Slashdot Mirror
Windows 7 Benchmarks Show Little Improvement On Vista
snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Randall Kennedy examines Windows 7 from the kernel up, subjecting the 'pre-beta' to a battery of benchmarks to find any signs that the OS will be faster, more responsive, and less resource-intensive than the bloated Vista, as Microsoft suggests. Identical thread counts at the kernel level suggest to Kennedy that Windows 7 is a 'minor point-type of release, as opposed to a major update or rewrite.' Memory footprint for the kernel proved eerily similar to that of Vista as well. 'In fact, as I worked my way through the process lists of the two operating systems, I was struck by the extent of the similarities,' Kennedy writes, before discussing the results of a nine-way workload test scenario he performed on Windows 7 — the same scenario that showed Vista was 40 percent slower than Windows XP. 'In a nutshell, Windows 7 M3 is a virtual twin of Vista when it comes to performance,' Kennedy concludes. 'In other words, Microsoft's follow-up to its most unpopular OS release since Windows Me threatens to deliver zero measurable performance benefits while introducing new and potentially crippling compatibility issues.'"
it still kicks linux's ass
not only is it a dupe, but the original article is still on the front page. Way to go.
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/10/1522246
Friends don't let Friends use Internet Explorer.
"zero measurable performance benefits"
Yes, because things like improved startup time, increased battery life etc are not measurable right?
"Windows 7 is a 'minor point-type of release, as opposed to a major update or rewrite"
And when did Microsoft claim otherwise? The whole point of Windows 7 has been that its built on the Vista SP1 (Server 2008) codebase and they are NOT trying to change too much. Which brings us neatly to...
"introducing new and potentially crippling compatibility issues"
Read above. They didn't change any of the basics so that there would be no incompatibilities (like those caused by a new driver model).
Of course, these articles purposely ignore all the UI and usability improvements the very same mags covered earlier, which make a very visible difference in daily use.
Windows 7 is just a rehash of a just released OS, and this article is a rehash of a just released article. There's so much synchronicity, Sting is singing in the background.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
introducing new and potentially crippling compatibility issues
not to mention new flavors of DRM and many new proprietary protocols and formats.
The largest prime factor of my UID is 263267.
What exactly is this article trying to prove?
Microsoft themselves have said that Windows 7 will ship will the same underlying infrastructure as Windows Vista. They also said that Windows Vista was the biggest kernel rewrite since Windows 2000.
The interesting thing about a lot of Vista's bloat is that it isn't kernel level. We know this since we can compare Windows 2003 and Vista. Windows 2003 has almost identical program startup times to Windows XP/2000.
I do think that Windows 7 is going in a disappointing direction in general. They seem to be playing right into what I like to call the "Apple Trap." Instead of doing what Microsoft do best which is to produce a workhorse they instead try and play the designer, and want to make a work of art.
I have no problems with benchmarking the O/S and commenting on performance and the like, but when the person that analyzes and presents these results says: "the process lists are similar" I'm forced to wonder what the guy is smoking. OK, so you have have smss.exe, csrss.exe, winlogon.exe, a bunch of svchost.exe processes. That really says nothing about the underlying architecture of the operating system and the amount of differences that are there. This guy might as well have said "I looked at Word '97 and Word 2007 and they're both named 'winword.exe' and let you edit text. I'm struck by those similarities!" Anyone expecting Windows 7 to be a radical departure from Windows Vista is delusional, all the more so if that expectation involved vastly different process lists. Also, this guy compares the video encoding performance of Vista and Windows 7 and says there's no performance improvements... That has got to the dumbest thing I have ever heard. Seriously. It might very well be that Windows 7 is as slow as Vista. Maybe it's even slower. But you will never know that by comparing how long video encoding takes on each of them. Video encoding is a CPU-bound process, so nothing Windows 7 does can improve the video encoding performance of any machine because it cannot just magically improve your CPUs clock speed. All other things being equal, any gains from encoding german scheisse porn on Windows 7 over doing so on Windows Vista are going to be negligible at best.
*cofff* Ubuntu 8.10 *cofff*
So we're skipping this one as well?
