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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.
Does anyone doubt that, say, Word 95 installed on Windows 95 would run circles around Word XP on Windows XP (on the same hardware)? I hope not. You can call it bloat, but there's probably a reason why people (not just "lusers", but also "power users" who "know better") keep upgrading anyways.
This is the foundation of the Wintel monopoly: Harness ever-expanding software to Moore's law and reap the benefits. We don't have to like it, but at this point its not a surprise either. Maybe instead we should try to understand why it's been so successful.
-- Brian
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
It's easy to point to certain features in a new OS as examples of progress, but end-users often find that a new OS performs like molasses compared to the version they were using.
So why does that happen? Well I'll tell you my educated guess: every year, electrical and computer engineers make amazing advances with comptuer hardware, making RAM more plentiful and less expensive, making hard drives larger and faster, implementing devices like L2 cache to decrease read/write times, and most popularly making Processors faster than ever (at least by clock speed.) You would think that these advances would make all software simply fly, be faster and more responsive than ever, and you'd have unlimited storage space for your files. However, that's not the way it is, and somehow, you still run out of disk space, don't have enough RAM, and have programs running slow (on a 2 GHZ Machine!!!) So what is it? Programmers. "Computer Scientists," rather than improving on software that ran well on old architectures, go by the thought process "well now that we have all this power, why don't we use it all" and so they end up writing applications and OS's that hog all the newly available extra resources. I'm not saying all Comp Sci's do this, I mean look at Linux, it's pretty damn efficient. When it comes to commercial apps though like Windoze, rather than make something extraordinarily efficient that runs on the newest machines, they say "well the hardware takes care of efficiency, let's just make something with a lot of bells and whistles." What you end up with is grossly large applications that sloth along on extremely powerful machines that have the capability to be so much more. This is yet another reason to use Linux.
~ now you know
I completely agree with all of the above points...
Win2k is the first version of Windows I've ever used that I can consider usable. Usable being a relative thing, of course.
Win2k will most certainly be the last version of Windows I'll ever buy... I'll simply pick up a newer Mac w/ OS X.
note: Win2k is also the only version of Windows I've ever purchased (separately). All the other ones were bundled w/ their respective computers. Then again, picking up Win2k Pro and Win2k Advanced Server w/ 5 CALs for $130 legally isn't so bad... ('So bad' again being relative.)
The first thing I did with XP was turn off that ugly, stupid, round, bouncy, primary-color assault they call "Aqua", wait... whatever they call it. Like almost every visual UI change uSoft has done in the past 10 years, it only chews up more screen real estate with wasted pixels.
:-)
Once that was changed, I had a reasonably lean, nice-looking UI with the benefits of the enhancements to the task bar (very nice!) and the start panel (kinda cool, but pointless IMO, also that can be turned off too). And on a laptop, ClearType is worth the upgrade price alone.
Now, configuring is another matter. For instance, I still can't always get volumes to share on my home network the way I want them to on the first try, but then again Joe Worduser isn't going to be doing those kinds of things.
OTOH, XP boots radically faster than Win2k on my IBM i-series laptop (Celeron 433, 192 MB RAM) and shuts down faster too.
Now going from 9x to NT/2K/XP, that takes some re-training
Mostly in unlearning that you have to reboot your computer every hour.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Oh, the silly things Intel marketing makes journalists say. Since when is the Pentium 4 faster than a Pentium III of lower clock speed in day-to-day apps? As far as I know the only apps where the P4 is significantly faster are either ones with SSE2 or Quake 3.
Comparing a 1.5GHz P4 to 2 1 GHz PIII's is absolutely insane without at least first comparing it to 1 PIII. Especially when you are talking business apps. The P4 will continue to be a dog until Intel pushes it past the 3GHz mark. And if AMD can hold their own it might even be a dog then.
Calling the 1GHz PIII "relatively slow" in the same breath as calling a 1.5GHz P4 "blazingly fast" makes me giggle. Back to NetHack.
"He's more machine now than man, twisted and evil."
