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PC World Tests Final Version of Vista SP1
Mac writes "PC World ran the final version of Windows Vista SP1 through a first set of tests last night. Here's the bottom line: 'File copying, one of the main performance-related complaints from Vista users, was significantly faster. But other tests showed little improvement and, in two tests, our experience was actually a little better without the service pack installed than with it.'"
I'd love to see em get Vista in proper order, but damn it... All this wasted effort is damn funny... Slopping more junk isn't the answer... Maybe one of these service packs should start stripping away all the excess code. I mean c'mon, 27 minutes to install a collection of bug fixes? 3 reboots? Jesus... and that was on quad 6600. Ouch.
It should also be noted however he was testing the file transfer with a SD card, I would assume they behave similar to your standard USB flash drive and is generally either optimized for speedily transferring large files, or small files but rarely both...
One would think copying a Blue-Ray disc image across 2 hard drives would be more appropriate? Or at least using a standardized mix set of data, both files large and small. Word documents, mp3 files, disc images... But wait this is PC World... Not exactly at the forefront of reliable and unbiased testing...
I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask where they're goin' and hook up with 'em later.
Exactly.
I mean, the slow copying speed when copying LARGE amounts of data sucks, but the WORST part of Vista is the slow copying speed when copying/moving small files. I mean, moving a file to the Recycle Bin takes 2 seconds! Copying a shortcut from one folder to another on the same drive takes 2 seconds! Those things should happen instantly, and DID happen instantly on XP, and every version of Windows before that.
That's where the performance problems really piss people off. A %9 improvement doesn't do squat.
His single file copy test was a bunch of files from a flash drive. He copied them three times before SP1, and three times after. He then reports average times, but no reporting of variation. That's not exactly serious benchmarking now is it.
To be fair to PC World they do say that this is informal and preliminary and they will publish comprehensive results in due course. My criticism is that this makes front page of Slashdot (the reason of course is that it's somewhat critical of Vista and therefore of course is great news here in anti-MS FUD world).
It astonished me that stories about Mark Russinovich's blog post on Vista file copying (including changes implemented for SP1 after customer feedback) were rejected.
It strikes me as feeble that the Slashdot crowd all scream FUD! whenever MS are guilty of it (frequently), but then commit the same sin themselves in the other direction.
And the other thing that hacks me off is that this post will no doubt be modded flamebait or troll which means worse karma (got none anyhow) and therefore no voice. It's an interesting effect of the Slashdot moderation scheme that any criticism of Slashdot is suppressed. Free speech doesn't flourish here (unless you follow the herd!)
So, in reading that article, vista was slower primarily because they stopped using cached I/O. The explanation seems to be that file copies weren't actually any faster in XP they just *LOOKED* faster because they closed the copy dialog before the copy was actually completed (IE, the dialog closes when the file is completely read from the source, not when it is completely written to the destination).
In Vista they changed this so the dialog actually closed when the copy was complete, but now in SP1 they have gone back to the previous setup.
Why bother with Cygwin when you can get that environment without all the Microsoft crap?
I know you're kidding around, but there is some truth to this. On fresh installs, many former Windows 2000 users would routinely disable the extra services and eyecandy that were so prominent in XP, trying in vain to negate the loss in performance that came with the move to the newer Microsoft OS.
On most hardware, the older Windows 2000 had a huge performance advantage over its newer cousin--tirelessly proved out in benchmark after benchmark--that never actually went away until...ever. Microsoft just stopped supporting the older OS without special contracts, and people just sort of stopped using Windows 2000 in general. And so XP became the new performance baseline.
> On most hardware, the older Windows 2000 had a huge performance advantage over its newer cousin
I completely agree. Even compared to Windows NT 4, 2000 never looked bloated. But that is where my praise ends: it might be small, but it was still difficult to use in a lot of places. Windows XP did actually improve the usability quite a bit, although style wise it was a mixed blessing. And since SP2 there is no comparison: XP is just a lot more secure.
I think those are the main reasons that 2000 died out without much notice. On 64MB of RAM, it might have the edge, but you can by 1GB for $30 now. And Windows XP works just fine on any computer less than 5 years old. I don't see the same thing happening with Vista any time soon.
How is this possible?
The best sales pitch for SP1 is that it COPIES FILES FASTER? Which is still probably slower than it was with XP, thus making it a non-improvement?
Ridiculous.