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32bit Win7 Vs. Vista Vs. XP
An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet's Adrian Kingsley-Hughes tested the latest Win7 build against XP and Vista and came to a surprising conclusion: Win7 performs better than the other 2 OSs in the vast majority of the 23 tasks tested. Even installation. 'Rather than publish a series of benchmark results for the three operating systems (something which Microsoft frowns upon for beta builds, not to mention the fact that the final numbers only really matter for the release candidate and RTM builds), I've decided to put Windows 7, Vista and XP head-to-head in a series of real-world tests...'" This review shows only a 1-2-3 ranking for each test, so there's no sense of the quantitative level of improvement.
Take results with a grain of salt. He ranks Vista as better than XP on the AMD machine and as nearly equal on the Pentium machine.
Of course, the AMD machine has 4 GB of RAM and the Pentium machine has 1 GB, so that could have something to do with it.
When are 32bit OSes going to start going away?
first
This review shows only a 1-2-3 ranking for each test, so there's no sense of the quantitative level of improvement.
In other words a totally subjective opinion with no numbers/statistics to back it up, also known as Totally And Utterly Useless.
Anybody actually believes in others' test results or anecdotal evidence on any technology over his own experience?
Vista is pretty stable. I know people like to crap on vista but in terms of stability it is far better than xp has been.
How can vista boot up faster than XP.. i have never seen this is a real setup... windows 7 faster vista (I can believe that) but vista & windows 7 faster than XP.. Like above said.. take with a grain of salt..
I'm using build 7000 right now. And yes, it is clearly quicker than XP, and there arent as many point where it has the potential to stop. It feels very fluid. Its the best windows version yet but a fair margin.
Vista is pretty stable. I know people like to crap on vista but in terms of stability it is far better than xp has been.
I agree. It's like the stability of a five legged chair versus the stability of a four legged plastic chair.
Who likes chairs anyway?
1) Netbooks. The Atom processors in most netbooks are 32-bit only. Also consider any other embedded scenario where 64-bit CPUs are not available, practical, or where 64-bit addressing is not necessary.
2) Upgrades. Windows does not support upgrading from a 32-bit OS to a 64-bit OS (you have to choose the "clean install" option). If you want to sell upgrade discs to the vast majority of current customers, you need to sell 32-bit copies.
Do a 64bit test as well as most system today with with 3-4gb ram + video ram and other system stuff go over the 4gb limit 32bit.
From the comment below it seems he seems to have had different beta experiences than me.
and as a rule beta builds are usually more geared towards stability than performance
... but what about gaming? That's the metric I'm concerned about the most. My framerates were down 70% in Vista (HL2EP1). Given my computer is only barely cranking out 30fps on recent games at lowest settings, it's a big deal to me.
See "Atom" for instance.
Okay, so ignoring the fact that actually XP is "better" than Vista on machines with 4Gb and somehow "Windows 7" is top on virtually all tests on both types of machines (does the word "bollocks" mean anything to you?), this is ENTIRELY subjective.
For instance, one category is "Burning a DVD" with CDBurnerXP Pro. Somehow, XP gets a 3rd place or a 2 while Vista gets a 3 or a 1st and Windows 7 gets a 1 or a 2 (and, in fact, is one of the very few "non-1st" marks awarded to Windows 7). WTF were you measuring? How can you "rank" the burning of an ISO to DVD in the same software on two seperate machines differently between ANY vaguely similar OS's?
The *only* factor that differs is speed, so you're telling me that Windows 7 can burn disks faster than XP or Vista? Fine... show me the statistics, because I don't believe that XP or Windows 7 are that different when it comes to throwing some data down an IDE/SATA cable, yet somehow this idiot has "ranked" the OS's by some criteria and declared Windows 7 a winner.
Subjective, zero evidence for the reasons of the rankings, stupid scale (1st, 2nd, 3rd, then add up the place rankings and see who got lowest - not one single entry where there's a tied-first or other place, so it takes two "first places" to recover from one "third" place on another category), stupid benchmarks in the first place (i.e. burning a DVD is a valid benchmark but not when you don't say what you are measuring and/or what each OS scored - if one OS finished 0.00001 of a second later than the fastest OS, does that put it in 3rd place, for instance?), blatant sucking up.
If you're gonna claim to be a technology journalist and do such a comparison, at least do it vaguely correctly.
And, yeah, it's purely guesswork but the disclosures section on the author says nothing and yet everything I can find from him (even on Linux.com) is anti-Linux, pro-Microsoft and even the hint of possibly-future-pro-Apple stuff he mentions in passing never shows up as anything other than anti-Apple sentiment. We all have our opinions but this guy's just out to boost MS. Either he gets a lot of nice stuff in the post *cough* Windows 7 Beta's, Microsoft hardware to review *cough* or he's on the payroll.
Disregard.
Windows Vista 3rd
Windows XP 2nd
Windows 7 1st
Windows 7 wins... it uses the least number of letters.
Their 64 bit version of Vista is actually the best consumer level OS they've done so far. It's the version that should become Windows 7. It's stable, fast (way faster than the 32 bit version on my machine), and its backwards compatible with almost every application that I've tried.
If they made the default install 64 bits, they'd actually be pushing forward an improvement in their consumer OS. As it is, we'll be living with Vista mk. II.
I'll bet the folks who work on the 64 bit version are scratching their heads wondering why they bother!
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
After they add the DRM and Malware tools that don't phone home!
Rick B.
He tested things like moving files around, compression, decompression... This is all good and fine, but it's probably not the thing that most people "feel" when they use a computer. What I would like to know is how snappy or sluggish does the operating system "feel" when using it for every-day tasks? Does everything halt while the hard drive cranks away when you click a menu? Do the GUI animations help use the computer or do they simply slow you down? That's the sort of thing that matters to most users. How often do you really have to move 100 MB or 2.5 GB of files around?