One of the biggest PR failures of Vista was serious compatability issues with old software and hardware. (I'm going to blame the soft/hardware makers for this. Everyone had 5 years to collect an arsenal of XP gear so I don't think they cried themselves to sleep that we had to buy new Vista Compatible printers just because they couldn't be bothered fixing the drivers.) MS have decided to base Win7 almost entirely around the existing Vista kernel to avoid this, hence the identical performance. "[I]ntroducing new and potentially crippling compatibility issues" would be more likely if MS had decided to chase performance improvements in Win7, unless they based Win7 around the old XP kernel (which ain't happening in their new one-kernel-to-rule-them-all approach).
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I thought that Vista was a major re-write because of the new secutiry model. If that is the case, would it be reasonable to do another "major re-write" just a couple of years later? People might want to look into TinyXP project to see how much improvement can be made to a standard installation before demanding major re-writes.
Nothing new. Damn, I expected a better performance on Windows 7, but I see i will need to change to Linux when XP support gone out.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
Maybe they've decided to finally release that Windows Mojave I've heard so many good things about!
Did any of you readers actually expect MS to create a new OS in such a short (for MS) period of time, that wouldn't be a copy of it's predecessor?
I know you all think it, and I know you've all said it but here it goes: Vista is shit, even shit would be insulted when being compared to Vista, and what goes for Windows 7 (aka Vista SP "insert number") will be as shitty as Vista. This is natural, there's only so much one can create from shit.
I am the lawn!
I don't even think the slashdot staff read the frontpage anymore. There's story dupes constantly now! I mean is it too much to ask that they take 10 minutes to skim the stories on the front two or three pages since they last posted a story?
Some facts:
- Vista is barely slower than XP on hardware bought within the last 2 years. It was fairly slower on RTM for many reasons, but vastly improved drivers & some colossal patches have put that to bed now.
- Vista in fact speeds up some operations over XP by pre-caching commonly used stuff. This uses more memory, and is often confused for being "bloated" by actually using the memory that you blessed your computer with being able to use, for what in fact it was designed for - speed increase.
- Windows 7 is taking Vista and putting it on a diet while not fundamentally changing the architecture. If it works on Vista it'll work on W7. That's a stated design goal.
Thus, for performance: Expect Windows 7 to be more responsive to user-input, work on lower-ended machines, start up quicker, etc. Don't expect: CPU intensive apps (games for example) to suddenly speed up 50%; memory intensive apps to use any less memory. They won't - Windows 7 is an operating system, not an overclockers kit.
throw new NoSignatureException();
So, they are essentially releasing Vista SP1 as "windos 7", right?
Given the development time, that shouldn't really come as a surprise to anyone. What did you expect? A total rewrite-from-scratch?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Performance is mostly determined by the program code and hardware latencies. The few things that the OS does have been tweaked and optimized for so long that any noticeable throughput increase would be a miracle. The aspect which can still see some improvement, latency, is not tested by the typical benchmarks. Another kind of improvement is to make the system just as fast but less "optimized", in other words, achieve the same performance with a clearer, more maintainable architecture. If Microsoft can deliver on these aspects, then Windows 7 does not need to be faster to be better. If.
I read rumors about a minimal kernel to be used in the next Windows version. Will 7 skip it?
this article is full of shit. how did it make it to slashdot? oh wait..^^
An improvement could be a reduced number of versions in which it will come. How many versions MS will try to sell this time?
Come on guys, its a pre-beta! We all know that Windows 7 is going to be a refined version of Vista, did you really expect them to actually do any thing significant so far? I'm guessing that the performance will only start to improve by the 2nd beta, when all the new features are implemented and they have fixed all the major bugs. Right now, it's little more than Vista with minor tweaks to the UI.
Most human behaviour can be explained in terms of identity.
Please just stop following every step of "Windows 7" which will probably not be out for years, despite anything Microsoft says.
The only thing those reports generate is the hype Microsofts wants around their unreleased OS to keep up hope in people dissatisfied by Vista. Yeah, this time it's all going to be better...sure.
Windows 7 is not special and it's not worth reporting every tidbit unless there's actually a product or a set-in-stone feature list.
What are we benchmarking, exactly? And how can I verify it?
