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Is Windows 7 Faster Or Just Smarter?
Barence writes "The Windows 7 unveiling garnered largely positive coverage, with many hands-on testers praising it for being faster than Vista. But is it actually? To find out, this blogger ran a suite of benchmarks to see just how much quicker Windows 7 really is — and the results weren't quite what he expected. 'The actual performance gap between Vista and Windows 7 is ... nada. Absolutely nothing. Our Office benchmarks and video encoding tests complete in precisely the same time regardless of which OS is installed. [...] It's tempting to see this as a bit of a con. They've sped up the front end so it feels like you're getting more done, but in terms of real productivity it's no better than Vista."
Is Windows 7 Faster Or Just Smarter?
I don't like either of those options, how about "just more of the same Microsoft software?"
I understand the article points out that they went with simply a "more responsive interface" paradigm (Web 2.0/AJAX, anyone?) and probably didn't really fix any serious problems. But at the same time this headline reeks of either marketing or hilarious lawyer type questions. Examples:
My work here is dung.
The productivity would actually increase if the front end speed increased since it would allow the user to interact faster etc. The other tests such as encoding etc are really CPU and application dependent and not very much OS dependent, so it's not really a fair test.
To quote the pointy haired boss "Work smarter not harder".
Personally I'll stick with Homer Simpson's motto: "If something is hard to do, then it is not worth doing." Which is my rule regarding installing new Microsoft Operating Systems.
Just to throw out one more gem; "If it isn't broken it doesn't have enough features yet." Which seems to be Microsoft's golden rule.
The Long Now Foundation
Video encoding is a terrible metric for "productivity" since it's something the computer can do on it's on while you go get tea. It's pretty much CPU and memory bound. The underlying OS shouldn't be doing anything but getting out of the way.
But UI "tricks" are an improvement. If find it easier to start your video encoder, or can do other resource-light things while the video encoder is running at a small cost to the actual encoding speed, then you're making better use of your meat co-processor. Which really is a "productivity" gain.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I really wouldn't expect significantly different scores for something like an office suite or media encoding. Once the OS gives the process all the memory and CPU time it needs, that's basically it. Maybe for games where there could be significant differences in the DirectX flow, but not in general.
But as the article notes, throughput isn't everything. The "up front" speed and how long it takes for a button push to result in action is equally important if not more so. The responsiveness of applications is something an OS can have a significant impact on, and is probably the most important thing for making the computer -feel- fast, and thus giving a better user experience. Hell I've long considered responsiveness to be justification enough for dual-core processors even when a user isn't multi-tasking or running multi-threading apps. So if it's a good enough reason to get a whole second core, it's a good enough reason for an OS upgrade.
It does sound kinda cagey that they're making this one of the main reasons to get 7, rather than improving Vista. But whatever, it's all academic to me.
The enemies of Democracy are
They don't define "faster" to include the response time of the interface.
But most users DO include the interface response time in their opinion of which is "faster".
I think Microsoft made a big mistake with the "fade in" menus. Just turning them off gives the user the impression that you've made their machine "faster". Even though email works at the same speed as before. As does Word. As do their games.
I'm no fan of Windows. But improving UI responsiveness, does greatly improve user throughput when using a system - partly because the user can do what they need to do more quickly, but also because there are fewer jarring moments where you are brought out of the process of creation to have to wait on the computer to finish something. These small interruptions can add up to a big loss of focus over a day.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I dunno about most of you, but I do consider a nippier interface to be an improvement in productivity. For the vast majority of Windows users, the thing they want to see improved is those moments lost "when they click a button and nothing seems to happen", as the article author puts it. That is time that has been taken from me. If I get those moments back, and the performance of the trivial CPU tasks involved in actually reading and writing files are kept the same, then yes, my productivity has improved.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
So let me get this straight: Windows 7 is only faster than Vista. It doesn't manage to also make third party programs written for Vista magically faster as well.
For the average user, a lot of time is wasted waiting for the UI, or being afraid or unable to do other tasks while something "heavy" is going on (like reading email, surfing, etc.).
If the system still has the same horsepower, but I'm better able to actually multi-task without slogging through a molasses interface, then it's a huge improvement.
It's just not worth trying to type an email sometimes when it takes 6 seconds to update the UI after each keypress... maybe doing so will slow down your build in the background, but only marginally compared to the time wasted if you can't do anything at all during that time.
