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.'"

Comments

Anonymous King Sours on Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

nobody gives a shit about vista and neither should you.

Re:Anonymous King Sours on Slashdot

[Ngarrang]

Simple: Eventually M$ is going to force you to run it. The corporate lapdog U.S. DOJ won't do anything to stop them either, just like they folded a winning hand against them last time. The corporate world, the big companies, will ultimately determine Microsoft's course. At this point, Microsoft is kinda stuck. They own the desktop OS market, but the real money is made in licensing to the truly large companies. If those companies will not upgrade, they have the clout to look at Microsoft and say, "No. Extend support for another year. It would be ashame to switch those 100,000 desktops over to Linux." At which point, the Microsoft lackey does what they say. Microsoft only appears to be in charge, they have become pawns themselves.

Straw Man?

[lseltzer]

Did Microsoft say it would improve overall system performance?

Re:Straw Man?

[faloi]

Yes, they did. In the SP 1 white paper. They talk a lot about some of the specific improvements, and are sort of vague on exactly why there'd be an overall performance increase. They certainly give the impression it would improve overall performance.

Re:Straw Man?

[IllForgetMyNickSoonA]

Check this.

Re:Straw Man?

[trianglman]

No. It's fair to call a straw man when someone puts words in someone else's mouth and then defeats that argument. In this example, (I did not RTFA, nor anything else related to this btw)if Microsoft did not say anything about performance, but this group tore MS apart because of a lack of performance improvement, it would be a straw man because this group is attacking a claim MS never made. On the other hand, if MS did say performance would be improved, it wouldn't be. From what others have said, and my own personal expectations of this SP, this is probably a straw man. I wouldn't expect a service pack designed to fix security holes and other issues would by default improve performance significantly. Service packs are, generally, a roll up of all the previous security updates, plus any additional security or features they want to add.

An example from the wikipedia article:

An example of a straw man fallacy:
Person A: I don't think children should play on busy streets.
Person B: I think that it would be foolish to lock children up all day.

Re:Straw Man?

[QRDeNameland]

Perhaps you should google on logical fallacies. All that saying "straw man" means is that someone is making an argument against a claim that was never made. If Microsoft never claimed SP1 would improve performance, than it would truly be a "straw man" criticism to berate them because SP1 does not improve performance, and thus the "straw man" defense is valid. However, if MS *did* tout SP1 as improving performance, then the "straw man" accusation is invalid as the article would have a valid point in pointing out that performance gains appear to be dismal.

The guy who posted that MS *did* claim performance improvement makes an actual argument that the OP's "straw man" claim *is* invalid, which is perfectly fine. However, you are simply implying that *any* claim of "straw man" is a "diversion tactic", which is not.

Re:Straw Man?

[QRDeNameland]

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.

Re:Straw Man?

[deathy_epl ccs]

Now this is a picture of Chewbacca.

...

Lookit the silly monkey.

Re:Straw Man?

[QRDeNameland]

That's Straw Chewbacca to you...

Re:Straw Man?

[Daniel Phillips]

It's fair to call a straw man when someone puts words in someone else's mouth and then defeats that argument. Is it fair to try to divert attention away from an actual issue (Vista performance is terrible and is not improved by the latest service pack) to a stupid wankfest about whether Microsoft actually claimed they would improve the poor Vista performance? Either way, Vista performance is poor and not getting better.

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.

Re:Straw Man?

[Daniel Phillips]

Here is what Microsoft specifically claimed about SP1 performance (thanks to faoli for the link):

Performance
The following list describes some of the performance improvements that Windows Vista SP1 will include
      Improves the speed of copying and extracting files.
      Improves the time to become active from Hibernate and Resume modes.
      Improves the performance of domain-joined PCs when operating off the domain; in the current release
        version of Windows Vista, users would experience long delays when opening the File dialog box.
      Improves performance of Windows® Internet Explorer® 7 in Windows Vista, reducing CPU utilization and
        speeding JavaScript parsing.
      Improves battery life by reducing CPU utilization by not redrawing the screen as frequently, on certain
        computers.
      Improves the logon experience by removing the occasional 10-second delay between pressing CTL-
        ALT-DEL and the password prompt displaying.
      Addresses an issue in the current version of Windows Vista that makes browsing network file shares
        consume significant bandwidth and not perform as fast as expected.