XP is a great improvement over Win2k for the laptop users. Much faster boot/shutdown and hibernate/dehibernate cycles. I installed XP RC2 on my Dell Inspiron 5000e (1600x1200 screen) without needing to install a single additional driver.
.97a My desktop machines at work are running Linux and Solaris.
Performance wise: Subjective performance is better, esp with startup/login/dehibernate... I can't detect any speed difference in application performance. I develop in VB/Java/SQL Server often simultaneously... Definately a more severe test than average.
No hangs, crashes, etc to date (and on a beta XP install.)
Altogether almost as significant of an improvement over Win2k as Win2k was over WinNT4.
I'm not pro-MS either... I've been a loyal Linux user since
It's not really supprising, I've installed XP on my dual celeron 400 system and a week later, I've trashed it and reinstalled win2k.
There are 2 issues here. The HOME version and the (supposely) PRO version.
the PRO has WAY too much "take me by the hand I am a complete newbie" stuff in it, too much monitoring, too much popups for crap that I should do myself anyways. While I can understand this in the "home version", it's PERFECT for home, it's nice looking easy and made for newbies... but the professionnal version really is NOT aimed at professionnals that's for sure...
heck I can see myself if I need updates
I can see myself if my drives are full
I don't need any importer utilities to copy files from my previous version, even less converting my Mp3 to WMA
I don't need a stinkin popup window everytime I throw in a CD-R or RW.
Etc...
Oh and for those who will say "you can turn them off too you know?" Well, I don't need these options turned on by default and having to turn them all off just to be less annoyed right off the start, it should be the opposite, no? (again for the pro version, not home).
I don't want this to be a flame, even if it sounds like bitching, but if you look at the points mentionned, it's weird that a "pro" version has all of these little annoying things, people that will buy pro are used to NT/2K environment (usually) so why would he downgrade to the "clippy-age" when he upgrades?
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
The author of the article forgot to mention the amount of RAM on the test machines. When publishing the results of a benchmark one is supposed to include all configuration details so that others can replicate it. What's the use of a benchmark if it's not replicable ? The amount of RAM is certainly an important factor for overbloated applications like OfficeXP.
I'd suggest Infoworld to take a look at sites like www.firingsquad.com to learn how to publish benchmarks.
The Raven.
The Raven
First of all, if you turn off all the GUI bloat (My Computer -> Properties -> Performance Settings) it is nicely quick indeed even on low-end machines PROVIDED that you have lots of RAM. A Celeron 400 with 192 megs of RAM boots into XP much faster than 2000 does, and performs at or above the level of 2000 with a similar amount of RAM.
It is true, with any newly-release software, that there are probably bugs and compatibility issues. But XP really shines in some areas, notable Firewire. A friend who had a 1394 card that he couldn't get to work in win98 lent me the card, so I tried it and a DV cam in XP. Not only did XP not need any drivers, it mounted the camera up as a drive instantly, and has a built-in image capture utility that works extremely well (though it could use some extra settings for images). Color me impressed as hell.
XP by default, installs about 1.2 gigs of stuff! It also ships with a number of security concerns like Remote Registry, Remote Desktop, and some other services turned on by default... XP also has a lot of services that are not necessarily security concerns, but, do we really need easy wireless configuration turned on by default if you don't have any wireless devices? Same for the camera image services. Those turn on if disabled as soon as you install a camera anyway. So, there's LOTS of room for memory bloat improvment. I got a significant speedup by disabling a lot of unneeded services (probably about 12-15 by default).
We in the linux community, instead of bitching, need to look at XP as the new target. Look how good OSX and XP are. If we want to remain a competitor, we need to make our desktops this good. No excuses.
"We apologize for the inconvenience."
Sounds like you've either got faulty hardware or a faulty stopwatch, pal.
When was the last time _any_ major release of a consumer OS got faster when it was revved up a version?
(I'm not counting MacOS X 10.0.x - 10.1, as the 10.0.x series was basically an early adopter beta version disguised as release)
But any version of Windows ever as far as I can remember, any version of Classic MacOS, even Linux for the most part, though individual packages and subsystems may be sped up as they mature, the overall OS usually gets more and more bloated with time. If you take Windows 2000, optimize it, but then pile on a bunch more cruft on top, of course the overall product will slow down.