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
They've sped up the front end so it feels like you're getting more done, but in terms of real productivity it's no better than Vista
I take exception to this. Obviously, if the video encoding tests were written well, there will be little speedup. But if a window environment "feels" faster, you actually DO get more done. There is less frustration in waiting, and you can generally multi-task much easier.
There was recently a discussion of a faster X server. Frankly, I get plenty done on the old "slow" X server, but if one feels faster, it will actually eliminate a lot of brainpower consumed by waiting on a context switch.
There was recently a discussion on a faster Linux boot-up, which preloaded your configuration as you're typing your password, and had lots of other fast features... But that doesn't actually speed up Linux, in terms of encoding video. It just makes it "feel" faster.
I like OSS, but I see lots of bad tags being made. Unfair comparisons are simply unfair comparisons. You can't hail a nice feature in one OS, and discount exactly the same feature on a different OS. Without being hypocritical, anyway.
At this point it probably IS Vista!
Do you think Microsoft re-writes the OS from scratch every time? No, they just incrementally change the previous version, and this happens slowly over the course of development. Since 7 is still a year or so away at this point they're just showing you mostly user interface changes with little or no changes to the core underlying os. By the time it releases there will probably be some significant changes, but right now I suspect you're mostly looking at a UI demo running on top of plain old Vista.
I keep seeing posts like "I tried out Windows 7 and it looks like all my software is 100% compatible and runs great!". Well duh, since it's the same OS you're running now.
Wait six months or so before passing judgement on this thing.
G.
Okay here is the big question.
Do many users need a faster PC?
On a clean Windows box when are you waiting on the computer?
I am not talking about games, scientist, or people using CAD/CAM.
I am talking about the average user?
Now when you are waiting how often is it an IO bottle neck?
Waiting for a program to start, waiting for a file to download or some other function like that.
The real answer is that for the most part PCs are quick enough.
Video encoding isn't something that the average users does yet. It will be in the future but right now not so much.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
What is this knucklehead smoking?
Yeah, the signal it sends is that you're a blithering idiot, a chump, and an easy mark. What a jackass...
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Improving the front end is overdue and welcome.
Under Windows 2000/XP (have not touched Vista yet) I have often wondered why the Windows Explorer takes ages to show a directory, even if the actual content at the displayed directory level is only a few dozen elements. Maybe it scans all subdirectories for whatever arcane reason?
I strongly suspect there is a lot that can be optimized there, and if Windows 7 finally got around to it, this would be a good thing.
C - the footgun of programming languages
If the UI is now snappier and more responsive so that the user feels more happy with his user experience, isn't that still good progress even if in reality the speedup is only subjective? Everything that makes the user more content using the product is good, right?
Of course a snappy UI is a huge deal. Users spend a lot of time navigating before they actually run anything. And, keeping the UI snappy even when the CPU is under heavy load is an especially important user experience requirement.
There's nothing illegitimate or sneaky about optimizing the hardware to better serve the user.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
was much work really needed when consumer computers are quickly becoming powerful enough to actually run vista smoothly?
We can thank Nicholas Negroponte for this. His One Laptop Per Child project inspired the mainstream PC industry to develop similarly low-powered, low-priced subnotebook computers called "netbooks". Windows XP and Ubuntu run better than Windows Vista on the small CPU and small RAM of these computers.
That would cut MS any kind of slack. I hate their ugly guts (and boy, all guts are ugly, but theirs...: just imagine winnt's kernel code).
That being said, if the thing is faster in the iface, its a faster experience and that is that.
Those are seconds saved.
Its just stupid to hit them for doing something better, especially if you see what they are coming from: i mean, it cant be that hard to make something feel better than, for christ sakes, VISTA.
NO SIG
I despise Microsoft, and I doubt the conclusions from the article will change, but lets let them get it past BETA before we burn them as witches.
-- I really need to bleed off some of this
One of the problems with Vista was hardware upgrades. Every new cycle of Windows requires some hardware upgrades for the new version. Unfortunately for MS, the 5 year gap between XP and Vista hurt them. Combined with MS not defining the real requirements of Vista meant that most people trying to upgrade their 5 year old machine would end up in disaster.