Hmm, file shares are slow? Perhaps Microsoft should switch to Samba, which is fast.

Re:Straw Man?

[ozmanjusri]

Either way, Vista performance is poor and not getting better.

It's not just Vista though. Microsoft Office 2007 on Windows Vista consumes over 12x as much memory and nearly 3x as much processing power as Office 2000.

Re:Straw Man?

[QuietObserver]

If you take a look at the link included with the post issued by your GP (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=090DEAF6-2EAA-4AAA-8B3B-2E199DB4A97D&displaylang=en) you'll see that Microsoft did, indeed, promise that Vista SP1 would improve performance, as stated in the following (taken directly from the overview paragraph on that page; emphasis added):

In addition to previously released updates, SP1 will contain changes focused on addressing specific reliability and performance issues, supporting new types of hardware, and adding support for several emerging standards.

Therefore, this article cannot be, by any stretch of the imagination, considered a straw man argument.

Re:Straw Man?

[lseltzer]

Here are the specific claims about performance from the white paper:

• Improves the speed of copying and extracting files.
• Improves the time to become active from Hibernate and Resume modes.
• Improves the performance of domain-joined PCs when operating off the domain; in the current release version of Windows Vista, users would experience long delays when opening the File dialog box.
• Improves performance of Windows® Internet Explorer® 7 in Windows Vista, reducing CPU utilization and speeding JavaScript parsing.
• Improves battery life by reducing CPU utilization by not redrawing the screen as frequently, on certain computers.
• Improves the logon experience by removing the occasional 10-second delay between pressing CTRL-ALT-DEL and the password prompt displaying.
• Addresses an issue in the current version of Windows Vista that makes browsing network file shares consume significant bandwidth and not perform as fast as expected.

You can't tell from the PCWorld article what the tests were, but there's no indication that they made substantial use of these specific features, and there's no reason to believe from this feature list that overall general system performance would improve

Re:Straw Man?

[drinkypoo]

Is it fair to try to divert attention away from an actual issue (Vista performance is terrible and is not improved by the latest service pack) to a stupid wankfest about whether Microsoft actually claimed they would improve the poor Vista performance?

The actual issue is that Microsoft claimed that Vista performance would improve, and it did not.

Are we shocked?

[faloi]

Microsoft has all but given up on Vista. A lot of corporate customers are going to sit it out and wait for the next iteration of the OS to come out. People who have it generally aren't that impressed, at least among the family and friends I've spoken to about it (not a large sample set, I'll grant you). Vista is the new ME, the sooner it dies and MS dumps it the better off we'll all be.

Re:Are we shocked?

[king-manic]

Vista is the new ME, the sooner it dies and MS dumps it the better off we'll all be. Vista would have to re-animate the dead into blood thirsty zombies before it could rival the utter horror of ME.

Re:Are we shocked?

[cronot]

Vista would have to re-animate the dead into blood thirsty zombies before it could rival the utter horror of ME.

Gosh, I sure wouldn't like to meet you.

Re:Are we shocked?

[WombatDeath]

Won't happen - they wouldn't give users the ability to reanimate the dead without the permission of the copyright holder (presumably FSM or Odin or someone). I suppose they could get official backing by releasing something (Holy Windows?) which makes you pray for half an hour before booting but, now that I think about it, that's pretty much the current position... ...oh, shit.

Can someone lend me a cricket bat, please?

Re:Are we shocked?

