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."

Comments

Trick Question

[eldavojohn]

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:

• "Yes or no, has Steve Balmer stopped beating his wife?"
• "Is Linux Just Awesome or Totally Awesome?"
• "If I were to tell you the fact that Windows 7 developers dine on human flesh at their desks to start each day anew, how would you react?"
• "How can you afford not to use Linux?"
• "Is Internet Explorer 7 slower or just less secure?"

Productivity

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Productivity

[gnick]

Exactly what I was thinking - For most Windows users, the user is a major bottle-neck. By simply responding more quickly to them and allowing them some time to react (even if the system isn't fully ready to react to their next input), you can certainly improve performance. While there are a lot of users that do care about encoding time and Office benchmarks, most users just want IE and Outlook to let them start typing quickly so that they can forward on the latest news regarding Bill Gates paying people for testing their new e-mail system or letting their voice be heard by voting on "Am I Hot or Not?"

Bad benchmarks for productivity.

[zippthorne]

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.

Worse than that.

[khasim]

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.

Re:Worse than that.

[MBGMorden]

But most users DO include the interface response time in their opinion of which is "faster"

Indeed, and that's a pet peeve I have with Linux. I use Linux - a lot. Heavily on servers at work (but generally CLI only there), and then at home I have a Linux Mint desktop that I use in addition to my Mac and Windows systems.

I love the concept of OSS, and for someone who when they were growing up saw a compiler as something that cost hundreds of dollars, the whole concept of having such a nice development environment is just amazing.

That said, while actually going from point A to point B probably isn't any slower, the interface just makes the system feel draggy. All the little pauses and and graphical oddities when moving a window around just take their toll, but the actual OS is fine (as obvious when I try to do something like say, compress video or something, where the Linux system holds it's own quite nicely).

Hopefully Wayland will take off and help in that regard. Mac OS X has shown what a slick, responsive UI can do for a Unix-like backend. It just sucks that it's tied down to only a subset of available hardware.

Re:Worse than that.

[mR.bRiGhTsId3]

Realistically though, how could a change in operating system really affect the speed of video encoding, unless the process scheduler is absolutely abysmal (which I'd think it wouldn't be by this point). Since the tasks listed aren't part of vista. As someone who isn't flabbergasted by the concept that a CPU can't crunch numbers faster than itself, this isn't particularly interesting. It just shows that the Windows team is actually optimizing the important parts of the system they have control over.

Re:Worse than that.

[chazd1]

Having worked in marketing and well as puely technical roles it is clear as a bell what is going on here.

When new product uptake isn't up to projections the marketing dept. has a few options. One of the options in its arsenal is to "relaunch". Windows 7 is clearly a "relaunch" of Vista. With all the development time and Money put into Vista don't think for a second that they can develop yet another code base in a fraction of the time. It is the same product with a different name.

Relaunches are used when there is a perceived problem in the marketplace and the engineering dept.says the product is sound.

Faster interface = improved productivity

[Sockatume]

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.

A Con!

[CopaceticOpus]

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.

If it feels faster, you're getting more done

[bugnuts]

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.