Important note: Before I go any further I feel I need to make a point, and make it clear. The build I'm testing of Windows 7 (build 6.1.7000.0.081212-1400) is a beta build, and as a rule beta builds are usually more geared towards stability than performance.
So, that's why Google keeps releasing betas, as they don't need the performance, and Microsoft keeps trying to get us to buy new RTM releases to help us improve the performance. Now I Get It.
We know /. is a labor of love, so the editors don't get paid, but isn't ZDNet commercial, and should be paying some filthy lucre to get people who can actually write?
I've said the same when people complained about crappy Vista beta results, so I will say it again: Judge the system's speed when it is done. No nanosecond earlier.
The reason is simple. First, it's plenty possible that there are still parts missing. Parts that can weigh the system down again. In Vista's case, we saw a pretty good improvement in handling, but this can work the other way 'round too if early results are promising (maybe too promising) and optimizing takes a back seat to other matters.
From what I can see so far, Win7 still has some stability issues. Improving stability often comes at the price of speed. It is entirely possible that MS tried to get a system out for "beta report" tests that is as fast as possible to get these desired effects. Vista's resource hunger and its sluggish handling was one of the core gripes reviewers had, so it was likely the first tests Win7 will be put to will be about speed and handling. Vista had no really crippling stability issues (aside of driver problem which are arguably the hardware supplyer's problem), so this won't be one of the things reviewers will make a big fuss about.
So what did they produce for a beta review? Exactly what we have here. A system that is as fast as it can be, everything else back to the corner there. Yes, it's maybe crashing from time to time, but it's beta, you know, and Vista already was stable, so they'll get that done by release, no worries. Now imagine it was the other way 'round, stable as a rock but sluggish. Yes, it's beta, so the speed issues could be ironed out, but reviewers would have had a field day with it.
Bluntly, I don't give a flying fsck about a beta review of Win7. Wake me when it's ready for release. In other words, when SP1 arrives.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Who likes chairs anyway?
Steve Ballmer, that's who.
Does Win7 seem faster than Vista or XP ?
Don't worry, Microsoft has still plenty of time to fix this behaviour !
BTW, the article is really lame, since there is absolutely no indication why Win7 is faster.
How much did the writer get paid by Microsoft for this advertisement ?
I'm sure the fact that this build of windows does not have tons of extra bells and whistles installed, thus leaving more system resources for doing benchmarking.
Seems to work just fine for the olympics. If you just want to see who was the best, then its fine. The interesting bit being it beats both when everyone is so expecting another dissapointment. That actually is news till we see more.
It doesnt hope to be a quantitative comparison. And a certain audience really does care about that... just probably not slashdot.
People around these parts like #'s alot more. dont worry though, #'s will come.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
if you want a stable chair, you actually remove a leg and make it a 3 legged chair - they never rock
I am not stubborn. I am right!
Has anyone tested it on an Asus Eee or the like in comparison with performance of XP on the same machine?
I think that would be an important test what with vendors clinging onto selling XP with laptops/notebooks for as long as possible.
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
The general feeling around here is that no-one WANTS to believe it is even possible that Windows 7 doesn't suck. Because if that were true, that would sort of devalue everything done to improve Linux the last few years. (because if Windows 7 is fast and stable and lets you play games, that doesn't leave any room for Linux on the desktop)
It could actually be that Microsoft got it right. It may be that the core of Vista is not as terrible as we all think it is. I've seen posts discussing how Vista uses a completely refactored kernel, with more layers of abstraction and cleaning up of many of the quirks of win32.
Then, on top of this decent foundation, they overloaded it with poorly thought out gimmicks in an attempt to compete with Apple. In addition, some of their rewrites introduced new bugs, such as the networking problems where Vista machines are unable to talk to shared file servers.
It's possible that Windows 7 succeeded. If they fixed the bugs, and ripped out some of the bloated, inefficient Vista code then you might have a decent OS after. Microsoft might be a monopoly, but if they sat on their heels for too long, eventually (it might take 10 years) alternatives would overtake them.
There are also scores & times to back them up.
When you watch gymnastics, and after the competitor does their routine, you hear a bunch of numbers being rattled off like "5.1, 5.4, 5.3, 5.3, 4.0" (fucking Russian judge). Those are the numbers backing up the results, so people can discern for themselves who came in first, second and third. This does not exist in the article, you're basically just taking their word for it.
It also keeps the reader from performing their own benchmarks and comparing their results with those of the article, meaning that this article really can't be looked at in any scrutiny, meaning that the conclusions that they make are about as reliable as the theory of Intelligent Design (that is to say, sure they're possible, but there's no way that we can verify that - hence why ID isn't considered a science).
Karma: Non-Heinous
But what I'd like to see is the tasks rated with the time it took, not just ranked 1, 2, 3. I mean, is the difference from #1 to #3 just a couple seconds, or it is minutes? 10 seconds versus 13 seconds to copy 100 megs is negligible, but if it's 10 seconds versus 110 seconds, then that's something care about!
Also, do all the tests on the same hardware. And so the tests for Mac Leopard and Snow Leopard too. NOW that would be a cool article!
I'm cautiously optimistic about Windows 7. I've held off moving from XP to Vista, but Windows 7 might convince me to leave XP. That said, here are my pet peeves that still aren't (and may never be) addressed.
Everything I've read says XP and Vista 64 aren't true 64 bit OSes. DX10 isn't a large enough improvement in graphics over DX9 to warrant switching to Vista, and I'd like to be able to use more than 4GB of ram (RAM IS CHEAP!) with no problem. Will it be Windows 8 or windows 9 that we finally get a decent 64 bit os from microsoft?
moox. for a new generation.
Microsoft is still in business?
Even if you have a 64-bit capable CPU, unless you bought it VERY recently, you almost certainly have a 32-bit version of Windows Vista on it. Those people can very much upgrade to Windows 7, but they can't upgrade to the 64-bit version. They'd have to do a clean install. Your average user doesn't want to do clean install, and doesn't know or care about the distinction between a 32-bit and 64-bit OS.
