Windows 7 "Not Much Faster" Than Vista

PLSQL Guy writes "Tests of the Windows 7 Release Candidate in a PC World Test Center found that while Windows 7 was slightly faster on our WorldBench 6 suite, the differences may be barely noticeable to users. The PCs tested were slightly faster when running Windows 7, but in no case was the overall improvement greater than 5 percent, considered to be a threshold for when an actual performance change is noticeable to the average user. One of the major complaints about Windows Vista was the fact that it was consistently slower than Windows XP. If Windows 7 can't significantly improve that situation, what chance does it have to convince people to move away from Windows XP?"

Comments

They said the same about XP

[FTWinston]

One of the major criticisms of XP was that it was much slower than 98.

Hell, I vastly prefer vista to XP, on account of it doing much fewer crazy and unpredictable things, and I look forward to 7.

Stupid.

[DarthVain]

I am sure systems like 20 years ago were faster than Windows 7 at doing some particular tasks.

The whole point of new systems, isn't just speed, but functionality, or what you can do with it.

The real question that should be asked is "does Windows 7 offer significantly improved feature set"?

If not, then one begs the question of why bother.

Re:Weren't the earlier betas much faster?

[fluffernutter]

The problem with this reasoning is that I am not buying new PCs at the rate that Windows is being slowed down. Even if you consider the time between Windows XP release and Windows 7 release I have PCs/laptops around from the beginning and I still would like there to be an OS available for them.

At one time I was very interested in buying a faster PC. Between Windows 95 and Windows XP came the ability to burn a CD and not risk making a coaster, DVDs, ability to play real time video, etc. What has come to computing between Windows XP and Windows 7? Maybe the games look better but I don't play games, and other then that it is a lot of bloat in my opinion. There is no functional need for me to buy a faster PC right now and therefore I will not be. I want an OS that can support my choice. Fortunately I am a sysadmin so I am comfortable with Linux, but what does the average user do? By a PC that they don't really need?