[king-manic]

To be fair, my Dell Vostro 1000 came preloaded with Vista home basic, and it bluescreened after 30 minutes. I installed opensuse 10.3 shortly thereafter. Not that the Linux ATI X200 drivers are any better - I get X corruption all over the place and 1 month later I still can't get compiz working right. And you haven't returned it?

Re:Are we shocked?

[Lachlan Hunt]

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.

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 /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.

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.

Re:Are we shocked?

[syousef]

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.

Re:Are we shocked?

[jeffasselin]

The RAM usage at startup for a newly-installed system is simply absurd. 600-700MB is not an exaggeration. The graphics card needs for the new environment (without which it's mostly XP right? It's not like there's a new object-oriented file system in there right?) are quite hgh for most business needs.

The slow file copy isn't a joke. We're talking 1hr+ to copy 2.5GB to a FW hard drive from internal SATA. That's about 25MB/min, 120 times slower than the peak speed of FW. I think you can get more out of a parallel port.

There are some nice additions. But it's not worth the trouble, as some of the flaws totally override those.

Re:Are we shocked?

[MightyYar]

I really don't see where all the Vista hate is coming from. Vista is fine if you buy all-new hardware and all new software, and you make sure that the new stuff is Vista compatible. My experience with Vista has been okay, but there have been some expensive warts:

• Vista didn't work with my wireless router. Solution? New router.
• Vista didn't work with the brand-new Vonage USB stick. Solution? None - but there is a workaround that is a bit of a PITA.
• Vista will not work well with Office XP or earlier. An expensive upgrade to 2003 or 2007 is necessary - and 2007 comes with a whole separate set of issues...
• Other software and hardware was similarly affected. It seems like a waste to ditch your old printers/scanners/etc when they still work fine - even if the replacement is cheap or even free.
• Vista nannies you a whole lot, and you can't tell it to STFU without disabling security in such a way that you might as well be running XP. Sometimes you are being insecure on purpose (like when MS's own installer tells you to disable your antivirus before continuing).
• Someone needs to tell third party vendors that running in Administrator mode is about 10 years out-of-fashion. Again, buying new software largely fixes this problem.

So after you are faced with buying new hardware AND new software, it makes you feel a lot less locked-in to MS and compelled to get a Windows machine. I think this is part of why Mac is seeing its fortunes reversed a bit - for the few applications that you can't find for MacOS (or Linux), you can just boot into your old copy of Windows.

Re:Are we shocked?

[Slack3r78]

The RAM usage at startup for a newly-installed system is simply absurd. 600-700MB is not an exaggeration. The graphics card needs for the new environment (without which it's mostly XP right? It's not like there's a new object-oriented file system in there right?) are quite hgh for most business needs.

And yet another person who doesn't understand the new memory manager. High levels of allocated memory are a good thing for performance. Coding Horror has a decent primer on all of this, but the short version of the story is that people who are used to how Windows has traditionally handled memory management rather than how an ideal memory manager should work love to complain about Vista being a memory hog when, in fact, I'd suggest that the Vista memory manager may arguably be one of the best out there right now.

Re:Are we shocked?

[roystgnr]

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.

Re:Are we shocked?

[QuoteMstr]

You are the idiot here. Read up on something called a "unified buffer cache." It's a VM subsystem design that every modern OS uses; disk is the primary storage, and RAM is used to cache it. "Free" RAM is empty cache.

I bet that if we could measure the L1 cache, we'd have idiots complaining it was too full.

Optimization

[ktappe]

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."

Re:Optimization

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I did go with a compsci degree but I'm sure I could find something. Here's my proposed patch:

+/*

40 million lines of DRM, WGA, Windows Media Ultra Control Restricted Mode Crap

+*/

Done!

Re:Optimization

[arth1]

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.
Neither is something Microsoft is likely to do -- the first costs too much (including accepting incompatibilities and devising workarounds for them), and the second requires ace programmers, not run-off-the-mill visual-anything. Changing a few compiler flags here and there, or re-compiling with a new compiler version is cheap, but usually won't have much noticeable effect. However, it's what you're most likely to see from huge corporations.

