Windows 8 RTM Benchmarked

jjslash writes "Microsoft's PR machine has been hard at work over the past few months, trying to explain the numerous improvements Windows 8 has received on the backend. But are there real tangible performance differences compared to Windows 7? TechSpot has grabbed the RTM version of Windows 8, measuring and testing the performance of various aspects of the operating system including: boot up and shutdown times, file copying, encoding, browsing, gaming and some synthetic benchmarks." Lots of other sites are running reviews including: Infoworld, CNET, Computerworld, and Gizmodo, with very mixed opinions.

Comments

Paid for

[ozmanjusri]

Lots of other sites are running reviews including: Infoworld, CNET, Computerworld, and Gizmodo, with very mixed opinions.

You mean they're mixing the real opinions with the bought ones?

Re:Paid for

[Penguinisto]

BTW as a sidenote I actually really like Ubuntu Unity.

You don't, like, wear argyle golfing pants and a paisley polka-dot tie to work, do you?

I promise I'm not trying to be insulting, but I am curious now... :)

Re:Paid for

[geekoid]

I would not insult Ubuntu Unity's style...if it had one.

Re:Paid for

[SDrag0n]

Everybody keeps complaining about the interface. Really it's like it just opens the start menu on bootup. From there you can hang around the desktop all you want. I didn't like it at first but then once I realized that you could hit the start button and stat typing what you wanted, similar to the current start menu, who cares? PLEASE keep bitching about the same thing thinking it'll change. Thanks for your valuable input.

Re:Paid for

[darkmeridian]

Yeah, anyone who disagrees with you is a sycophant or astroturfer. You speak the unimpeachable Truth and all others are Damned. Please spare me this BS. I don't disagree with you, necessarily, but I hate the demonization of those who disagree with you. Dissent is healthy.

Re:Paid for

[Darinbob]

The biggest trouble I found was lack of documentation. Trying to figure out how to use Metro on your own is not trivial. While one article touted that you really didn't need start menu after all and that you could do the same thing with Metro, it took me a half hour to find a slow way to get up a menu, and another half hour to find a fast way to do this! If you're used to Windows or any other mouse based desktop system you may think that you can use the right mouse button, or maybe bring the mouse to the various sides of the screen, or click left or right on any blank spot on the screen (very few places not covered with "click here to buy stuff" icons).

I was baffled until I found a tiny spot to move the mouse where something happened (all the way to bottom right, size of a hanging chad). Eventually I found the _real_ way this is intended to be used. The Windows Key. You know, that key that most real computer users laughed at when they first found it and have not used it since. Just push it by itself and release and something happens. Sure some Windows experts may have memorized things like Windows+S for start menu or things like that, but most people I know never use it, or consider using it by itself and not as a modifier key. It's an extremely inconvenient key for touch typists as the placement is awkward. I always though it was a bit underused in most Windows versions, compared to the Command key in MacOS. But once you know to push this key all sorts of things can get done with metro, including popping up an amazingly ugly menu full of tiny black boxes. If you want to use Metro effectively you will need to learn a set of keyboard shortcuts!

That's the weird thing. How is anyone going to know based on their past experience to push this key as the primary means of UI interaction? On my android phone that came with zero documentation at least I saw three buttons at the bottom I could tap with my finger and eventually things would happen. Even the Nokia Lumia with the same basic look as Windows 8 comes with some buttons to push. But a windows user would naturally assume they need to click stuff with a mouse, and there's nothing to click except the default applications (not even real applications, they're more like smart URLs such as a "travel" icon with photo of eiffel tower, most of which no professional will ever use).

In the past people with visions were sometimes called mystics, sometimes called possessed, and sometimes locked up for their own safety. Today though people with visions are put in charge of product design.

Re:Paid for

[Darinbob]

This will be the new Ubuntu Unity marketting pitch: "At least it's not Metro".

Re:Paid for

[epyT-R]

Why the hell are you complaining about an OS you're not going to use?

because he's joining a conversation about it on the internet to voice his opinion?

If you don't want to use the software, why are you moaning about it? I'm not going to use it, either - there's no reason for me to upgrade at the moment.

so you complain about him complaining about an os he's not going to use, but yet you feel the need to post about his post when you also are not planning on using it?

No Chrome on W7

[QuantumBeep]

The sly omission of Chrome on Windows 7 from the browser benchmark is face-meltingly biased.

No real difference

[linebackn]

So after reading through the entire article (wait, was I supposed to do that?) the bottom line is that there is no significant difference that any regular user would care about.

I don't think shaving a second or two off of boot time is going to impress people when they see the user interface is "all different" now.