I view all these pre-release type benchmarks as so much aerial masturbation. It's just nothing.
expandfairuse.org
The current release isn't a release candidate. It's not a beta. It's a PRE-beta. Microsoft have about at least 10 more months until they call Windows 7 done.
Steven Sinofsky specifically said in his PDC 2008 keynote: "please don't consider this build suitable for benchmarks", but does anyone listen? Nah, let's run the benchmarks! :)
If it works on Vista it'll work on W7.
So, in essence, Windows 7 represents a significant name change from Vista.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
how a closed system like Windows gets truly benchmarked anyhow. its like having a car with a hood that doesnt open, but seems to go quite a bit faster than your old car.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Okay, this has bothered me for over a decade.
What makes anyone think that the next release of an OS is going to be faster? It's not going to be. I don't care who developed it, either, whether it be the giant of Redmond, the hipster of Cupertino, or a bunch of unwashed shut-ins writing lines of code in their moms' basements. Every iteration of an OS is actually going to be slower, and that is just a consequence of it doing more.
The only real question, then, is if the balance between the added functionality and the slowdown is coming down enough on the functionality side to stop people from getting pissed off. For XP, the balance was nice. For Vista, it's not. For Tiger, it was. For Leopard, I guess it's not for some people (but it is for me). Linux doesn't do anything regardless of distro or update, so it's kind of hard to talk about.
The point of the story is this: I don't actually care if something doesn't run that fast, because I'll probably replace my hardware before that OS runs its course, and it'll work great on the next kit. All I really care about is if it runs well enough to enjoy the added benefits of that extra code.
The change? sed -e 's/Vista/7/g'
Hey, 7 is shorter than Vista. It must be lighter, right?
"Don't expect: CPU intensive apps (games for example) to suddenly speed up 50%;"
Indeed , 50% is absurd. But they might speed up 5% or so depending on whether the process schedular and memory management have had a rewrite. For a machine with a lot of processes running and an app using a lot of memory those page and cache miss percentage can make a noticable difference as well as how intellgently the OS swaps in and out processes of varying priorities.
This and the previous /. article link to reports from people who have tested the pre-beta. The results seem pretty clear:
1) The GUI feels more responsive.
2) The memory consumption is pretty much the same.
3) Benchmark tests show little to no difference.
So Windows 7 will probably be more fun to work with, but based on 2) and 3) you should not expect it to work on lower-ended machines compared to Vista. Overall, it looks like some GUI improvements and not much else.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Microsoft's obsession with backward compatibility is killing it.
For home and gaming, they need to keep XP and disable it from being used in a business network... let that horse run as far as it can.
For business and other work, they need to write a brand new kernel and everything and start over learning from all previous mistakes and discarding backward compatibility... natively. Then build a VM compatibility layer with the intent that people will use it in the process of weaning themselves from Win32 and all that backward compatibility and supporting broken applications nonsense.
Been saying this for a long time and will keep saying it. I said this before Mac OS X was announced. Apple, it would seem, had the same idea and it is working VERY well for them. The compatibility VM sucked bad which actually prompted people to upgrade their apps even faster. And no one stopped using Apple over it. And no one stopped developing software for Apple computers over it. It was a burden on users and developers to make that change, but in the end it was the best move.
Microsoft is another story. When you are in control of everything, that is precisely what you stand to lose. But ultimately, I see things are coming to a head and Apple sees it too. No matter what Microsoft does, they will lose. They need to make plans to limit their loses and plan for the future -- not just two years of profit forecasting.
The very interesting thing about OS X 10.5 (Leopard) boot process is: It does nothing in order. It is parallel booting, firing all OS startup stuff at once and expects to do their jobs. That happens thanks to launchd architecture which I have no clue why not adopted by Linux or *BSD.
Here is its presentation by the inventor of launchd
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1781045834610400422
(in 8:00")
That is one of underrated features/changes of Leopard. Now the term "photocopy" comes from this: They do something like launchd without using the underlying Unix logic and architecture. So, there is a huge chance that it won't be scaled. I have really lost count of how many kernel extensions, startup items, daemons running on my Leopard but it boots exactly same speed as it was cleanly installed for first time. Just like I really don't care about 1000+ .plist (pref) files on my user directory.
