid crutches and applications), which slow things down.
But hey--it's all about marketing, sales, and profits. That's the reality of the industry.
*and maybe explicitly--who knows what goes on behind closed doors?
A bit smarter would be welcome (Score:4, Insightful)
Improving the front end is overdue and welcome.
Under Windows 2000/XP (have not touched Vista yet) I have often wondered why the Windows Explorer takes ages to show a directory, even if the actual content at the displayed directory level is only a few dozen elements. Maybe it scans all subdirectories for whatever arcane reason?
I strongly suspect there is a lot that can be optimized there, and if Windows 7 finally got around to it, this would be a good thing.
Progress, right? (Score:3, Insightful)
If the UI is now snappier and more responsive so that the user feels more happy with his user experience, isn't that still good progress even if in reality the speedup is only subjective? Everything that makes the user more content using the product is good, right?
Optimizing the UI is perfectly legtimate exercise (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course a snappy UI is a huge deal. Users spend a lot of time navigating before they actually run anything. And, keeping the UI snappy even when the CPU is under heavy load is an especially important user experience requirement.
There's nothing illegitimate or sneaky about optimizing the hardware to better serve the user.
I am NOT the kind of guy... (Score:4, Insightful)
That would cut MS any kind of slack. I hate their ugly guts (and boy, all guts are ugly, but theirs...: just imagine winnt's kernel code).
That being said, if the thing is faster in the iface, its a faster experience and that is that.
Those are seconds saved.
Its just stupid to hit them for doing something better, especially if you see what they are coming from: i mean, it cant be that hard to make something feel better than, for christ sakes, VISTA.
Where was the real improvement (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the problems with Vista was hardware upgrades. Every new cycle of Windows requires some hardware upgrades for the new version. Unfortunately for MS, the 5 year gap between XP and Vista hurt them. Combined with MS not defining the real requirements of Vista meant that most people trying to upgrade their 5 year old machine would end up in disaster.
These are MS recommended hardware for Vista Ultimate/Business:
Compared to XP Pro requirements:
Now both requirements are really inadequate to use the OS fully. The difference is with only 3 years between 98/XP, it was easy for users to upgrade their CPU, motherboards, video cards without much infrastructure changes. For the 98/XP upgrade it was only 3 years and most users only needed more RAM. If users did require hardware upgrades (CPU, video card), these were readily available. Need a faster Pentium/Athlon in 2001? Go down to BestBuy. The 5 year gap between XP and Vista meant that some hardware upgrades were not easy or even possible. Need a faster Pentium/Athlon in 2007? They don't make them anymore. Ebay is your only real source and even if you upgrade to the fastest one, your system will be slow.
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Although I don't think that was his intent, all too many people DO think that way.
Hence they end up having a subpar system because of subpar hardware (subjectively).
It would be like trying to install Win98 or ME on a 386DX40 with 8 meg of RAM. 5 to 7 years before 98 was released, that was a decent system. BUT, we where all running pentium class machines by then (even the 486DX2 systems had spec's similiar to the pentium 66+ at LEAST.. And when we figured out that bus speed made the BIGGEST difference, ou
Joke? (Score:3, Informative)
Of course video encoding and the same old office build won't be affected by the OS.
What people want to be faster is booting up, logging in, connecting to networks, detecting hardware and installing drivers, and running those damn .msi installers.
Reviews of Windows 7 are biased (Score:5, Insightful)
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If Microsoft really wanted to improve productivity (Score:3, Insightful)
Only the front-end?! (Score:3)
Only the "front end", not the programs run under it?
You mean, Windows 7 is only faster as an Operating System, and doesn't magically make arbitrary applications run any faster!?!? OUTRAGE!!
How exactly is changing operating systems supposed to improve video encoding performance?
Yes, I did RTFA. I see that their tests ran faster on XP. WTF?
Dialogues (Score:4, Interesting)
Q: How do you like how much faster the DRM is in Windows 7?
A: I don't know because I'll never use another OS that has DRM built in.
Windows 7 m3 build 6801 (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:It looks just like Vista now because... (Score:4, Informative)
Since 7 is still a year or so away at this point they're just showing you mostly user interface changes with little or no changes to the core underlying os.
Excuse me?
A year or so away from release, they should be done with fundamental changes to the core OS. They should be working on the details and polish, before they send it of to testing and QA.
Of course, they'll probably pull a main component two months before release when it turns out it'll never work anyways, re-write some stuff and not have enough time for testing left.