Re:Optimization

[UncleTogie]

Does average joe care about optimizations? Probably not. Are they important? To people like you and I, sure, but not to average joe.

Yes, it DOES matter to Joe. Joe, however, won't call it "code optimization". Joe will simply say that "Vista runs slower than my XP did!" He doesn't care WHY it's so, but even Joe can tell the difference in speed.

We have a lot of Joes come through our shop. They notice.

Re:Optimization

[sumdumass]

Well, seeing how this machine was so "hot" in the hardware section, it could be that the bottleneck wasn't in the OS at all. IT could be that it has cycles to spare but is waiting on the memory bus to see any increase in performance. They could have been maxing out everything that would have restricted the OS from performing and never saw the "issue" in the first place.

Of course there was/is an issue, Vista just seems slow. In the former example, they wouldn't have seen the issue because something else would be slowing it down. But on a lesser machine, I'm wondering if the optimizations would have a more dramatic effect. I mean a machine where the memory or processor is limited and the actual execution of the code was keeping it slow. Will it allow the code to be executed faster on a processor that is maxed out all the time?

Re:Optimization

[TheRaven64]

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. Micro-optimisations in the right place (not even at the assembly level, just tweaking a few algorithms or data structures, or even the code layout) can give huge benefits. I got a 25% speed gain from some code I was working on a few years ago just be moving a couple of functions into a header and marking them as static inline so the compiler could inline them. Memoisation of frequently-called functions can also give some benefits.

The hard part is usually not the optimisation, it's working out where the optimisations need to go. This typically involves wading through huge amounts of data from profiling runs.

Re:Optimization

[billcopc]

As a guy who used to write entire applications and games in pure assembler (a loooong time ago), optimization is something I do on-the-fly, but to some degree of restraint. If something can be dramatically improved with one or two extra lines of code, I do it, otherwise I leave it as-is.

Keep in mind that only one other person ever sees my code, and he tends to figure out my hacks with relative ease (or asks me if he's stumped). If I were at Microsoft, such code-level optimization would be murder as I'd be the only guy in the building able to work on it.

One thing that can help tremendously in optimization is a virtual machine, then you can profile the whole thing from boot to shutdown. I used it extensively when I was producing games, though I was doing tricks that would be considered profane today, like self-modifying code and interleaving. People always gave me confused stares when I showed off my real-time loop unroller. How better to sync graphics, audio and input than to smush them all into one dynamically-interleaved refresh-synced loop ? You could call it extreme time-slicing minus the context switches, and it made that old 486 scream!

As much as I'd enjoy that sort of wizardry in today's software, there just isn't time for it anymore. I must have spent a good 40hrs on that arcane unroller, it was a labor of love by a teenage demo-coder. Today, I'd just throw more hardware at it and bill the client. Microsoft is no different, they're just a whole lot bigger.

Standard reply from most vendors is...

[Hymer]

"This is a BETA, it is not finished yet. Everything will be alright when it is released."

Game over man!!

[djupedal]

Last one out of Redmond, please turn off that god damn useless big ass table...

Has it ever improved efficiency?

[Ckwop]

Without wishing to troll, when has a Window service pack ever improved the speed of a Windows OS?

In fact, and I'm sure someone on Slashdot has raw data on this (that perhaps even shows I'm wrong), Apple are the only company who has ever achieved this on a regular basis.

I've found in my rather short development career is something scarily similar to the first law of thermodynamics: "Bad code once created can never be destroyed." In most commercial situations, the risk of breaking a routine far outweighs the benefit the change brings.

We've built an entire area of study, refactoring, on trying to sell the importance of keeping code clean. I'm still not 100% convinced that the case for refactoring has been made. If you spend three months refactoring, is the simpler overall structure really going to speed up development sufficiently to justify the capital outlay? In all but the very worst code-bases, the answer is unclear.Bear in mind, refactoring my cause you to notice bugs that you can't fix because it would break an interface. Now your code has to be badly structured to support this bad business logic. This can be enough to render the effort useless.