Next time around it might make more sense, but having a 32-bit version of Windows 7 is completely reasonable.
Also, keep in mind that the 32-bit version has to be produced anyway, since the 64-bit version *includes* the 32-bit binaries to support 32-bit applications. So the potential savings in development cost aren't as significant as they might seem at first glance.
Kaspersky just launched a preview release of their Win7 version *today*. Did you ever stop and think that maybe the link would be more relevant once Microsoft had actually released the beta?
32 bit is pointless now.
A while ago games like Crysis would gain ~10% FPS in XP over Vista on my hardware. Now I find that Vista 64 beats 32-bit XP for gaming by 10-15%. That is with 4gb RAM and above. The gap was a little closer with 2gb. It seems the 64 code path is finally showing it's stuff.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Really? The only problems I've ever had with XP stability was when I was screwing around with things I most certainly should not have. For me, all vista ever did was run slower on superior hardware, and that's hardly a good trade for a faster, less irritating OS that hasn't bluescreened in more than two years.
Ezekiel 23:20
The 64-bit versions of Windows are completely, 100% 64-bit operating systems. That is quite unlike the fruity top competitor who only sells a 32-bit OS that can kinda sorta run some 64-bit code.
Most new machines I see at Best Buy are running the 64-bit version of Vista. I fully expect that most if not all Win7 machines ship the 64-bit version.
I'm more concerned with the problems with Vista beyond performance. How many people out there needed mobile device synchronization only to find Vista's Windows Mobile Device Center is even LESS stable that the much villified ActiveSync or outright just doesn't work for them? Or, how about the silent failures caused by the new permissions scheme?
I won't be fooled again.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
"Win7 performs better than the other 2 OSs" In other words, it only crashes once a month, instead of once a week.
The article wasn't about Windows 2000 vs. 98 and 95.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
some claim Vista and 7.0 are so bloated that OpenGEM on an 8 bit 8088 Laptop using CGA can beat them both. OpenGEM vs. Windows Vista even on an 8088 laptop it beats a modern system running Vista.
Sometimes less is more, the less the OS has in features the faster it runs. Like the TinyXP version that had the core of XP ran faster than Windows XP with full features. It is also why WindowsPE boot disks are so popular, they can run a version of Windows faster than the real version.
If you take any Windows version and strip it down to it's core, minus IE, minus Media Player, minus a lot of annoying features that most people don't need, you get a much faster OS.
Some people have to use 4Gigs of RAM just to get Vista running fast enough to matter. 4 freaking gigs of RAM, that is because of how bloated Vista really is, and all Microsoft and hardware makers are doing is forcing us to buy all new hardware and software every three years or so. Notice that Vista didn't run a lot of legacy Windows programs and a lot of those were development tools and business applications.
Forcing people to upgrade every three years is ridiculous, most people don't need that many features they just need a PC than runs to surf the Internet, do some word processing and email, and maybe play a few games or something else. Windows XP does that good enough, we shouldn't have to be forced to upgrade to Vista or Windows 7.0 because most of us don't need those features.
It is like when the Macintosh came out, nobody needs special effects like zooming windows and other things, AmigaDOS/Workbench lacked those and ran faster and then someone wrote a shareware program called MacGag that did every special effect a Macintosh did on an Amiga.
When I use Windows XP I turn off all special effects and use the classic interface just to get a faster system. I don't need bloated crap features that I hardly ever use. Most of what I need is the core of Windows XP.
Instead of adding new features, Microsoft should be fixing the broken security model of Windows and make blue screens of death a thing of the past by properly error checking the OS and having code that recovers from situations that cause BSODs. The Amiga had a program called GOMF or Guru Out of My Face, that error trapped AmigaDOS/Workbench so we never saw the Guru error red screen of death anymore. So I know it is possible, but no, Microsoft would rather keep adding new features to the OS instead of making them optional or available via add-ons like Windows Plus Packs or something.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
if MS has trully managed to make Win7 be faster than WinXP, we must have crossed over to the "Bizarro World" where all men are clones of Steve Balmmer, all women clones of Clippy and programs code programmers! madness!
Now that is bullshit. If Microsoft got their act together and made somethign as fantastic as Longhorn was supposed to be it really doesn't have anything to do with linux, and many of us that use a variety of things would rejoice. Gnome, KDE etc might be furthur motivated to add new features and improve old ones at the desktop level. I use linux because I want a cheap unix - a vastly improved Microsoft operating system isn't going to change that, plus it fills so many niches that are completely unprofitable for Microsoft so they will never go there. So many of the improvements are in things that Microsoft just does not care about and why should they - such as embedded devices, NFS, decreasing boot speed etc etc.
Since Vista even has problems networking with NT4 machines that some people still need for legacy apps I really am not as optimistic as you are. When something from Microsoft is not Microsoft compatable it is a sign that you have a product with problems.
I'll hold my opinion until they implement things like the poorly integrated DRM that caused so many problems in Vista - if they have to have it (and I think they will decide they do), they should implement it in such a way that it doesn't cause a lot of other problems in the system. To be frank, they are the company that has a long list of very stupid mistakes the latest of which is forgetting leap years exist. I doubt that the 32 bit version of MS Windows 7 will even support Intels Pentium Pro from 1995 and be able to address more than 4GB.
>It could actually be that Microsoft got it right. It may be that
>the core of Vista is not as terrible as we all think it is. I've
>seen posts discussing how Vista uses a completely refactored
>kernel, with more layers of abstraction and cleaning up of many of
>the quirks of win32.
I believe they DID get it right. Check this out:
http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2008/12/15/continuing-our-discussion-on-performance.aspx
Scroll down about 8 screens to the stuff about PerfTrack.
This does seem "innovative" and "new".
