Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

XP SP2 Can Slow Down Business Apps

Posted by timothy on from the tradeoffs-are-everywhere dept.

An anonymous reader submits "Mobile PC magazine installed XP SP2 on a bunch of notebooks and benchmarked them, finding that SP2 caused a 9-percent performance reduction in business productivity apps. While a couple of notebooks performed better, the majority took a 3- to 22-percent performance hit." For now, the story is just at the top of the Mobile PC website, but they promise more details in an upcoming issue.

10 of 359 comments (clear)

  1. Buffer checks by JanusFury · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is probably due to them recompiling a large number of libraries and system components with the buffer checking and other security features they added into the recent versions of Visual C++. If you ask me, it's worth it, just to know that my Windows box has a few less wide open holes to be exploited.

    It definitely has proven its worth so far - I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure the reason SP2 isn't vulnerable to that GDI+ JPEG exploit is that they recompiled GDI+ with buffer checks.

    --
    using namespace slashdot;
    troll::post();
    1. Re:Buffer checks by metlin · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The reason I brought that up was because I was interview by Microsoft last summer at Seattle, and one of the groups that interviewed me was the systems group.

      (Funnily, systems wasn't even my area, but still they interviewed me, but that's another story...)

      They were of the opinion that since MS is a favourite target of hackers and the like, any MS programmer ought to go to extraordinary lengths to patch any and all buffer checks and foo bar. I was asked to write some piece of code for compiler design and memory management, and the guy kept harping on buffer checks.

      I would imagine that with ALL those checks, such things would not be common - but lo! and behold, there they are.

      Either they are not doing a good job of doing the whole buffer check thing that the guy harped to me about and it was all hogwash to impress upon you how "important" and "hard" coding in MS is, or there is something seriously wrong with the codebase that SO many exploits turn out everyday.

      I can only guess which one it is.

    2. Re:Buffer checks by IronChef · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I've heard so much about the programming practices at Microsoft and what not - and yet, ironically, these things keep cropping up so damn bloody often while some operating systems coded by a bunch of loosely connected hackers are way more robust and stable.
      Hmm, makes one wonder.

      the openbsd people are united by an ideology. Microsoft employees are largely, though not exclusively, united simply by the desire for a paycheck.

      I work in a Microsoft facility and let me tell ya, they aren't all smoking what Steve Ballmer is.

      Is it any wonder that quality suffers when compared to a project that is a labor of love?

      Or maybe my bad attitude is why I am a contractor and not full time there. :)

    3. Re:Buffer checks by omicronish · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Either they are not doing a good job of doing the whole buffer check thing that the guy harped to me about and it was all hogwash to impress upon you how "important" and "hard" coding in MS is, or there is something seriously wrong with the codebase that SO many exploits turn out everyday.

      I was an intern at Microsoft this past summer, and I believe it's the shear quantity and perhaps complexity of software being written that's resulting in these bugs. They really do emphasize writing secure code now (I don't know how it was like before). I shared an office with two other interns, and during several code reviews another intern was involved with, there would be "did you check parameters here? potential buffer overflow? what if this is NULL?" And it wasn't even important code he was working on.

  2. Why- by thewldisntenuff · · Score: 4, Interesting

    was this even posted at all?

    This wasn't even a readable story - just a small synopsis of a story that will be featured in Mobile PC mag next month. There could have been plenty more info, but instead we got two paragraphs.....

    OTOH, is an average 9% drop in performance even an issue? I mean, 9% in office apps is nothing....Who needs high performance when typing, making spreadsheets, or even a PowerPoint presentation?

    This (once again) illustrates the MS push towards security over performance/compatibility

    -thewldisntenuff

    --
    My MythTV HowTo
  3. Re:Of course. by savagedome · · Score: 4, Interesting

    my internet lagged so bad I had to reinstall Windows Xp. Worked better after that.

    Bollocks. Reinstall XP? Did you atleast try removing SP2 to begin with? You could atleast set a system restore point before you do any major upgrade that contains patches and/or including third party drivers.

    I am no Windows fan but just trying to make it sensational that you had to reinstall XP from scratch doesn't really do anything. I have installed SP2 pretty much after it was released and have had no problems. (Well, of course some people are going to see glitches considering the size of that damn thing).

    And maybe, just maybe, did you think of the possibility that your *P2P* app might be the bugger. Just a thought.

    --


    Free XBox, PS2
  4. Welcome to Windows upgrades by coupland · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If you thought SP2 would be a speed upgrade then you also buy the previous lines that Win98, ME, NT4, W2K, XP would make Windows faster than previous versions. Of course these fallacies are based on the assumption that you would install the upgrade on a *newer* PC than their sample set. No Windows update has ever been faster than its predecessors.

    Period.

  5. Reality check by Card · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Correct me if I'm wrong, but given today's hardware, is 10-20% slowdown even noticeable to the average user running, say, Word? IIRC, the threshold for user to notice anything meaningful is around 30% in day-to-day operations.

    Games are a different beast, but does the user even care if loading a spreadsheet takes an extra second or two?

  6. Defragment C:! by prandal · · Score: 3, Interesting

    After installing SP2, defragment your hard drive - so many core files are replaced that the system's performance will be even more sub-optimal than usual until you do this.

  7. XP SP2 can give you a serious headache by Linker3000 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Since installing SP2 on a laptop, the printouts from Treeview Pro (a directory listing program) have had every printed character flipped on its vertical axis - all the letters are in the right place but the wrong way round so - for example, all 'b's look like 'd' - it's readable but makes your brain hurt!!

    Does anyone have a weirder SP2 effect?

    --
    AT&ROFLMAO