This is why service packs rarely improve functionality or performance. Windows XP SP2 is a notable exception. The risk is simply too great.

Simon

Re:Has it ever improved efficiency?

[drsmithy]

In fact, and I'm sure someone on Slashdot has raw data on this (that perhaps even shows I'm wrong), Apple are the only company who has ever achieved this on a regular basis.

And one should not lose sight of the fact the only reason Apple *could* do this was because OS X was so godawful slow to start with (and for years afterwards).

When OS X was released, it was a dog on even the fastest Macs available (and remained "slow" until the G5s). Vista runs happily on machines that were merely high-end (not even the best available) 4 years ago.

Re:Has it ever improved efficiency?

[toddestan]

In fact, and I'm sure someone on Slashdot has raw data on this (that perhaps even shows I'm wrong), Apple are the only company who has ever achieved this on a regular basis.

I actually thought Microsoft was going to copy Apple on this. In other words, release a slow, bloated, unusable piece of crap OS like Apple did with 10.0, then wow everyone as they optomize the heck out of it. Which is why I'm a bit surprised that Vista SP1 supposedly doesn't have much of an improvement.

The sad thing is...

[pwnies]

...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.

Why I even care one bit

[Mascot]

Vista has one great selling point as far as I'm concerned: DX10. It's inevitable that games will eventually require it, though so far it's not exactly a big deal.

So I notice Crysis has a "Very High" setting that's disabled for me in XP. Ok, I think, the first half or so of the game runs ok with High settings, so maybe it might just barely be playable on Very High. Just to be able to see what it looks like.

I boot into Vista and install the game there. Lo and behold, it runs at almost exactly half the FPS on High compared to in XP. Had to drop it to Medium to be even remotely playable. Needless to say, Very High is what I'd need to be to enjoy it with everything at max.

Is the culprit crap drivers for my hardware, general performance drain by Vista, or DRM using everything it can to make sure I'm actually allowed to use the computer today? I don't know, but I do know Vista has made me seriously try a Linux on a desktop for the first time (only used it for servers until now). If only more games supported it, or ran under Wine, I'd be happy as can be.

Re:Why I even care one bit

[AbRASiON]

I can give you 2 pieces of information.

Firstly, I can confirm for you, yep Vista sucked for me too, same driver versions, fully patched machines and the Vista install has several bullshit disk thrash services disabled, it still ran at 34 FPS avg in the benchmark at X settings.

XP ran at 45 FPS avg, same system, same benchmark and settings.

Also the "DX10" features in Vista ARE available in XP with some ini hacking, do a google on it, I think DIGG covered it.
Vista, more like shitsta.

How to "speed up" Vista

[Toreo asesino]

Do some research and you'll find you don't need a service pack to tune Vista:

Turn off: Volume Shadow Copy (files won't be versioned automatically any more), indexing service (rapid searching won't work any more), and SuperFetch (apps wont be pre-loaded and so will start slower, but you'll have more "free memory" on average - a debatable benefit anyway).

You'll notice XP levels of disc activity (barely any) and lot's more free memory. That's because Vista's not doing anything. Personally, I like to be able to search instantly, have apps load instantly, and have my critical files backed up transparently; so I don't mind the "bloat".

Anyway, if you actually know how Windows works, you'll know what you don't want running and what you do. Turn off the stuff you don't want, but most people are fine with the defaults even if it means using more resources.

Re:How to "speed up" Vista

[j.sanchez1]

Do some research and you'll find you don't need a service pack to tune Vista:

I agree...Black Viper to the rescue. I printed out his list of services for XP and still use it to this day when tweaking systems for friends/family.