Let us assume that all subsystems are nicely tuned. This does not mean the system will be fast or responsive. Many user tasks will touch many subsystems. How these interact is the benchmarking problem.
With PerfTrack, someone sends in a report "This is Slow", with a trace of the last minute of system activity. Somebody monitoring the PerfTrack logs says "hmm. thats not right". They define an unacceptable level, and broadcast this out to everybody running PerfTrack. These then send reports back automatically only when the performance goal is missed.
Quote:
In our "dialed up" request, we would set a "threshold" time that we thought was interesting. Additionally, we we may opt to filter on machines with a certain amount of RAM, a certain class of processor, the presence of specific driver, or any number of other things. Clients meeting the criteria would then, upon hitting the "Start" event, configure and enable tracing quickly and potentially send back to us if the "Stop" event occurred after our specified "threshold" of time.
End Quote.
They mention they have over 500 of these in use now. A few more months to bake this, and a nice perf boost should be EXPECTED.
The law is a weapon of the government, not a protection for the likes of you. Surely you understand that.
In "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information," Tufte has blistering criticism for "the Pravda school of graphic design," in which graphic illustrations show visual elements that are not proportional in size to the data being illustrated. He comments that the designers of such graphs always defend them by claiming they were "just trying to show the direction of the trend."
In my experience, pointy-haired boss types are also fond of emphasizing direction rather than magnitude. Thus a tiny increase in sales will be talked about as if it were just as important as a huge decrease the year before: "we're moving in the right direction."
The size of numbers matters, and I cannot for the life of me imagine any intellectually honest reason for going to the effort of replacing them with 1-2-3 rankings. It is less effort to present the actual underlying data, so what earthly reason is there for Kingsley-Hughes to hide it?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Yeah, yeah, speedy shiny and all but is everything back to its normal (XP) place ?
Do I have to click a zillion times to mess with the Network Configuration ?
Please someone copy XP's interface on some Gnome or KDE. Thx a lot.
The problem with Linux is that not enough people use it.
This means that an awful lot of desktop software is not available for Linux. The most crucial software being games, but all sorts of productivity applications are also not available.
If Microsoft relied on their monopoly for long enough, getting fat and lazy and writing buggy, slow, bloated code, eventually a criticial mass of people would switch to Linux. At this point, developers would be forced to create Linux versions for everything, and then more people would switch, and so on and so forth. Open source, with the huge advantages it has, would become the dominant software model for operating systems.
Long term, the world would greatly benefit : Open source OSes could be both secure and unbelievably stable. Plus, anyone could simple 'opt out' of changes that broke something.
Explain to me why this rates a +3 "Informative" mod when the poster tells us absolutely nothing more about his system, his applications, or how he uses his machine.
Interesting. I very well remember the reports that Vista would be the last 32 bit OS in the line and that future OSs would be 64 bit only. Not that you can believe a word that they say.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
yeah, keep telling me how stable vista is as my dual-boot system in vista crashes twice daily and when booted into RHEL 5 has never even had a hiccup. Oh blame it on bad hardware or a driver or whatever you want, but in the end vista crashes more than xp ever did for me. And Linux well... it just keeps working.
I know I know bad karma... but after a crash or two a day, you get pretty mad (when you know it shouldn't be like that.)
I have Vista CoreDuo 6750 (2.66 Ghz) /4Gb and XP Amd5000 (2.66 Ghz) 2Gb with similar 8600GT video cards and similar software. Vista is MUCH slower even if the Intel processor should be faster.
Lots of Vista users will be upgrading to 7, just like lots of Windows 95 users upgraded to 98 and Windows 2000 users upgraded to XP.
Are you really not familiar with netbooks?
Well put, sir!
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
full 64bit drivers that can shove data to devices oh like Video cards much faster
How do 64bit drivers speed up DMA?
This includes not only the OS's operation, but even 32bit applications running on the OS.
My understanding is that 32bit application would run slightly slower if the CPU was in 64bit mode. Presumably 15% would be the overall system performance, including legacy 32-bit applications?
You see when you have a 64bit memory addressing and can optimize for this in the memory manager you no longer have FS and pagefile lookkup tables for extended amounts of RAM.
What is a FS (filesystem?) lookup table?
You also can do like Vista x64 does and shove two 32bit memory writes into on 64bit address space, so when it can, you get double the read/write performance out of the memory chip because you are pulling two 32bit chunks in one read cycle.
By "64 bit address space" I presume you mean 64 bit register (you fit 2^32 32bit address spaces in a 64bit address space). But even in 32bit mode Intel CPUs can access 128bit registers via SSE. Anyway, this presumably has more to do with your compiler than your OS, so I don't know what Vista has to do with this.
Everything else being equal, 64bit software would run slower than 32 bit, because you need twice as many bits to represent a pointer. Essentially, unless you need an address space larger than 4GB, you are wasting 32bits on every pointer. This would waste memory, cache and memory bandwidth etc. The standard answer as to why 64bit software runs faster on Intel/AMD CPUs is that on these CPUs everything else is *not* equal.
The biggest bonus to running in 64bit mode on Intel/AMD chips is that since 64bit is essentially a whole new arch, we can throw out all the backward compatibility. In 64bit mode we actually have a decent number of registers. Also since 64bit code won't run on old processors anyway, there is no point in compiling code to be backward compatible with the old i586.
Understand yet?
Not really. Not any better than I understand this paper anyway :P. Could you give links explaining your claims above?
I facepalm'd. It's time to move past 32-bit and on to 64.
Alchemist: Be Thou For the People
Virtual Machines aren't a panacea. For starters cutting and pasting between Virtual Machines isn't going to work without some special fiddling. You could add a holes to the VM so that this all works, but you are going to lose more and more of the security benefits from going with a VM. Also, the "Vista is too bloated" crown isn't going to be too impressed by starting up a whole VM whenever we start a legacy application.