They named it "parallel booting" or something, some story about it on http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9119230&intsrc=hm_list
Well lets look at history. ... well I think we all know what we think of vista. But generally we would have thought you would need a better computer to run vista. Its just all the bugs.
Wind 98 needed more powerful Computer to run it after windows 95
windows xp needed more a powerful Computer to run it after windows 98
Vista
So now if Windows 7 Has more features, is stable and as bug free as any version of windows can be, and offers the same performance as vista.
It might actually have good perfomance when running on a low end machine at the time of its release.
An editor is one who separates the wheat from the chaff and prints the chaff. -- Adlai Stevenson
...you just wait until you buy it, you'll get a microsoft employee jump out at you from behind the counter, after you hand over your money, and go
"SURPRISE!! We fooled you! You actually thought you where getting a new OS!.. HA! You're just paying for Vista and very expensive plastic packaging"
If it is only minor improvements, then why is it not a service pack, or like 95 and 98 SE versions?
Why do you feel these small chances are worth another full price release?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
My facial expression shows little surprise.
In the spoon, there is no Soviet Russia!
I recently tried Vista (for the second time) because so many monkeys like you keep telling us Vista is much, much better now.
What a bunch of hooey. Vista still makes my (pretty nice) laptop run like a dog. From slow video, to audio stuttering, to far too much hard drive thrashing, to disappointing program startup times...hell, sometimes I can't even track my mouse across the screen without it pausing half way while Vista does God knows what.
And yes, my laptop is "Vista compatible", and yes, I had all the correct drivers installed for my hardware.
I went back to XP (again) and the performance is so much improved, it's like getting a new computer.
Sorry, buddy, but Vista still sucks, despite your claims otherwise. And if Windows 7 is more of the same, I'm going to have to tell Microsoft, "Thanks, but no thanks."
Who cares if it's a few percent slower?
Computers are getting faster MUCH MUCH more quickly than operating systems are getting slower. I did a degree in computer science 10 years ago using a computer which had less RAM and Mhz than my *phone* does now! I was running Windows 98, which is much slower than Vista, but guess what - my Vista machine is still about 16 times faster than my old Windows 98 machine and it has 32 times more memory. I'm certainly not complaining.
I don't really see why it's a problem if any given operating system is 3 or 4% slower than the previous version. Do you really want to go back to using Windows 3.1 just because it's slightly faster? I sure as hell don't.
That is a joke or what? Come back at the later stages of composition, when you have some real experience.
In case you want to listen, I'll tell you what'll happen. Word featureset becomes absolutely irrelevant after all its bugs start appearing and bitting you. Open Office, while less featurefull is functional, so you'll experience the same productivity from the beggining to the end of the composition.
Anyway, both are bad. If you really care about your productivity, you should learn some good document editing software, like LaTeX, for example.
Rethinking email
Come on guys... just install OS X or Ubuntu. Windows 7 is more AIDS riddled crap that not will only continue to crash but will also take everything down with it when it does. What's the point of supporting an OS whose only advantage is gaming.
Forewarning: The same dinks that are going to talk Windows 7 down, before they have the slightest clue about it, will also use XP as their weapon of choice to chop Windows 7 down with. XP happens to be the same tool they bashed years ago when it was released. Now they need it to try and mak an argument? HAHA. The cycle never changes, it just starts again.
They only tested with up to 256, 512, and 1024 MB of RAM available for the OS and apps. Yes, Vista is much much slower than XP if you have 256, 512, or 1024 MB of RAM. If you look at results with 2 or 4 gigs of RAM, using identical systems for XP and Vista, things look a lot different. App speed is roughly on par (app loading is much faster in Vista), and system responsiveness is certainly higher under Vista for a system with 4 gigs of RAM.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
Pre-beta, development code is *as fast as the current production product*?!?!? ...and this is a BAD thing???
Are you guys high, stupid, or just plain retarded?
If this is what we have as a *PRE-BETA*, then by all rights, the final release should *really* blow Vista (and perhaps even XP) out of the water.
Lay off the crack, guys.
...how many people are going to see this way down here, but I'll post anyway.
