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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.'"
Anyone running vista is (most likely) running it on a newer box. Does average joe care about optimizations? Probably not. Are they important? To people like you and I, sure, but not to average joe.
Also, I is very impressed with the summary's grammar.
Don't be wise here. Every story must be anti-microsoft.
It helps to prop up the self-esteem of the inferior shit eating Linux crowd.
Macs for fags, Linux for turds, Windows for the rest of us.
What the hell is with this "straw man" crap? Whenever someone loses an argument or disagrees with something it's the first thing they say.. "straw man! straw man!".
Did I miss the Godwins revision memo? or is it just some diversion tactic for people to ignore evidence forced right into their face?
You don't see where the hate is coming from?
It's damn near unsuable. Places in the file tree like to reset their permissions, and read only settings. The interface makes me want to vomit, and i can't find any of the functions i need either.
Brand new computer idles at 700MB ram usage.
It is COUNTER INTUITIVE in naming, window layout, and it buries every useful and major function under 5 layers of horrible counter intuitive menus/windows.
These problems didn't exist in win2k, they put them in xp and on cause they think people are dumb. People are dumb, but the current trend makes it even harder for those dumb people, let alone experienced people.
Your 12 year old hardware won't run an OS released last year? So what? I have an Atari 2600 that won't play PS3 games, but I'm not crying to the wind about it. Your false dichotmy not withstanding, what metric are you using to determine that the performance of modern operating systems is lacking? What does good performance look like? People always complain that performance sucks but without a metric to determine what "good" is, how do we know when something is "bad"?
People often make statements like "I need 2 gigs of RAM to run this OS? That is insane!" Why is this insane? How much does 2 gigs of RAM cost? (Hint: about $35 US, $80 if you're not up to playing the rebate game)
The point not being that we shouldn't concern ourselves with performance, but that we should have some reliable way to measure it, beyond old hardware sucking ass.
As an aside, the 486DX line of processors weren't any better at performance (using your "measurements") running Windows 3.11 or OS/2.
Most worthwhile optimisation is done by rethinking the design, and to a lesser degree hand-coding parts where you know the realities better than the compiler can guess, and just how to exploit that.
Microsoft are completely screwed - they have nobody left who understands the "legacy code" - that huge, monolithic binary blob at the middle of the kernel that is totally undocumented and untouchable. The NT kernel is all they have, and it's unmaintainable.
Game Over, Microsoft!
No, it works good OOTB, but some of the features have a reverse-placebo effect on users. "Vista taking up 1GB of my memory after booting? Bloat! I'm going back to XP where I can drool over all the free memory I have just sitting there doing nothing but draw power.".
Then DRM comes along and shoots all the nice little features in the head.
All in all though, it's not nearly as terrible an OS as people make it out to be.
:wq
"They didn't. Therefore they are hinting to you that the performance upgrade for Vista is still XP!"
Vista is so bad that even WinME is a "performance enhancer" by comparison.
All I've seen wrt Vista is:
Vista - the Un-Operating System.
Kevin Smith on Prince