Here's the exact wording from the Windows 7 EULA:
"You may not disclose the results of any benchmark tests of the software to any third party without Microsoft's prior written approval."
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=624
That kind of says the exact opposite of what you wrote. Hmmph.
A shared clipboard is trivial. You certainly are not going to lose as much security as just running the app with complete rights to your host OS. It would be expected that MOST applications would not be legacy. Only the ones you cannot get in the new OS so bloat would not be that big of a problem and every year it would become less of a problem. A single application running on DOS could generally be run in 1 meg of memory. That is nothing today. An instance of XP will generally be able to run in half a gig. Literally at worst your XP application would require 3 gigs of ram. Now consider that you now have an OS that cleanly could access up to 16 exabytes of RAM, the memory limitation would be far worse on the 32 bit native than it would be on the clean 64-bit system running virtual machines as they could load more programs, and each program could have more memory than if it ran native on a 32-bit machine. So, for the "I load every application I have into memory... 5 times." crowd, they would be better off. For the "I have one application that I cannot live without" they would be WAY better off. Especially since there is no telling if the current "backward compatibility" will let it work anyway. And for the rest of us, who are using 100% relatively new software, we are the best off.
Yes, because with three points we have a plane.
That's why my analogy uses chairs with nr. of legs > 3. :)
A shared clipboard is trivial.
On windows a clipboard isn't just text, so it isn't entirely trivial. But the clipboard is just one thing. Then there is drag-and-drop, and other cross-procedure calls, shared memory, library installation and replacement, access to users documents, Direct X, OpenGL, screenshots (GIMP), keylogging (hot key manager). Failing to support any of these things *could* prevent a legitimate application from interacting with the system the way a user expects. If you implement all of these you really aren't gaining that much security. Particularly if you run all your 64bit code outside the VM. Also, most VMs also have security flaws. Finally there is no reason to believe that the 64bit code is any less likely to have a virus than the 32bit code. If the user wants to run a VM, there are plenty of off the shelf VMs. If a Vista license allowed the user to run any previous windows in a VM of their choice that would be kind of cool, but I doubt the MS would have been able to create the perfect VM when VMware etc. have been been working for ages and still only support a fraction of the features I discussed above.
It would be expected that MOST applications would not be legacy.
But most Windows Applications aren't open source. Even MS doesn't have access to the code. They can't just decide to recompile all the applications as 64bit, they have to wait for every vendor to do it. Remember how long it took to get 64bit flash?
"I load every application I have into memory... 5 times."
As it stands each application can access almost 4G. With VMs, either you have a VM for each app, which is going to be very wasteful, or all of your 32bit apps together can only access 4G.
And yet somehow, despite all that, Apple has used the exact same strategy to allow backwards compatibility with pre-OS X applications for the last 7 years.
Funny, that.
The real litigious bastards...
Once a week? 98? Are you on crack? You do realize that when Windows 98 first came out, Microsoft themselves recommended that it be rebooted every 8 hours of use to limit the chances of it sporadically exploding while you were in the middle of something, right?
Actually, what was said is that WS08 would be the last 32-bit *server* OS. Which it is (32-bit win7 is desktop-only).
Once a week? 98? Are you on crack? You do realize that when Windows 98 first came out, Microsoft themselves recommended that it be rebooted every 8 hours of use to limit the chances of it sporadically exploding while you were in the middle of something, right?
Once a week in 98 is far closer to reality than once a week in XP.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft also used a similar technique for DOS apps. Pre-OS X applications didn't have any memory protection capabilities, and virtualisation may have been pretty much the only way Apple could get OS9 applications to play nicely with OS X. I don't think Apple (or MS) claimed that these VMs gave much in the way of security benefits.
Here are my benchmarks using SETI@Home on an Intel Quad Core 9660 with 4 GB RAM. All are fresh installs of the 32 bit versions of each OS on their own SATA2 drives with all updates installed. YMMV
Windows XP SP3
Float Pt (MOPS) 2999.2
Integer Spd (MOPS) 6238.63
Turnaround (days) 0.11
Windows Vista SP1
Float Pt (MOPS) 2935.12
Integer Spd (MOPS) 6076.71
Turnaround (days) 0.20
Windows 7
Float Pt (MOPS) 2910.61
Integer Spd (MOPS) 5714.78
Turnaround (days) 0.19
So Windows gets slightly less performance from the same hardware with each new version but Windows 7 does get slightly more SETI@Home results done in a day than Vista though still not as many as XP.
Someone who is using a bootlegged copy of Win7 is worried about the rules of the EULA?
Now that is bullshit. If Microsoft got their act together and made somethign as fantastic as Longhorn was supposed to be it really doesn't have anything to do with linux, and many of us that use a variety of things would rejoice. Gnome, KDE etc might be furthur motivated to add new features and improve old ones at the desktop level. I use linux because I want a cheap unix - a vastly improved Microsoft operating system isn't going to change that, plus it fills so many niches that are completely unprofitable for Microsoft so they will never go there. So many of the improvements are in things that Microsoft just does not care about and why should they - such as embedded devices, NFS, decreasing boot speed etc etc.
Since Vista even has problems networking with NT4 machines that some people still need for legacy apps I really am not as optimistic as you are. When something from Microsoft is not Microsoft compatable it is a sign that you have a product with problems.
I'll hold my opinion until they implement things like the poorly integrated DRM that caused so many problems in Vista - if they have to have it (and I think they will decide they do), they should implement it in such a way that it doesn't cause a lot of other problems in the system. To be frank, they are the company that has a long list of very stupid mistakes the latest of which is forgetting leap years exist. I doubt that the 32 bit version of MS Windows 7 will even support Intels Pentium Pro from 1995 and be able to address more than 4GB.
