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Researchers Sour on Vista Service Pack 1 Performance
Stony Stevenson passed us a link indicating that a group of researchers has described Microsoft's upcoming Windows Vista Service Pack 1 as basically a performance dud. Researchers from the Devil Mountain Software group is claiming that a series of in-house benchmark tests showed that users hoping to receive a speed boost from the update will be disappointed. "Devil Mountain ran its DMS Clarity Studio framework on a laptop Barth described as a "barn burner" -- dual-core processor, dedicated graphics, and either 1GB or 2GB of memory -- to compare performance of the SP1 release candidate that Microsoft released last week with the RTM version that hit general distribution last January. The Vista RTM was not updated with any of the bug fixes, patches or performance packs that Microsoft has pushed through Windows Update since the operating system's debut. 'One gigabyte, 2GB [of memory], it didn't make a difference,' said [CTO Craig] Barth. 'SP1 was never more than 1% or 2% faster.'"
50 million lines of code and they couldn't find anything that needed optimization?? Or were their priorities elsewhere? These days, optimization always seems to be relegated to "low man on the totem pole."
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
...that a large amount of their userbase doesn't even know that there are alternatives. It's a shame really. Because I guarantee if Microsoft had less of a market share they would focus more on these details like optimization and straight up good code because if they didn't they wouldn't survive. Now it just seems they do only the amount of work required to keep the train rolling and their riders complacent. I'm in a workplace where 99% of the computers run Windows XP, and the sad thing is that it's a technology company that deals with security and networking. You'd expect that a large majority of them would have heard of linux or even unix for God's sake, but hardly any have. It's a Windows world and Microsoft knows it. They'll do the bare minimum amount of work possible.
Windows Me was a pile of crap that crashed every five minutes. Vista is merely slightly slower than XP. I use it for games, since Wine/Cedega aren't quite there yet for the latest titles. It runs just fine, everything works just fine, everything is perfectly fast enough -- do I really care whether things are theoretically a few percent slower if I can't tell the difference without actually benchmarking? (Hint: I don't.)
I really don't see where all the Vista hate is coming from. I wouldn't want to use it day-to-day, but that's the same as any version of Windows.
A release candidate should be identical to the actual release; that's why it's called a "release candidate" and not a beta version. The only things that would be changed between the RC and the release are any major bugs such as crashes, exploits, etc. Any performance tweaks would have already been done by the time it hit release candidate status. Similarly any debugging code that would slow things down would have also been removed.
I have an old Dell Latitude xp450c that cost someone (not me) probably about $2500 in 1995 but today its not worth anything except to battery, memory and ac adaptor sellers who have more of these to sell, then there are such laptops existing.
This is a 50Mhz 486dx laptop with a 8megs of ram. What OS can I reasonable run on it besides DOS, baslinux (basic linux - damn small linux is to big). and some floppy based OSs like maybe if I can even QNX demo of i can even find it anymore? To bad I can't get AROS to run on it.
I also have an Amiga 4000 Toaster that runs at a warp engine speed of 28Mhz though I have more ram in it. and its still useful.
The point is, when it comes to OSs today the performance is pretty much a dud in a fair comparison to the better OSs of yesterday.
There has been a code bloat to use up increased speed, memory and storage in OSs today.
Today you can buy 1 gig thumb drives that could hold your whole system, personal files and duplicate backups of the same and still have plenty of room.
In fact, we should today have such sub-gig personal thumb drive based systems. Expecially considering what the more common applications are.
Performance sucks today, and its not just a windows bloatware matter.
It seems you have to do a lot of research to get vista working decently. I guess this proves that it is not yet ready for the desktop :)
I'm sure the only thing tying you to Windows these days is your own aging skill-set. Let's face it, Windows has always been your bread-and-butter as a programmer right? Well one could see why you would feel slighted when others bash what you've spent a large amount of your life learning and suffering with. The cold truth is: The Windows skill-set is in danger if MS keeps dropping the ball. Every time MS drops a steaming pile of OS on the market, more people make the switch to Apple, or Linux, and your skill-set degrades just a notch. The thought of mass defections from Windows probably makes you wake up in a cold sweat at night. Well, I'm not going to sugar-coat it: Vista is turning many people elsewhere, and Apple is making all the right moves in the market right now to swiftly pick those disenfranchised folks up. It's only a matter of time before the market tips and non-windows machines are the minority in many areas. It may not be tomorrow, or even ten years from now, but I've lost all hope in MS pulling up from the tailspin they are in.
In closing, I think that there is no better time then RIGHT NOW to expand your skill-set to include Windows agnostic developing. Because I'm of the opinion that there is a huge shift happening in the market right now, just very slowly...