I don't understand why people are expecting any performance gains in "Windows 7". They took Vista and added more eye-candy (though, to be honest, some of it looks rather interesting to me). Unless they change some of the base of the code (to lean it up), it's going to perform exactly as Vista does (as has been shown in all of the "speed tests" that have been performed to date).
bork bork bork!
...it's no surprise that they're trying it in RL.
Rename the product, make some minor changes in the UI, it worked so well for Windows Me.
His opinion based on personal perference doesn't make him anything. It does however make you an asshat and a douche for judging someone on what OS' they prefer.
Enjoy your completely exposed install of Linux if you're not running regularly update security software. The only reason Linux doesn't get Malware is because it isn't worth the author's time, not because it's magically immune
General acceptance: someday... (one can hope)
Well, as with several other stuff, it's just a matter of perspective.
If by general acceptance, you specifically restrict to PC compatible computers. Yes, there aren't many Linux installation around (well except if you work in a Linux-oriented shop, like research, academics, etc.) Just, like Intel has a quasi-monopoly on CPUs for these machines.
But if you extend your definition to the more broad concept of linux being executed on an electronic device, the situation is completely different : you'll suddenly realise that the Penguin is already everywhere. ... most brands of routers run Linux.
Just take DSL routers : there's currently one in almost each house here around. Linksys, D-Link, Netgear,
In several european country, DSL ISPs are even bundling own-branded "{name_of_ISP}-Box" routers for VoIP / IPTV and Internet running embed Linux.
Yes currently Mac OS X and Linux only account for less than 30% of the market share, leaving more than 70% Windows Box. But the 100% total of those are connected to the net using boxes which 99.9% of the time run Linux.
Same goes for lots of the Media box connected to your TV set. Unless you built your own Windows Media Center HTPC, chances are, you bought a ready-to-use box.
In the USA, that is most likely a TiVo. Which runs Linux. Here in Europe, you probably bought from MediaMarkt one of those countless dead-cheap miniITX-based "add your own harddisk" noname asian box. Which most probably runs Linux too.
Same in an enterprise : the desktops will be probably running XP. The servers could be running Server 2003. But the routers, the cheap RAID/NAT box, the noname small network-to-printer bridges, and lots of other small electronic gizmo are running some form of embed linux.
On the desktop, Linux is facing strong competition from Windows and Mac OS X. On the other hand, in the embed market Linux is only facing what is basically a big mess of hundreds of small ad-hoc firmwares, with no clear leader, and that lot of manufacturer are dumping in favor of Linux, simply because it offers them a much better, more coherent and easier to maintain platform to work with.
Currently if you want to build some network-enabled gadget, either you re-invent the wheel and built your own solution. Or you just slap Linux with some micro server on it.
Trolls are still waiting for "the year of the Linux Desktop". They just missed that "the year of the Linux gizmo" has already happened long before.
If you look at electronics at a whole, Linux is suddenly a much stronger leader.
Just as, if you look at electronics at a whole, the battle for CPU dominance has long ago been lost to ARM & MIPS.
(with a bunch of PICs occupying a significant place for an even broader definition of electronics)
--
Beside....
Finding drivers is usually pretty easy, especially for newer hardware. In Linux, you have two scenarios:
1. It Just Works (TM).
2. You have driver issues: in this case, you're better of having problems with older hardware that is more likely to be supported by some third party driver.
And in lots of distribution, its just a matter of adding a new repository with additional drivers.
With some distro like openSUSE, that's basically just clicking on a ".ymp" link at the end of the explanation page on their wiki, and everything (adding the repository, installing the packages, etc.) is handled automagically.
That's it. Info page -> Click -> Installed.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Who the heck is this Randall Kennedy guy? First, Windows 7 IS using the same kernel as Windows Vista. Why would he expect any differences here? Secondly, it's unfair to compare a pre-beta, debug build against a release build.
This guy shouldn't be writing technical articles when he's not qualified.
I wish I could be as unpopular as Vista. I think they have sold at least 10 billion dollars worth of them over the last two years.
I bet KDE wishes they could be as successful as Vista. What's the conversion rate between KDE 3 users and KDE 4 users? I'd bet that less of a percentage of KDE users have converted to KDE 4 than XP users have converted to Vista.
But... that's really the whole point of Linux, isn't it.
I bet Perl wishes they could be as successful as Vista. How's Perl 6 doing these days?