Hey, screw you for insulting M$ like that for a leap year bug in the Zune. It's not like the apache ftp client (which pissed off A LOT of our customers using it) didn't have the same issue when 2/29/08 hit. They seem to have 'forgot' that 2/29 was a potential date. How either of these companies did this, I don't know. But what I do know, is that you shouldn't insult M$ like that just because you like sucking linux's metaphorical cock.
https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/NET-188
Thats not my experience at all. My vista machines run 24-7 all year and they're solid.
Its slower than xp (we all know that by now) but i do like it better than xp in terms of ui features. I know little has really changed in the ui since xp but there are better ui workflows for searching folders, sorting/listing folders etc.
I hope all of this crap about 7 is true because it would be nice to have the performance of xp (or better) and a more powerful ui.
Linux just isnt in the cards for me... I ran redhat for a year or so (a few years ago) and while it worked, and i had wine setup etc... I found dependencies a pain to deal with and i never truely felt comfortable in linux due to it being different and something new to learn. I been working in 3d modeling & animation for 10+ years and I do photography now, so I have plenty to learn everyday. I always consider myself learning and refining my craft, and when it came down to it, i didnt want to spend time learning linux inside and out, when i could be spending that effort in ways to benefit my craft.
I guess it came down to a time management thing.
I do not hate linux and I'm tempted all of the time to try and run it at home but I think for now windows is fine.
Who cares how well it performs, when its major task is to keep track of whatever's happening on your computer and rat you out to anybody who pays Microsoft enough money? If I've got the best five-bladed butt fucker in the world, I don't necessarily assume that I'm going to get great reviews from any other publication but Hurt Me Weekly.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
http://slashdot.org/~SockDisclosure/journal/214377
So The "new' Windows OS finally cleaned up it's 32 bit act in time to be obsolete. It's easy to accomplish tasks when you set a low standard and fail to maintain it.
Fiat Homos et Pereat Theos
> forgetting leap years exist.
Open source, wasn't their code.
Bizarre but true. Red Alert 1 will actually run fine under Vista 64 but won't install (installer is 16 bit). The machine I was using had VMWare on it so I installed it in the VM then moved the unpacked directories outside.
Pentium Pro hardware wouldn't support 4GB anyway, infact Pentium III had hardware limitations sub 1GB.
Boards based on intel's 945 Chipset has max 2GB Ram support. At some point you can't blame the O/S anymore
than cheap hardware.
Don't believe this shit I benched Windows 7 build 7000(Beta1)32bit with Cinebench(32bit), 3dmark and Passmark and compared it to winxp 64bit and the best result I could get was 99,68% of the xp score running Cinebench mult.CPU test. 3dsmax and Passmark are about 75% of the XP score.
So Win7 is very fast but not far as fast as xp is,
My machine: PentiumD 2,8 , 2GB DDR667, GF6800GT.
yeah, keep telling me how stable vista is as my dual-boot system in vista crashes twice daily
Bullshit TBH. My 2 year old Vista install has not borked once. Perhaps you should learn how to use a computer....
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
Do you still have to rebuild/reinstall modules for Linux for each version of the kernel?
In addition to the other /.ers' reports :
- openSUSE : No, you don't. .ko into the current modules collection.
if you install the drivers from an RPM (which is one single click on a web-page away, thanks to their 1-click-install feature) everything is taken care of by the package manager.
if you install the drivers from an ATI/NVIDIA installer or something more esoteric that you compiled your self, the openSUSE kernel upgrade will attempt (successfully in all my occurence) to import automatically the previous
- Debian stable : no you don't.
Everything including the kernel version, etc. stays the same across version updates, except for patched bugs. The previous modules keep working because the situation is exactly the same as before.
Atleast you don't have to reinstall every driver in Windows each time you've ran Windows update...
The fact that their whole OS stays exactly the same and doesn't improve a bit over the course of 5 years may have something to play in this situation.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Since on release Win7 will most likely be slower than Win7 Beta (this seems to be the way MS does things now) and in any case, Win7 will need a SP fix that will slow Win7 down again as well.
I am running Vista x64 SP1 and Windows 7 build 7000 on the same machine and I had XP x64 SP1 installed a few months ago also and I can say without a doubt that Windows 7 is one of the best OS that I have ever used, it literally flies through all tasks without any lag whatsoever and I have tested it running multiple tasks, I had dozens of windows open from multiple apps running at the same time with dozens of processes and still experienced no lag time and I run some pretty heavy apps, currently at idle windows 7 Utilizes over 4 times less CPU and RAM. The average startup time is 3-4 time faster than vista and 2-3 time faster than XP. I am looking forward to the final release which is usually faster than the beta, and if Beta 1 is any indication of speed and stability then all the other OS on the market are royally screwed.
How is the CPU temperature compare to Vista?
Vista run fast enough for me (A Core 2 Duo CPU, 2GB Ram and a Nv 8600 card), but what is keeping me from using it is the temperature, under 100% CPU load, it will fry my laptop CPU/GPU, and with recent Nvidia card problem, I don't want my laptop to die too soon.
Here is what I get from 3 OSes:
- Vista: Idle: 49oC (fan running), full load = 70oC+!
- XP: Idle: 43oC (fan running), full load = 66oC, GPU temperature = 56oC
- Linux: Idle: 44oC (fan is not running), full load = 66oC, GPU temperature = 45oC
With 2GB of RAM, Vista will be faster, even if you have a 800mzh PIII and a 1998 ATI video card.
But many motherboards designed to take a <1 GHz Pentium III can't take more than 512 MB of RAM without perhaps plugging a RAM disk into an IDE port and using that as swap. Case in point: my Dell Dimension 4100 from the fourth quarter of 2000 has an 866 MHz PIII CPU. It came with 128 MB of PC133 SDRAM in one slot, which I have since upgraded to 384 MB by putting a 256 MB stick in the other slot. But it doesn't take bigger sticks than 256 MB. Is there a reasonable way to upgrade a motherboard designed to take sub-GHz CPUs past 512 MB, or should I just recycle it and get a new PC?