Benchmarks don't really tell the story...

[dhavleak]

• Steep learning curve (nothing to 'learn' obviously -- it's just a new interface -- but it's very different from Windows 7 and definitely takes some getting used to)
• Tangibly faster startup / shutdown / resume etc.
• Tangibly faster switching between apps / windows etc.
• Unfinished in terms of adopting to the new UI paradigms. Several places where you end up back in the old way of doing things, or going back to the control panel to look for settings. It's clearly still there as a catch-all.
• Some awkwardness in terms of managing processes. Clearly, it's designed for you to not think about that stuff. But windows users of old aren't used to that and want to know how to exit an app. You can kill apps quite easily, but it's part of the so-called learning curve.

Well done, but job not finished.

Re:Window 8

[dhavleak]

You can run any number of apps you want, simultaneously.

Weird benchmarks

[flimflammer]

Something feels wrong about comparing Windows 7 /w Office 2010 and Windows 8 /w Office 2013. Will Office 2013 not be available for Windows 7 or something? Why would you compare two different Office products in two different operating systems? Seems like an unreliable metric if you're trying to compare the performance between operating systems and not different versions of Office.

Re:Real use of the OS

[Scowler]

How was I trolling, exactly? I'm not the one using the word "abortion" or the phrase "steaming pile of crap". I agree with you that this is not a compelling upgrade for the keyboard/mouse crowd, but then again, Metro wasn't really designed for that, was it?

Re:Worse for Games

[Hadlock]

The new version of windows always sucks for games until nvidia and ati get around to tweaking things. Give it 6-8 months for everything to catch up. If you plan on installing Win8 on day one and expecting everything to work as good as, or better than the 36 month old Win7 ecosystem, you're insane.

Their Conclusions

[TranquilVoid]

Since the summary is a teaser;

* Generally the same performance as Windows 7, sometimes marginally faster
* Faster startup and shutdown
* Games and web browsing the same (IE10 no better than IE9)
* Multimedia slightly faster (x264 encoding/decoding)

I'm sure corporate group policy will take care of the faster startup and shutdown times :)

Re:Window 8

[Anonymous Coward]

Two steps, 1) Click the desktop app, 2) Install Vistart, a 3rd party start menu replacement. I am not trolling, I am being serious. I can stay in desktop mode for weeks. After you wake up your computer from hibernation, type in your password, it returns you right to where you left off, in desktop mode. Default file associations might go to metro apps, but you can change those too. OK Vistart won't let me right click on anything in the start menu, but that isn't a huge deal. I don't know why that guy called me a troll. I've been using windows 8 on my home laptop for months. I am in desktop mode 99% of the time. As far as the ugly theme in desktop mode goes, no big deal. Someone will come out with a nice themeing program or hack for it at some point. I've been saying this for months. I've been using windows 8 since before they even had Metro in the leaked builds. I've had lots of time to notice the nice features.

Seriously, use windows 8 with Vistart. It's a free program. You may miss a few advanced features of the Windows 7 start menu, but you will like all the positive changes of Windows 8 more than the negative ones. Here is just one example. Windows 8 does not interrupt your presentation to remind you to reboot your computer to install an update. It gives you days worth of warning before it nags like that. Another example, if you are copying a bunch of files and one can't copy, you can just hit skip, and it will continue with everything else. You can also pause fie copying. Plus, Windows 8 doesn't have that nasty explorer refreshing bug that Windows 7 has. I haven't tested this, but I bet it doesn't have the nasty failed backups if you use a custom library bug that Windows 7 has. What is Windows 7 biggest missing feature? Native ISO mounting? Windows 8 has that. I've reinstalled Windows 8 several times over the past year, 2 or three leaked builds, then three official betas, then the RTM. I never had to install Daemon Tools or Security Essentials as part of that process, because those features are baked right in.

Plus, Internet Explorer 10 is nice. It is standards compliant. I am developing a website and targeting Chrome/Safari as the recommended browsers, but I would like it to work in IE10. It mostly works in IE9, but that required a lot of work, some features will never work in IE9. My modern HTML5/CSS3 website using canvas and FileReader API works just as well in IE10 as Chrome.

If you only mess around with Metro for a couple hours, how do you expect to notice all the changes under the hood? I have been using Windows 8 for months. Actually, I have been using Windows 8 for over a year now. I am still discovering nice new features. I've been using since you had to hack Metro into it, because it came disabled in all beta builds before developer preview.

Come on moderators, give me a few points so people can read this. Windows 8 in desktop mode with Vistart is a very nice experience. You can't review an OS in a weekend, I've been using it for a year and a half or so.