You could look at those and other examples of floundering FOSS projects and say that Linux has failed but you would be as wrong as can be. The great irony, of course is that the for all of its "socialist" trappings, Linux has more of the traits of a healthy free market eco-system than Vista does. Vista succeeds because its conversions are forced on one hand, but its a mono-culture and the entire thing either sinks or swim depending upon how much the mono-culture is accepted. Linux is made up of thousands of tiny pieces, and so, even if Perl 6 or KDE flounder, then, there's plenty of other people willing to take up the slack in other projects. Linux is like a free market economy because the whole system doesn't fail - just pieces of it, and that creative floundering and risk taking that it encourages drives its innovation. On the other hand, Vista has all the trappings of a socialist project - Microsoft leaders are writing blog articles suggesting that Microsoft has too much of an individual culture, everyone has to play as a team, and they really can't turn loose any of the individual Vista teams to pursue their own audiences because there is an artificial brake of Microsoft corporate hierarchy, politicized and fief building, all pushing developers down.
This is my sig.
Slashdot on an unfinished construction project: "One year after beginning the project, the construction company THREATENS to deliver a building that is unbearably cold and has CRIPPLING compatibility problems with my electronics." Slashdot on Obama: "Weeks after being elected the next President, Obama, the successor to the LEAST POPULAR PRESIDENT IN HISTORY, has failed to end the war in Iraq and fix the economy. He promised a new direction for the country but SO FAR things are EERILY similar to the Bush administration."
This hack is running benchmarks on a pre-alpha version of Windows 7 and you people are agreeing with his conclusions? I know you guys reach for straws when it comes to anything that makes Linux sound a bit better, but this is a new adventure in incompetence.
Microsoft is trying to maintain maximum backwards compatibility with Vista in order to avoid the nightmare that was Vista. Mucking around in the innards of the kernel is probably a good way to break hardware drivers. No, I think Microsoft is going to rely on processor improvements to increase the use-ability of Windows 7.
This isn't news, just shows how M$ can't compete with free software. M$ will continue down the same path of destruction as a former convicted monopolist dealing with non-free software such as Windoze, Offi$e, Xbox, play$ for $ure, and every other M$ failure. Adobe and every other non-free software will follow suit and the free software advocates will get the last laugh so tag on with "haha" on all M$ failures as well as all failures of non-free software supporters.
--
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk
Friends do assist M$ addicted friends in committing suicide.
Windows 7 is, in fact staggeringly fast and responsive. The testing that these people have done is just incredibly irrelevant. In Vista x64, it takes about 4 seconds to launch Firefox, on a clean install for me. In windows 7 Build 6801 for me, it is INSTANT. Same with every other application I have launched from Windows 7. This is not to mention the fantastic new taskbar and much improved and "cleaned" explorer, as well as the new tray and window management, which is extremely useful. I'm sick of the hate. This is a fantastic release.
Some of you hater blowhards clearly just don't know what you're talking about. OF COURSE Windows 7 will be faster than the current pre-beta. It's routine for betas to be compiled with extra debugging code and preliminary non-optimized routines. Every beta I've seen ends up improving in speed toward the end of the cycle, although in many cases the real optimizations aren't put into effect until just before the first release candidate. Just hang on for the ride a while longer, or if you just love to chuckle at Microsoft's perceived misfortunes, enjoy the most, but be prepared to eat a least a little crow by next year.
Of course Slashdot can't put out anti-Microsoft FUD fast enough... that's what this entire website was MADE for!
Win7 isn't even out yet, and already the FUDsters are going full-bore at the "ZOMG TEH WINDOZE 7 IS TEH FAILURE!!!11!! WinXP WUZ TEH BEST OS EVAR!!!11!!!11"
I still find it ironic how the exact same people who were here, on Slashdot, bashing Windows XP for years upon years, are now loudly proclaiming it to have been the gilded age of modern computing.
It's time to get rid of this incessant fudspreader and replace him with an African American moderator.
What say you, good men and women of /.?