[Windows Vista adds a delay] when it delivers the audio signal to each speaker resulting in the audio reaching your head position simultaneously from all speakers.
But if a delay per channel makes the sound better for one person in the room, why doesn't it make it worse for other users in the room?
I would be most interested in a comparison of GDI performance between XP, Vista and 7.
When are 32bit OSes going to start going away?
Perhaps once DOSBox matures. Your 64-bit OS can't run 16-bit apps or 32-bit DPMI apps without an emulator, and DOSBox's wiki still says Windows 3.1 doesn't run perfectly.
Of course, you still need to account for the bootup time of XP. Even with hardware virtualization, this is at least tens of seconds.
How fast can a virtual machine resume from standby? I've read a recent Slashdot story about an OS hack that replaces "shut down" with "restart, then go to sleep" for sub-10-second "boot" times.
How much RAM do these virtual systems have?
You could use the Mac OS Classic solution for this: store how much RAM an app is expected to use along with each app. And after that, as Belial6 tried to point out, have them swap to a compressed RAM disk.
Do you really think they'll be sued over an EULA?
I'm no lawyer, and they may be legally binding in the US, but I personally have no respect for such agreements. And I seriously doubts most courts have either...
- It'd be something else if the agreement was printed and signed, but it's not!
Look up WoW64. 32bit applications run seamlessly on 64bit XP and Vista and Windows 7.
I know the difference between "Windows on Windows" and "World of Warcraft". But I haven't seen anyone get WoW32 to work in WoW64 to run 16-bit apps. So we'd still need to use some sort of emulator to run 16-bit apps or mixed 16- and 32-bit apps.
4 gig's is not that all that much data. Let's take RAW HD video 4gb / (30 * 1080 * 1920 * 4 bytes ) ~= 4 seconds.
How much raw HD video needs to be kept in an uncompressed buffer in RAM at any one time, as opposed to lightly compressed (e.g. Huffyuv or low-quantizer motion JPEG) on a 1000 GB spinning platter? Disk addresses have been 48- to 64-bit for a much longer time, even on Windows operating systems for workstations.
Up until the the Intel switch, you could run Mac OS 9 code, similar to WoW, without a re-compile. In most cases, the question is why would you want to.
Because the application's developer went out of business before Mac OS X became popular and took the application's source code to the grave with it. In many cases, such as games, there isn't a nearly exact modern substitute for such an end-of-life application.
IMO, this is the correct way to do it -- you can sign the driver yourself but you have to explicitly tell Windows to accept that signature.
That'd be fine, except the Microsoft white paper that explains kernel-mode code signing claims that users can't turn off the always-on-top "Test Mode" banner at all four corners of the screen until they remove the self-signed driver.
How many people have a significant need for 64 bit computing right now?
Anybody who has bought any of these games from the Virtual Console aisle of Wii Shop Channel.
He must have some special copy of Vista or something. I don't think have ever seen Vista boot to a 'usable' desktop faster than XP no matter how much RAM a system has.
Bibo Ergo Sum.
..and it had Ubuntu grabbing all the 1's, 90% of the replies would be of the "OMG WINBLOW$ SUCKS!!! OSS 4 LIFE!!!" circle-jerk variety. I don't think most of you anti-MS fuckers would be concerned with the methodology.
They do. Look up WoW64. 32bit applications run seamlessly on 64bit XP and Vista and Windows 7.
Well that's true for applications. The drivers are a completely different kind of beast.
TFA's author was basically forced to run them in 32bits because that way, he can run all of them an put nice 1/2/3 numbers in the test.
Whereas, with 64bits OS:
- XP64 probably won't boot at all for lack of any decent driver in 64bits (unless it is specifically tried on a server which was shipped with server 03 64bits installed on it)
- Vista 64, well, sort-of works. As long as your hardware isn't too old. Or too recent. Or is built by a constructor who only supports 32bits Vista on shipped hardware. Well, ok. If you really want good support for 64bits Vista, better pick up a constructor which ships its hardware with Vista64. The bad news : there aren't lot of them - most still even ship Vista32 on AMD CPU.
- Windows 7 64bits : it's beta, probably not much support beside what's on the DVD. You'd be probably more lucky on trying installing it on the machine which shipped with Vista64.
Meanwhile :
- Linux 64bits : just fucking runs since at least several years. The couple of exceptions are only 1. graphic card requiring propretary drivers for 3D (which is usually a single click away - just answer "yes" to "do you want to download binary drivers to enable 3D" dialog box in most distros) and 2. some WiFi adapters whose constructors still aren't cooperative with the opensource world.
For everything else, as the software is opensource, 64bits support is only a recompile away and all distributions ship 64bits compiles next to the 32bits.
- Mac OS X 64bits : Apple controls the hardware and it's easy for them. Since Leopard, native 64bits applications are supported.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
If the "numbers" aren't out there you can still say "hey, that [those rankings] isn't what I got using the exact same setup as you tested with". Of course we won't know whether you really did the benchmarks, so we'll just accuse you of lying because it is so much easier (and more fun) than doing the benchmarks ourselves to test whether you are right.
So, you are going to take the word of Zdnet over some random 6 digit UID slashdotter? They could just made that up you know! :P
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I've had some notebooks, most of which I daily used, run XP for half a year and more without reboots. Given reliable hardware and good drivers, XP is rock fucking stable. (Mmm, ThinkPads back when they still were IBM through-and-through).
I'm sorry but the ambiguous scoring methodology makes me very suspicious.
Actual times, and weighting shown would have done much the mitigate my suspicion.
Having used both XP and Vista, I can say without a doubt that XP comes out as the winner.
Most people do not see a good reason to upgrade. Those that are upgrading are doing so because Vista comes preinstalled in new hardware. Where is the value to be gained in upgrading when I do not use the computer to do anything that was not possible on Windows 2000? All people really want is an operating system that supports their hardware and Windows 2000 would be fine for that if it was supported and updated. This migration to a 10Gb OS is completely unnecessary and I hope that more people start realizing this and stop worrying about miniscule performance changes so that we can finally break the MS lock-in cycle.