Re:How to "speed up" Vista

[Drencrom]

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 :)

Re:How to "speed up" Vista

[stewbacca]

Anyway, if you actually know how Windows works, you'll know what you don't want running and what you do.

I think that sentence basically makes the point for all Mac users on the planet.

Fixed the headline for you

[trifish]

Researchers Sour on Vista SP1 RC1 Performance

Didn't we have a similiar story five days ago?

[denzacar]

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/18/188235

Only, that one was from PC World Canada.
AND... they at least listed the RC's version (0.275) and explained the tests (well, kinda...),the difference in performance AND the hardware used. http://www.pcworld.ca/news/column/3eef651f0a010408008b33e8065121c5/pg1.htm
WTF is a "barn burner"?

Also, saying "Office-based test script was "statistically insignificant,"...while a multitasking test panel produced results for SP1 less than 1% faster than RTM." doesn't really say much.

Adding to that the first (T)FA actually bothered to mention WHAT was the RC about...

Instead, Microsoft says, the service pack beta improves stability, performance, and reliability when reactivating a machine from Hibernate or Suspend mode; enhances device-driver support; increases security; and adds support for new standards such as Extended File Allocation Table (intended to enhance flash storage on notebooks, not desktops). ... kinda makes this (T)FA even more non-informative in comparison.

In fact... first thing that comes to my mind after reading TFA (the "Barth said"-part) is Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction:
"Check out the big brain on Barth!"

Re:That's a release candidate

[mkraft]

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.

Re:That's a release candidate

[GDubs]

Tell that to the KDE team.

What is not a performance dud today?

[3seas]

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.

Bias

[Nanite]

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...

Give up...

[__aamisb9940]

...Vista is NOT about performance. It's about security. The market demanded a 'more secure' Windows, and Microsoft delivered. The market once demanded speed, and MS delivered Windows 98.

Windows is like "Star Trek" movies

[BearRanger]

Let's see. . . 95, 98, ME, XP, Vista. . . Yup, only the even numbered releases are any good. Just to be safe they'd best rebrand Windows 7 as Windows 8. ;-)

Woo hoo

[JRHelgeson]

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.

Vista's not slow

[holophrastic]

I can't figure out if I'm just brilliant when it comes to selecting computer components, or I'm the only one who doesn't take a bat to my machine and then wonder why the machine no longer works. You guys keep saying that Vista is slow, and I'm forced to believe you when you say that yours is slow. But mine, mine is not slow. Hell, forget mine. I just bought my grandparents a machine. $1'800.00 got them a 2GHz, 2GB, 24", office, ultimate. No dedicated graphics card. No dedicated sound card. No dedicated NIC. No dedicated anything. It's responsive, it's reliable, it's stable, and it works as fast as anyone would want it to work in full aeroglass beauty. Now, they aren't running photoshop, nor any CAD app, but they are running office, a bunch of games, digital camera stuff, and the typing of the dead.

So why is your machine so slow?

Re:Vista's not slow

[BosstonesOwn]

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.

Re:Vista's not slow

[holophrastic]

Heh, what a benchmark. I'm with you on the point of typical versus power users. Certainly I've taught my grandparents and set things up so that the system stays clean. However, I hardly think that we power users are a good standard.

Not only are we happy to push our machines well beyond reasonable, we also tend to take hardware that was never meant to approach even their own specs -- consumer hardware specs are maximums, not typicals.

For my own Vista machines, I didn't go with the minimum ram -- and 2GB is minimum for Vista. I didn't go for half of Vista, I meant Business or Ultimate. I didn't go for the cheap hard drive, the centrino processor, or the slow ram.

The other issue with using power users as any sort of benchmark is that our needs and desires and playfulness grow much faster than the industry -- in part because we are driving the industry. A new super car is invented, and some car guy sees how fast it can go before it breaks. A new plane, and a test pilot takes it out. We get a new OS, and we see how many things it can handle concurrently.

