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Early Speed Tests For Windows 8
adeelarshad82 writes "You often hear in the software industry that performance optimization is one of the last steps in the software development process. That bodes well for Windows 8, considering at the early stage of Developer Preview—even before we've seen an actual beta—the nascent operating system is getting widespread praise for its performance, particularly in startup times. Anecdotal evidence is always encouraging, but PCMag decided to run some very early tests on the OS to see if the reports were wishful thinking or if there was a real, measurable boost in speed. Along with startup and shutdown times, they used several standard industry benchmarks to compare Windows 8 performance with that of Windows 7 running on the same machine."
There are actually two kind of performances, which are both important. The real, actual performance, and how well the OS can make the system feel even under load. It's important to have a snappy feel even if the system underneath is working hard, and this is especially true now that the amount of cores in CPUs and multithreading are increasing. Say what you want, but just the feel of speediness is an important factor. This is why the boot up time is looked at so much too - it's great to quickly get to the desktop, and let the OS load up while you're already started working.
One thing I've noticed with boot up times (and this applies to all operating systems) is that the OS tries to load all programs at once. Usually the limiting factor to this will be hard drive. It's less true with SSD drives, but it's really noticeable with 7200 RPM and slower drives. It usually leads to the whole system crawling for a few minutes after desktop shows up. It would be great if the OS would measure the different loads and UI response times, and actually limit the startup programs. This way you could open your browser and other tools and those would be given priority upon startup process.
I tested the developer preview version briefly and it sure seemed a lot faster and snappier. The startup time is remarkably faster. And according to this PCMag test, seems like the overall speed has been improved a lot too. Good job MS!
...you boot the bastard on a desktop machine, and then it goes to that horrid Metro screen which makes navigating with a mouse and keyboard painful? It may be fine for touch, but without touch, man....it makes you want to break things.
Then you talk to a Microsoft turfer, as seen on here and other places, they will bald-faced lie to you and say "well, it's not finished yet, who knows what it will be like?"
Then you go to the Microsoft fora and ask Microsoft employees about Metro as being standard for the upcoming desktop, they double-down on it.
Guys, get your friggin' stories straight. All I know for sure is that Metro without touch is a steaming load of bovine excrement backlit by the morning sun so you can see the vapors wafting off it. Fix it.
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BMO
Actually if you want to know what is generally the cause of Windows being slow its all that OEM trialware crapola that gets loaded onto a machine before you ever get it. I consider the new Asus EEE I got pretty light in that it only had nine extra things running at startup, of which only two I found useful (hybrid engine and Asus Hotkey) whereas I've seen as many as nineteen on some dells and HPs. That is why PC Decrapifier is a handy tool to have around.
The second thing that slows Windows down is what I call "granny services" which thankfully MSFT is FINALLY fixing in Windows 8. granny services are the services that MSFT or the OEMs have running to keep granny from calling tech support. That's support for cameras and scanners,media sharing services, etc. It took them a fricking decade but they are finally gonna have services launch by trigger instead of the usual auto/manual crap.
I only hope the new services setting is backported to Windows 7 as many of us have settled into Windows 7 and won't be making the switch for quite awhile. I know in my case i've just finished getting the last of my customers moved off of XP and I doubt seriously any of them will be too keen on jumping onto a new OS next year. With Windows 7 being supported until 2020 it could become the new XP, which while i'm sure that wouldn't make MSFT none too happy without a killer app to make all these multicores obsolete I just don't see folks switching every couple of years like we did in the 90s. Back then thanks to the MHz wars it was worth your while to switch thanks to the huge increases in performance, but now? Frankly any dual core is "good enough" for the majority of the things your average Joe is doing with a PC.
So while I'm happy that MSFT is FINALLY listening to users and making speed a priority I have a feeling windows 8 adoption will be even slower than 7 was. Anybody who has gotten a new PC in the past 4 years frankly has more than enough power to do whatever they want. Why would they switch? Frankly if the best reason they have is Metro and a few speed increases they are gonna be looking at some slow adoption rates IMHO. For most of the new machines I've seen in the end its the HDD not the OS that ends up the bottleneck anyway.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
You often hear in the software industry that performance optimization is one of the last steps in the software development process.
No you don't, not among sane people. You don't do performance optimization as "one of the last steps" shortly before shipping.
What you hear is that "premature optimization is the root of all evil" (quoting Donald Knuth). What he meant is that you should not bother with complicated performance optimizations when designing the code. Rather, create and implement a good clean design, then test performance and optimize where needed. On the other hand, algorithm choice is one of the biggest performance contributors and initial choices will often be made quite early, so one cannot apply this quote blindly. Read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_optimization
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Startup time, until login screen, or desktop, or usable system, or fully usable system ....?
The four are different and most people assume you mean the last, when most are measured to the first .... ...and unless you have a laptop why are you turning the machine on and off enough to worry about boot times (in the real world the difference between 20s and 1 minutes is a vast gulf, the difference between 1 minute and 5 minutes is irrelevant)
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
Ideally, a modern desktop OS should be booted once. The rest of the time it should be slipping in and out of sleep.
In practice it seems that a few months between reboots (for OS updates) is easily attainable on some platforms.
When a reboot occurs once every few months, boot time is not terribly important.
I can't help but think that people who marvel at improved boot times are rebooting their machines too much.
What burns my shorts these days is not the Windows reboot.
It's the automatic updates that only get applied at the end. "PLEASE PLEASE OH PLEASE DON'T TURN ME OFF BECAUSE I WILL FUCK YOUR COMPUTER IF YOU TURN ME OFF IN THE MIDDLE OF UPDATES"
For 20 minutes.
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BMO
Try: sudo dpkg-reconfigure -a
At least that's always worked for me when I need it to, should power fail, etc. Not to mention ext3/ext4 journaling seems much nicer than using NTFS and having to fallback to CHKDSK when such issues arise, (along with the occasional pre-emptive NTFS defrag).
Personally I find the overall cost of Windows as being too costly to use in my business.
man page for dpkg-reconfigure
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
"Does anyone else detect a whiff of shill in the air?"
No, I can't smell it due to the overpowering stench of knee-jerk anti-MS zealotry.
FFS, there'll be plenty of things to hate about 8 when it comes out, attacking it while it's still in the womb is a bit unnecessary, don't you think?
Sorry to break it to you, shill, but you're full of hot air and you need a tic-tac.
But to balance it out, everything in your post was wrong.