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InfoWorld says WinXP much slower than Win2K
iforgotmyfirstlogon
submitted an InfoWorld story that makes the shocking claim that XP is slower then 2k for business use. Pretty graphs, comparisons of SMP, and they even tested without the eye candy. My favorite comment is this one "it appears that for light-duty service on the newest hardware, Windows XP with Office XP is an acceptable choice -- if an 11 percent performance hit, or 53 minutes added to an 8-hour day, is acceptable." And thats the best case scenario.
Just installed XP on a local system. It's definitely slower than 2K. Are the drivers going to be brought up to speed to make upgrading worth the hassle? The extra stability is definitely one reason to migrate.
The differences in the new XP GUI and the old Me/2K GUI are very superficial and easy to learn. You can even set XP to use the old GUI with a single click.
-- Brian
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
I think the review is a bit unfair. I'm running Office XP on Windows XP here and find it just as fast as Office 2000. They've overlooked the fact that Windows XP starts way faster than Windows 2000. This is only on a Duron 700 with 128Mb of ram.
I have been using Windows XP with Office XP to do work, for the last few days. The upside is it is good for beginners while keeping the features of 2k. If one has never used an NT version of windows they are very likely to be impressed (and IMO rightly so).
On the flipside, it does seem to be a little slower than 2k, and somewhat buggy working with third party software (particularly games). Assumedly this will be working out in coming bug fixes witch MS solicits from you every time an application crashes.
In other words I would enthusiastically recommend it to a home windows user. In an office that already uses a version of NT on the other hand, the switch may not be necessarily.
Limited sample size of two workstations, YMMV.
Wrong... If you would have read the article, it says:
Looking for any old 8-bit Heathkit/Zenith software/hardware - http://heathkit.garlanger.com
i upgraded to xp from 98se, and even though i've noticed a slight (but quite acceptable) performance hit, the dramatically increased stability makes up for it completely. i would much rather have my system run a little slower and much more reliably than have it chugging a little faster but having any given application bring it down every couple days.
"I just want to thank my coach Eric a.k.a. Disco for shattering my reality..."
If you read the article closely you'd see that they ran the tests with a stock UI (eye cany on) and an optimized UI (eye candy turned off)
Cleartype is not just for laptops, its awesome on crt monitors also. Cleartype make normal anti-aliasing look like crap.
a ult.htm
BTW, you can customize the cleartype look on the cleartype m$ page.
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/cleartype/def
So while I understand that it's lots of fun to find a site which claims that WinXP is 10% slower and doesn't do the laundry or clean the kitchen and trumpet it on Slashdot, don't let just the one site be your guide.
For example [firingsquad.com] here is a site (and a cite) that claims XP actually offers slight improvements over 2k.
Even some [zdnet.co.uk] lacking benchmarks still claim that XP is faster than 2k.
Come on now, let's do some research before we spread misinformed FUD of our own!
I installed XP on my work laptop, 650mhz p2. No slow down if you turn off the pretty gfx, its the same speed. Friends with older PC's have told me its slower and have stayed with win2k, ymmv.
But windows networking FLYS compared to my win2k. I can open network domains with 10000+ pc's and it only takes seconds now. Printers and shares now remember the passwords. I can log transparently into a domain for printer shares only. Network login is actually faster now. FTP transfers are the same speed thou. I dont like to log into the domain, but It authenticates me for printers and exchange.
Only crash I'ved had was the 3dfx driver I have in my docking station, disabled the onboard ati card and no problems. The reason I run a 3dfx pci voodoo3, its pci half-height, and does 1600x1200.
On my Home PC, dual 800, I left the gfx on, and turned off shadow menus, that was the main slow down. Only crashs are the geforce nvidia driver (28.88 with newest gf2mx bios, god love those russian unreleased driver/bios sites)
3.11 to 95 - major change
95 to 98 - file windows now have "protection forcing the user to click several times to get to what they want..
98 to ME/2000 - move things around for no real reason, let's even change how some configurations are set-up.
to XP -- Complete GUI revamp... I think it's much cooler than the previous, but I'm a super-user, the sales drones will be weeping in their cubes because they cant find things the way they are used to it.
Every 2 years something changes to the point that retraining is needed... Even microsoft admits that, NT4.0 must be replaced with W2K certification and now XP certification...
why change certifications if you didnt change everything...
If you had to get a engineering degree in to program, we would have a lot better code out there.
LOL! Do you have any idea how many people are walking around with BSCS degrees, who can't even tell you why qsort beats a bubble sort?