Game developers do the same thing. They build games with adjustable detail. We see that as a way to dial down the graphics for lower machines. We forget, or ignore, the fact that the developers build the very same detail adjustment to dial it up for future machines. But we want to play every new game at maximum detail, which effectively means that the game is old the moment we play it, and that it wasn't developed to take advantage of future hardware. Obviously game developers build for future hardware. We power users push to play that higher level now, and complain when we can't see the best possible version the instant the game is released. Maybe those game developers should hide the higher detail levels from us until six months after release.

Ultimately (heh) I don't see Vista as anything more than a much better OS than XP (I mean in the network, business, and other internals, not aeroglass) that, as with every other software development, will take advantage of hardware improvements over the next two years. We'd be upset if it didn't.

The question I pose to you is not whether Vista now is faster than XP now. I pose to you is Vista faster now than when XP was new? And even more appropriately: will Vista be faster at the end of its life-time than XP is now, at the end of its own.

Re:Vista's not slow

[drsmithy]

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).

Re:DX10

[trolltalk.com]

"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.

Makin' a post

[Synthaxx]

(!) You're trying to make a post criticizing Vista

[Cancel] [Allow] [Thrash the disc around some more] [This button has been disabled by Warner Brothers (R)]

Samba is fast?

[Sycraft-fu]

Not in my experience. On the Macs at work that connect to the NetApp CIFS shares are quite slow using the built in Samba client. Buying ADmitMac speeds them up a bunch and is in fact what NetApp themselves recommend. Likewise we have a Samba server and it is notably slower with Windows XP clients than a Windows 2003 server with similar hardware and lesser IO. I certainly don't find Samba to be speedy and indeed we use NFS between our UNIX systems and the NetApp for this reason.

The missed point...

[TheNetAvenger]

The things that reviewers seem to be missing...

1) Some of the performance updates scheduled for SP1 were already released as Updates.

2) Performance on a System of 1GB (the sweet spot) will see virtually no improvement, and they are reviewing systems with 1GB and 2GB or more. If you baseline the performance difference on a 512mb system the performance difference is more dramatic.

3) There are also a few optimization that don't affect most users. Readyboost got a significant jump in how it improves performance, and there has been refining of Superfetch as well. This includes not only USB flash, but Solid State and hybrid Drives will see significant boosts.

4) File copying in RTM did have some performance problems but the majority of the problem was the screen not accurately reporting it was already copying files when it said 'calculating time', so SP1 gets about a 10% boost, but the dialog reports the process more accurately as well.

If Windows Update wasn't doing its job and the updates hadn't already been being released, SP1 would be more of a one time dramatic increase. Also they need to be looking at lower end system when testing if they want to see more SP1 improvements.

Finally, older and pre-Vista designed system configurations see more of a bump as well. If you test SP1 on a system that has the specific chipsets and HD Audio, etc that is designed for Vista, SP1 won't add a lot, as the system components were already designed and optimized for Vista.

Lots of people...

[DrYak]

Meanwhile, I hear the Walmart Green PC at $199 is selling like hotcakes, because it performs very well running Linux + Enlightenment.

But it doesn't run Windows apps natively. What's the point of even talking about this if I can't run Photoshop on it? And forgot about gaming on it. What a waste of time! Vista is a lot better than this piece of crap "computer" because it can at least do the tasks actual people want it to do. Walmart are just ripping people off by selling them a $200 paperweight that can't do what people expect a computer to do.

But there are a lot of people out there who mostly use their computer to read and write e-mails, surf the web, write some stuff on an editor that features spell-check. Whose most advanced needs in term of photos is the ability to open an SD card and display pictures by clicking on them. Maybe even IM a little bit.

Linux can bring every thing they need and even more (like reading multimedia) with the added benefit of good firewall function and separated privileges out-of-the-box. Most of those people with simple needs play games either in browser applets or on their gaming console (for which they'll have more cash available thanks to the low PC cost). They are the market for the Green PC, and there *ARE* a lot of them.