Here is how it works: 1. Sell new computers with snappy OS
2. Slowly apply updates to OS until it is a sluggish beast
3. Force user to buy better hardware
4. Only allow customer to buy new snappy OS
5. Goto step 2
So why would you want to block support for them just because they aren't 64-bit?
In these tests Vista outperformed XP. We know for a fact that isn't true.
He didn't compare the 64-bit versions because the 64-bit version of the Win7 Beta hasn't leaked.
64-bit driver support on Windows is excellent. I run the 64-bit version of Win7 on 5 machines, all with full WDDM 1.1 support and every device driver found via WU automatically. My Vaio laptop even has full 64-bit drivers for even the most obscure Sony propietary components straight from Sony, which makes sense as Win7 uses the same drivers as Vista and they ship those machine with 64-bit versions of Vista.
Most new retail machines come with the 64-bit version of Vista. Driver support for 64-bit Vista is fantastic. Leaps and bounds beyond 64-bit support on Linux. The Vista Logo program requires 64-bit driver support, you won't find ANY hardware that is "too new" - such a claim is utterly ridiculous.
There is no 64-bit version of Mac OS, and thus no 64-bit drivers. Not until Snow Leopard at least.
The DRM that caused so many of the problems? Where's your source on this... as far as I know the DRM is *inactive* and is just there for *future purposes* (it's the ICT flag which while not confirmed, dates of 2010 and 2012 are the common ones floated for when it'll be activated).
....and I don't do sock puppets.
Mostly due to video and audio hardware drivers having to be rewritten to run with the DRM code in Vista. Some of them were late and/or performed poorly. It was apparantly a late addition and has been blamed for some of Vista's performance issues. I wonder if the new beta has not implemented this yet and that may be why there is better performance - or on the other hand perhaps it is there and has been implemented better this time. I'll be a late adopter anyway because the MS Windows compatable software I use usually takes a few years before a version comes out that will work on the new version (even compatibility hassles between win2k and xp).
Had a 60gig lappy drive laying around, installed 7, build 7000 on a Dell Inspiron E1505 2 gig ram, X1400 video. Win 7 didn't pick up the video, SD card or sound card. After installing the vid drives (no reboot), SD card drivers (no reboot), and the sound card drivers (no reboot), then rebooting, everything was picked up, no yellow (!) bangs in the device manager. I've been using Vista for well over a year on this laptop...even the beta was as fast, or seemed as fast or faster than Vista(SP1). I suppose when they tighten the code, it will only get better. One nice thing is that you don't have to shut down UAC...it pretty much stays out of the way.
Yes, because we all not only have a beta copy of windows 7/want a copy/but also can produce accurate results from an accurate and identical testbed. Oh, did I mention that we clearly have the same files to work with, same iso's, same everything. Yeah, suuuure.
And having "numbers" would make all of the above so much easier. We could ask why they don't give a video of them performing the benchmarks. At the end of the day, it is you who has provided no evidence for your accusations ZDnet has ever faked a benchmark. And it was you who was caught "lying" about the MS EULA. What evidence do we have that you are not an astroturfer for one of ZDnet's competitors?
This isn't about fun or not. It's about not filling an area devoid of information with things that aren't there via magic speculation.
Oh, but filling a void of information with magic speculation about other people lying *is* fun! Why else would we be wasting time on this completely fact-free thread?
Xp vid encode seemed faster bacause it didn't work (I encode vids, the torture has got to end some common sense day). Vista, even at toms hardware review of old shows it is indeed all the same hardware doing the same work...and here comes the astonishing complaint the h.264 encoding time is slower...ya wanna know why? because it is actually encoding inVista...Vids seem to be a slippery subject for hardware and it is repulsive to think about. Vista is slower there...because it is working.It is not much longer to windows 7 and to gain an actual unloading of nonused programs from memory. If that is all windows 7 did it is still an upgradable thought. For now, I am just diving into vista...just for a darn home video...
"We are disappointed that CPU-intensive applications such as video transcoding with XviD (DVD to XviD MPEG4) or the MainConcept H.264 Encoder performed 18% to nearly 24% slower in our standard benchmark scenarios. Both benchmarks finished much quicker under Windows XP. There aren't newer versions available, and we don't see immediate solutions to this issue." -tomshardware
> The test you link to used SP2, while the new tests use SP3. XP SP2 and SP3 aren't the same thing. In fact, most benchmarks put Vista SP1 ahead of XP SP3 or at least within spitting distance of each other.
I think that's pretty telling, actually, assuming it's the reason. Did Microsoft manage to destroy XP's performance with SP3 enough that it's now below Vista? Did their software department design that "upgrade" or did marketing? (Assuming the two departments haven't been unified this whole time...)
Or do we have some bad benchmark data here?
Boards based on intel's 945 Chipset has max 2GB Ram support.
$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS, 943/940GML and 945GT Express Memory Controller Hub (rev 03)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
$ cat /proc/meminfo
MemTotal: 3362304 kB
So now we know that Windows 7 is not as bad as Vista or XP. Bu that doesn't mean 7 is good, it just mean that less bad than XP and Vista.... 7 is still a Windows, my friends...
Explain to me why this rates a +3 "Informative"
Because the moderators in question wanted to reward the poster for confirming their own biases.
Didn't you listen in psych 101? ;)
I thought he perpetrated horrendous acts of violence on that type of furniture? Define "like".
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
4 gig's is not that all that much data.
Correct, it's not all that much data, it's $35 worth of RAM.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
This comparison of 32-bit versions wasted my time. Yours? People who care about performance have been buying 64-bit systems for years, so how does Windows 7 64-bit version compare?
http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/11/10/46TC-windows-7_1.html