Code is the only cred that matters.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
- If you've been using Windows 2000, the performance you'll get with XP is virtually identical; if you've been using Windows Me, 98 or 98 SE, or 95, your system is going to feel like it has a whole new lease on life.
EWeek's review- We
... found that XP and 2000 outperformed Windows 98 and ran neck and neck with each other.
If you're comparing it to 2000, it meets expectations. If you're comparing it to 9x, it exceeds expectations.So performance-wise, it's really nothing new. Get it because you like the application support, or the fast boot times, or the config restore, or... But don't buy it for the performance.
I was running Win2k on my HPVLI8 here at work (you can look up the specs at hp's web site). I recently added another HD and installed XP with the Plus pack, and Office XP. My 2k partition was running Off. XP as well. I have 256MB of mem installed, to speed things up a bit (they come with 128).
Well, let me tell you how disapointed I was. The XP partition is slower than *anything* I have used before. The article is bang on the money, but doesn't mention a video card *anywhere*! I have the same configuration at home (with a 32 Meg D3D card, pIII 533, 655MB RAM) and it just purrs. Fast boot, fast shutdown, everything. My only complaint is with IE 6. It sucks. If I get any more of those "Do you wish to Debug?" windows I'm gonna lose it.
If you're in charge of purchasing, and you're reading this...upgrade to 2k. Not XP.
The "slowness" of Windows XP has been one of the biggest arguments against it, but what people don't realize is that if you turn off all the funky effects, it's just as fast as win2k. Added to the new drivers, as you've mentioned, and the fast user-switching , XP is a godsend. If you need to run some version of windows, and money isn't an issue, get XP.
FiringSquad posted their XP review and say that XP performs "on par, or better" than 2K.
They also posted full system specs, I am curious to see how much RAM the Infoworld machines had.
HOWEVER: Note that XP did lag behind in a couple benchmarks, including 100 points in 3DMark and a couple FPS in some games. (also: 98SE beat out both 2K and XP in 3DMark 2000)
From my experience, WinXP is faster than Win2k. I can also say that if you take off the Luna interface it runs even faster, not by much though. I have installed it on about 20 machines, and were talking about ten different types of hardware, including Laptops. I have only run into one problem, which with fixed with a bios update from dell. I agree that it is more bloated than Win2k, and the others, but who in their right mind would try to install XP, or even 2k on a machine with sub 128MB and a 500mhz processor. Those people should stick to Linux or Win(crash)9X, and leave Microsoft alone about their new baby. Either that or fork out the $300 and get yourself a Thunderbird 1.2Ghz/Motherboard combo with a half gig of ram and bring yourself into the modern world. What else does the Monopoly have to do to satisfy all of the people they assimilate? They did a damn good job with 2k which is rock solid, and XP is even better with more compatibility. For once they have put out a stable release. I hate the registration thingy though. Nothing a little crack cant fix. Anyways, that is my two cents, and "LET THE FLAMES BEGIN!" Honer
Uh, cleartype doesn't offer anything but disadvantages over straight antialiasing unless there is a 1-to-1 mapping between logical subpixels and physical subpixels. This is ONLY true on an LCD running at a logical resolution equal to its physical resolution.
You are clearly a moron.
I upgraded my box from w2k to XP just a few days ago, and it was worth it just for my games.... Stuff that didn't even THINK about running in 2000 runs fine in XP (like some older EA games and stuff that refuses to run under NT) To me it was well worth it. (altho I type all my documents in vim and process them in Latex, becuase that's what we do at work ;)
I'm an AIX Systems administrator, and yes I do cry myself to sleep at night....
That's interesting, I've seen almost the exact opposite results. I run a dual PIII 1Ghz with 512MB of RAM, which should make short of just about anything, but Windows XP runs like an absolute dream on it, even compared to Windows 2000. It's difficult to compare, though, as everyday as I continue to use the few select applications I use, they get increasingly faster. VS.NET, the first few times I started it, would take upwards of 10 seconds to completely load. Now it's nearly instantaneous. How do you benchmark an OS that constantly re-orders files on disk and library loading to optimize for frequently executed programs? They really should try running the systems side by side with normal duties for a few weeks, then compare.
That's a well-known fact of UI design, that users will make wrong statements about speed, rate of errors, and so forth, when using an interface they actually enjoy. This is why anecdotal "evidence" is next to useless in this case.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
Actually ClearType depends on "subpixels" found in LCD displays.
See this page for a decent explanation of how it works...
NGWave - Fast Sound Editor for Windows