Software expands to fill all the available hardware plus approximately 10%. Operating systems are partular offenders (and bloated office suites).
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
I don't think that was what he was saying. He said nothing about users not being able to use "real" computers. He just said they should be trained in a manner that teaches them techniques rather than pure rote learning. I think you are fitting his post to an internal mold.
I have a friend who taught a beginner's course on computers. The first thing he did was get them to break old CPUs with a hammer, and then told them "That's about the only way you'll break a computer". He got them all to disassemble floppy disks. He taught them the difference between their data and the computer. He taught them not to be afraid to experiment, once they had made sure their data was safe.
He taught them how word processors and spreadsheets generally behaved, not a long list of rote muscle movements. The end result was a group of people that were very relaxed with using a computer and found new programs and interfaces non-threatening.
I have met other people who have been to courses that are floored if a menu option gets moved from one menu to another. BZZT Segmentation fault (core dumped). *wail* *panic*
There should be no "ins and outs" to using a computer, I agree. And often there aren't if you are just willing to poke around for a few minutes in a relaxed manner. Of course, this would be easier if UIs were even vaguely consistent.
I object to people using computers like trained animals. Sheep are for eating and wool. However, I don't blame them. I blame the idiots who teach people to be sheep (and the fools that condone it).
Your post has some good points, but they address something the original poster never said, IMO.
---
The simple fact of the matter is many people don't WANT to learn the in-depth operation of a computer just like most don't want to learn the exact details of how a car, tv, vcr or whatever works.
Ignorance is bliss, isn't it?
For the record, I don't consider people like this very smart. If you have no desire to learn the details of how something works, you shouldn't be using it. I know a guy who had no desire to learn how his car works. When the oil light came on, he didn't care, because he didn't know what it meant. When the engine siezed a couple of days later and it cost him $3000 to replace, he finally decided it might be a good idea to learn a little about his vehicle.
Maybe that's the difference between intelligent people and the common sheep. Intelligent people actually make an attempt to understand the products they use. The common sheep only learn the bare minimum to get by and nothing more.
-Ryan, with the unoriginal sig
They have hardly made a "major change" to the user interface. It's basically plain ol' Win2k with a WindowBlinds theme slapped on top. If you are not familiar with WindowBlinds, check out Stardock's website. If I recall, WindowBlinds worked merely by covering up the existing titlebar and buttons on each window. I believe that the "old-school" Windows interface is still drawn and then WindowBlinds slaps another layer on top of it. I was HORRIFIED when I first installed Windows XP RC2. The "improved" interface looked like a big blue and green crap. Luckily, it's easy to defeat. There will be more themes available in the near future, but so what? It's nothing like Apple's beautifully done OS X. Apple completely redesigned everything, obviously spending alot of time. Win XP's "new" interface was a quick and dirty hack, started years ago by the creators of WindowBlinds. It's no surprise really that even Microsoft's latest and greatest OS uses technology taken from someone else. Hopefully they paid more for it than they paid for DOS.
The quote
Yes, the GUIs on Linux leave something to be
desired, but they are clearly independent of the
kernel and low-level graphics system.
(So are windows. It's just that most people don't change them. First lie.)
Changing
them is a part of the system rather than
something requiring hacks or procedures not documented for users.
(I'll agree that microsoft is not pluging the alternative shells much. But really you have themes since what 95 [plus pack] and there's a heck of a lot of shells to choose from not from MS. If they can change them as you now claim then your previous acertion is untrue. Also I don't see KDE plugging Gnome or the reverse.)
I have found KDE to be perfectly usable and extremely stable, plus there's a real OS underneath it.
(So which is it? "Perfectly useable and stable" OR "the GUIs on Linux leave something to be
desired" Maybe the majority of windows users hold both those views too. On another note I find it funny how you have blatetantly distorted the truth about Windows shells and injected YOUR OS bias.)