God is real unless declared integer.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Although it certainly had it's problems, at least Win ME was usable. Vista gets in the way of absolutely everything! I have never been so irritated with an OS in under 5 minutes of use, until vista came along.
/release and /renew to fix a conflicting IP address, but it gave permission denied error! I had to explicitly select Run As Administrator from the context menu to get elevated permissions just to run ipconfig. Bloody oath! Also, the windows explorer UI is so bloody awful and unusable, it's not even funny.
Using a friend's laptop running vista, logged in as an administrator, trying to copy harmless files from a public folder on my mac to the my documents folder on vista was forbidden. I had to copy to my Win XP machine first and then from there to Vista. Once tried to use ipconfig
Seriously, if my only choice was ME or Vista, I'd go back to ME any day. But luckily I can just stick with OS X Leopard and Win XP.
By reading this signature, you hereby agree with the content of the above comment.
Actually, yes, I can. If you can't determine the actual truth value of an individual argument and instead have to broadly lump what could be a valid argument into the domain of the "straw people", then maybe you should, with all due respect, shut the fuck up.
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
So my DRM is being upgraded? Should I be excited?
The worst thing Microsoft has ever done was put Mickey Mouse in charge of kernel development. Letting Hollywood dictate the kernel design will prove to be the undoing of the Windows platform.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
So what you're saying is that you don't care because it's not your primary OS. Those that do care may be thinking of it running as their primary OS. Heck they may be forced to do so at work in a couple of years. Their LIVING may depend on it.
I do use XP as my primary OS at home and at work and you bet I care. It ain't my spare car. It's my primary ride.
How is the parent modded as insightful? He's saying he doesn't give a shit because he hardly uses it.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
No, you see, *that* was good as far as an argument against the OP's claim of "straw man". You actually made an argument as to why the article is not making a straw man argument, with evidence to back it up, though it is extacly the same one the the first response from 'faloi'. Great, so far I agree with that, and I said as much.
But that was not *my* argument. My argument was that you can't simply deny any claim of "straw man" based solely upon your perception that it is often misused, which is where you started. And appropriately enough, that makes your last response to me......a "straw man" argument! To which I can only respond...refer to my previous post.
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
Meanwhile, I hear the Walmart Green PC at $199 is selling like hotcakes, because it performs very well running Linux + Enlightenment. Perhaps this shows that people really do care about poor Vista performance. And not what Microsoft claimed they would try to do about it.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Power users are always the first to notice even the little things. Because we see them based on experiences from other systems.
Most end users who are not power users don't really see the sluggishness unless it gets real bad.
Case in point is look at the spyware apps. I can tell when they are running on a persons computer , but they can't they just think windows got slower, when we realize something is wrong they just keep using.
I have a family friend who bought a debranded refurbed HP box , cheap and with a 22 ws monitor came in under $500. It runs Vista , it runs at the moment like new because I taught them how to clean out the system every week. And they have a kid who surfs all kinds of sites , but yet it remains pretty much effortless for them. They use it for all sorts of stuff , the kid surfs youtube and all the sites and gets nasties but they cleaned out quickly.
Also I would not take your grandparents as a benchmark. Usually give it to a kid or a teen who is just realizing women exist and can be seen nude. That is a true test for any OS.
This package Does Not Contain a Winner
"DX10. It's inevitable that games will eventually require it"
Why? To get an extra 10 fps? The normal hardware upgrade cycle will fix that, and let game manufacturers continue to ship with DX9. Heck, there are still games being sold that run fine under Win9x.
As Nintendo showed, its not necessary to require the latest and greatest hardware to have the best product.
Kevin Smith on Prince
Bad permissions cause Vista to copy files VERY slowly because it has to reset them on all files.
On the Lame Excuses List, this falls somewhere above "You can't take bottled water on an airplane or the terrorists might win" but still doesn't beat out "He only hits me because he loves me."
If the equivalents of "cp -r" and "cp -pr" take noticeably different amounts of time to complete on your operating system, something is broken, because a multi-gigahertz processor can finish fiddling with even complicated permission bits long before a 50MB/s disk needs to have them ready to write.
Vista could be a great OS , we just won't know until they decide to get the drm out of the system and remove what people feel is slowing down everything.
DRM is an utterly irrelevant criticism of Vista. If you're not using DRM-encumbered media, it's simply not active. If you *are* using DRM-encumbered media, Vista isn't imposing any more restrictions than any other player would.
I would like to see a total rewrite of the windows kernel to take advantage of newer ways of doing things. And I mean completely throw out backward compatability much like Linux does when they change core components in the system. Relying on a kernel that is going on almost what 20 years old ? Tells me this company has way to much mucking up the highway.
By that measure, both Linux (ca. 1991) and OS X (NeXTSTEP, ca. 1989) have older kernels than Vista (Windows NT 3.1, ca. 1993).
Bearded Dragon