Do you really think that counting threads and memory footprint will give you any sort of indication of a systems performance? So, whatever those threads are really doing is not useful information? By design Windows uses as much memory is available, as unused memory is of no value. A performance indication would be to measure how much actual pagin is there when physical memory is exhausted by running process. Counting used memory is worthless. And counting threads and processes? Come on! What sort of analysis is this? Even if it were based on the final product (instead of a pre beta version), this analysis doesn't tell absolutely nothing. Not that I would expect that Win7 uses fewer resources that Vista. It would be a great thing if, coming a few years later, it used the same level of resources (meaning it should be able to run in machines over five years old) but expecting it to consume fewer resources is delusional. Performance today has much less to do with resource usage than with responsiveness and proactivity anyway.
.
It may be a mere minor point release technically, but marketing-wise it is going to be a double jump in major version numbers.
Better computing through marketing.
but only on slashdot. It's like goats.ex or something but funnier because of what it says about M$.
It's funny to see the current M$ party line as, "incompetent IT people are going to install Vista so get used to it." Is that the best lie they can come up with? Wow! Shovel another $300 million into the PR pit.
I am a name troll of Westlake. Visit my homepage to learn why.
The article says "zero measurable performance benefits". "[L]ittle" implies there's some improvement somewhere. Microsoft may be doing a great job drumming up the buzz about Windows 7, but that doesn't mean we have to help them. Anyone who's actually paying attention to the details knows that Windows 7 is Windows Vista with a fresh coat of paint.
Hey, I'm the first to get on Microsoft about a poor product. I think the one thing they need to put in Windows 7 is a way to kill all the processes that run in the background. Something like a performance mode, that shuts down things like sidebar, media center, and indexing. I went through all of my vista services. After my inital install I was using 42% of memory. After I turned off or disabled a bunch of not needed services, i got it down to 26%. It works pretty good now. But what ends up happening is that all the "art" gets turned off. I could care less. I want performance, not pretty. If I wanted pretty, I'd use a Mac and get nothing done.
Let us not forget that XP was released in 2001! I certainly remember the same internet echo chamber of whining when XP came out that it was so slow compared to Windows 98 and shared all the same hardware issues and everyone is complaining about now with Vista.
Windows 7 will not be released for two - three years, I think the average slashdot user will have upgraded their computer a number of times before the release.
I agree with all of you that it was a poor marketing strategy for Microsoft to release a slower version of Windows but I find it hard to compare a brand new somewhat future proof (in hindsight, windows 7 is being rushed along to replace vista) operating system with an operating system that has had the luxury of being tested over and over again with thousands of driver updates over the past seven years! If Vista is too slow, upgrade your hardware and wait a year or two. In seven years, half of you will be whining about how Windows 8 is way too slow compared to your great seasoned Windows 7 runs. Step up with new hardware or quit whining and keep using XP.
Who reads articles? Looks. Oh yeah, these are independent studdies by different people who reach the same conclusions by different means. That's a good indicator of truth. If there was a fix for Visat, it would have come out in it's six years of development. If you want to be charitable and blame hardware vendors, it should work by now but it does not. Vista still requires extraordiary hardware for ordinary tasks. This is not going to be fixed because the idiots at M$ believe in DRM and owning your computer for data rape.
I am a name troll of Westlake. Visit my homepage to learn why.
Is Microsoft Finally going to DITCH the 32bit version of Windows?
Just to force everyone to make drivers for 64bit, so we can FINALLY have machines with enough RAM to run Windows itself?
Now, let's just benchmark this against Ubuntu 9.04 and Haiku OS- then we'll really know which direction this is taking.
It's really funny how they're complaining about how the alpha release is about the same speed as vista. Do you remember what the Vista alpha/betas were like?--
This release is for getting feedback on new features and giving developers a chance to start working with the new API's, specifically some of the "dock" and device related ones that will need work before the release. It has not been performance optimized yet!
I know that in opensource development, one of the beta versions is simply tagged the release, in that it's loosely bug tested, called an RC, then eventually called a Release- but in the grown-up software world, quite a bit of performance enhancement and optimizations go into the last legs of development.
This has not occurred yet. You do not have a released version.
Ubuntu 9.04 shows little improvement on 8.10. In the current state of the development, Windows 7 is Vista!
You're talking a guy who watches Mythbusters to ogle at the lovely sexy Kari with her red hair and vegetarianism.