These are MS recommended hardware for Vista Ultimate/Business:
Compared to XP Pro requirements:
Now both requirements are really inadequate to use the OS fully. The difference is with only 3 years between 98/XP, it was easy for users to upgrade their CPU, motherboards, video cards without much infrastructure changes. For the 98/XP upgrade it was only 3 years and most users only needed more RAM. If users did require hardware upgrades (CPU, video card), these were readily available. Need a faster Pentium/Athlon in 2001? Go down to BestBuy. The 5 year gap between XP and Vista meant that some hardware upgrades were not easy or even possible. Need a faster Pentium/Athlon in 2007? They don't make them anymore. Ebay is your only real source and even if you upgrade to the fastest one, your system will be slow.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The lipstick on a pig aphorism comes to mind.
W7 is the Vista that Vista could have been. But that may be damning with faint praise.
The sheer obesity of Vista could easily have been improved upon. Somewhere, there is a coder army taking instructions from an idiot. They need to find that idiot and fire that person. Even Gates was better at direction.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Can someone tell me why Slashdot's tags overlap with the summary? I mean do the site maintainers even check their work on more than 1 web browser? It's pretty annoying trying to read the last few sentences of the summary only to have it overlapped with tags. Also what is this metric-fuck-ton of javascript that has started plaguing the front page. I thought this was a news blog not the forefront of web 3.0. Between those 2 fuck ups, Flash ads, and that stupid survey popup, and these new slew of pointless articles (Stupid useless VIM tricks? c'mon) this site is quickly going into the shitty and not even because of comments. Fix your shit slashdot. Please
If they've sped up the front end consistently, then I would be very happy.
My primary complaint with Vista is how long UI operations take. Opening windows, dragging them around, launching applications etc. all seem to take place in something approximating geologic time.
Once I have a high-performance app open (say a game), the game itself runs pretty quickly. It's the getting there that's a problem.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
The specs you casually throw out are just astounding.
Granted I don't try to run it on crap systems
To use Dell as the brand, you mean I can't run it on a Dimension/Vostro?? I've GOT to spec Precision boxes?
with less than 2GB of RAM, either.
Granted 64-bit is *the* future, WTF is consuming all those resources? I'd guess it's some DRM/crypto nightmare, but I don't know.
Although my 7 test box only has 1GB of RAM.
Only? I've got a Thinkpad T42 running Debian Lenny and KDE4 will ALL of the eye candy on 512MB RAM with no problems. Disclaimer: 1/2 my mobile work is telnet/serial interface, so my productivity gains are faster CLI-fu and good systems topography.
All of this is to conclusively state that something is seriously wrong at Microsoft when a machine is a dog with only 1GB RAM.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
The reason Windows 7 is getting good reviews is because Microsoft is bribing reviewers with free high-end laptops. If a software company handed you a $2,000 computer, wouldn't you have a few nice things to say about the operating system preloaded on it?
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(w/64 Megs of RAM)
Well there's your problem. I haven't had a computer with 64 MB of RAM since the mid-90s. My phone has 2 GB!
(kidding, of course, I know that post and was hoping that would show up in this thread. However, if you're going to update it for the context, go the full monty!)
The CB App. What's your 20?
As is the way with MS , they update all the eye candy first to get the drooling masses interested , then they get down to the core stuff where it really matters later on - ie the exact opposite way round to the way it should be done.
This is why Linux fails as an alternative. Sure it runs great under the hood but the GUIs are to intrusive for the novice computer user to learn.
There is a reason Windows sells well. The interface is easily learned by the masses.
So ... the Better than Average Edition is the basic edition, right?
It's like the popcorn sizes in the movies. Now they're called large, extra large and super size. Funny enough, they're just the same size the old small, medium and large sizes. Only the price changed.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
They'd fix Windows so it didn't need a reboot after every freakin' update. Even if you have a fast boot time (which Windows does not even come close to either) it still leaves workers twiddling their thumbs while it does it's thang. It makes it even more insulting when you keep getting the annoying reminders which eventually have the "reboot later" option greyed out, giving you no choice but to stop what you're doing for a few minutes. Even then, what happens if that latest "critical update to IE" breaks a driver and your system won't boot?
...especialy when the bloggers comparison of OS performance is based on a video encoding benchmark. I'm suprised that I havent seen anyone call this bloger a clown yet. You shouldn't be allowed to publish benchmark results if you rode to school on the short bus, even if you happened to be the smartest kid on it.
"His name was James Damore."