In fact, I personally use, as my everyday computer, a Pentium-III on a 440BX motherboard (nearly 10 years old Mobo !). Maxing out the memory to 1GB and upgraading HDD is the only thing I've needed to do the past few years. Linux runs perfectly on it and fulfils all my surfing/IMing/Mailing/GIMPing/etc. needs.
I guess I couldn't even get Vista to work on such old hardware.

The only reason a lot of people buy new machines is because the old one is "too slow", i.e. crawling under the number of viruses and spywares. And then they need to buy bigger hardware in those new machines, in order to support microsoft's bloatware-du-jour that powers it.

wrong performance IMO

[Sir_Sri]

I'm not sure there is much you can do to improve overall vista performance say in games etc... If you look at the benchmarks it is whatever it is compared to equivalent settings on XP, and new stuff (DX10) is pitifully slow cause it's pitifully slow, there's not much a service pack can do about that. However if you look at a lot of applications performance in Vista vs Xp is not much different, if different at all (think FEAR), however any exception is a glaring exception and frustrating. Looking at the numbers I bet a 1-2% performance increase in Vista is probably bringing it to the same level as XP using the latest drivers for a lot of apps.

More relevantly are some of the general scheduling algorithm problems in vista which need to be addressed. Why does playing audio with a network running cause glitches? Anyone playing an MMO with VOIP (essepcially in game voip like tabula rasa and POTBS beta) can tell you this is a problem. When my backup is running, why are 3 of my cores idle, no matter what I'm doing and 1 nearly crippled? Why does it take so damn long to start a program? Now some of that is application level, not OS scheduler, but the time for an app to gain reasonable access to performance is strangely poor. Startup is the same sort of thing.

Ok so windows Vista has a transactional file system. Am I actually getting anything out of that I will ever use? Well truth be told probably, if it prevents partial writes to the system registry which leave it unstable (or any file leaving the OS or app unstable) then I guess it's good. But I'm not sure it's worth the cost, i guess that's a matter of opinion. Ok so supporting parallelism at an OS level is an odd balancing act, between trying to do it at the OS level and exposing cores to the app level. Sony's PS3 has probably the simplest idea, which is 1 cell core for the system processes and 6 cores up to the application to manage, but the PS3 has a limited set of programs it runs at once, Vista has at my count 78 running processes (including backup, excel, task manager and opera atm, with trillian, the NCsoft launcher, AlienFX for case lights, desktop icon manager (DIM), my palm pilot software and logitech mouse drivers), can't it load balance some of that crap around between cores?

If you want to start thinking about the not too distant future then there is definately something to say which is XP64 vs Vista64. Basically nothing works on XP64, and it's a nightmare, less of a nightmare than it was, but still a nightmare, whereas Vista64 seems a dramatic (if incomplete) improvement. I'm not sure it's even reasonable to compare these OS's since hardware vendors basically ignored XP64 when it came to life, whereas they're kinda forced to pay attention to vista64. The transition to windows 7, vienna or whatever the hell it's called is going to be painful when it's 64 bit only.

I think vista FEELs slow because of a poor scheduling algorithm for tasks getting control of the system and having a transactional file system. One of those things is fixable with a patch, one not, and the one that isn't fixable is probably not a bad idea, it's just an expensive one performance wise. That's a painful tradeoff between performance and reliablity, but most of us who've had to manage servers with virtualization and mission critical data understand the tradeoff all too well, as time goes on and the desktop PC begins to incorporate more and more of the HPC world of parallel machines with complicated interconnections and the database space of storing critical data (and while it may not seem like it is critical, no one wants to lose the last 5 years of pictures because of a bad file copy algorithm), it's going to slow the OS down. Autosave is a good example of this sort of tradeoff in the application world, and while the benefits are more obvious I'm not sure that a transactional file system is a bad thing really.

The other serious criticisms of (aside from file copy and game performance and general scheduling) such as too many versions, PIT