And I listen to the Skeptics' guide to the Universe (http://www.theskepticsguide.org) to hear the voice of the sexy veggie hippie chick Rebecca.
What OS do you think I'm going to prefer? ;)
I wouldn't give too much weight to this article. First, this is by far a pre-release TEST version of a product that will undoubtedly go through many changes before the final release. But more importantly, unless your machine pretty closely matches the configuration he tested on, your results will perforce vary. (Which may mean your results could be better or worse.)
As James Kendrick over at JKontherun (http://www.jkontherun.com/2008/04/the-shortcoming.html) has said, "The reality is that there are too many factors in play on modern systems for raw power benchmarks to give an accurate indication of how well a given system can perform them. Today's complicated systems are affected by many factors, CPU power, hard disk speed, memory and HDD caches, graphics subsystems, total installed memory, operating system version, and internal components which all play a role in how well a system performs overall. Individual benchmarks don't reflect this in my opinion and this is why I don't publish them."
Kevin C. Tofel, also at JKontherun (http://www.jkontherun.com/2008/10/windows-7-on-a.html), had this to say about his installation of the pre-release on his MSI Wind: "Like LAPTOP Magazine, I like what I see so far."
Benchmarks won't tell you much (at least that is useful). But real-world, hands-on usage such as what Kevin and James often report on at JKontherun are.
Woadan
You can't bend reality to meet your perceptions.
Did anyone actually think that Windows 7 was going to be any more than Vista SP2? Please. When you can't sell something, refresh the packaging and sell it again. The funny part is, even though it will be the same as Vista, there will be lots of people willing to say it's better than Vista...
I enjoyed Kennedy's reference to the "mythical MinWin". It's clueless fools like him that are perpetuating this myth. MinWin exists today, it just isn't what the overwhelming majority of journos think and say it is.
Mark Russinovish explains what MinWin really is on Channel 9: http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/Going+Deep/Mark-Russinovich-Inside-Windows-7/. The relevant section starts 29 minutes in.
I don't see a big difference between Vista and "7" besides the desktop appearance.
Anyone who actually believes Windows 7 isn't just Vista SP3 is just not very bright.
Fiat Homos et Pereat Theos
Microsoft doesn't sell software - it sells lies.
Windows 7 might be marginally better than Vista by the time it's released - over a year from now - but that merely means Microsoft has made everybody wait another three years to upgrade XP.
Microsoft still ends up selling you morons crap because, quite frankly, most of you WANT to bend over for Bill Gates because he's rich and you're not. It's simple alpha-beta chimpanzee behavior.
I reiterate what I've said for years now:
Windows is CRAP.
Linux is ALSO CRAP.
BUT Linux is FREE CRAP.
Seriously, the IT industry needs to start moving away from the Microsoft environment because the company has demonstrated repeatly that it cannot produce a decent product for a decent price. The corporations need to understand that making Bill Gates the richest guy in the world is not an effective use of their capital - especially in the middle of the worst recession since 1981, which still threatens to turn into "Depression 2.0".
None of the objections to doing so - training expense, lack of applications, blah, blah - are relevant over the long run. Everything was engineered to work with Windows over two decades - it can be re-engineered to work with open source standards similarly. Bite the bullet and do it. As Dick Marcinko used to tell his RED CELL SEAL Team, "You don't have to like it. You just have to do it."
If you don't, you'll keep paying through the nose to Bill Gates both direct costs and productivity loss for the rest of your corporate life.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
OK, I have been using Vista x64 since the RTM, at first the performance was kind of slow compared to xp, but after some patches I see no differance, benchmarks are the same give or take 10-15 points. And the only issue I haven't been able to fix by just using google is the network problem when using audio. For those people who bitch about vista I have 2 peices of advice for you, Throw away your 10 year old pc. Use google when you come across a problem.
Ok back on topic, Im using windows 7 on my laptop, and there is a few compatiablilty issues but its an ok OS, but as far as it being better than vista, for day to day average person use THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE! I still use the same amount of ram, I actually use more CPU than before. You people that claim windows 7 is sooo great need to actually use it first, I think its a waste of time, if MS has actually given vista time, given it another SP or more patches the OS would be just fine.