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Ask Slashdot: Are Post-Install Windows Slowdowns Inevitable?
blackest_k writes: I recently reinstalled Windows 7 Home on a laptop. A factory restore (minus the shovelware), all the Windows updates, and it was reasonably snappy. Four weeks later it's running like a slug, and now 34 more updates to install. The system is clear of malware (there are very few additional programs other than chrome browser). It appears that Windows slows down Windows! Has anyone benchmarked Windows 7 as installed and then again as updated? Even better has anybody identified any Windows update that put the slug into sluggish?
Related: an anonymous reader asks: Our organization's PCs are growing ever slower, with direct hard-drive encryption in place, and with anti-malware scans running ever more frequently. The security team says that SSDs are the only solution, but the org won't approve SSD purchases. It seems most disk scanning could take place after hours and/or under a lower CPU priority, but the security team doesn't care about optimization, summarily blaming sluggishness on lack of SSDs. Are they blowing smoke?
That's entirely possible. Windows 8/8.1 absolutely spends more priority on hiding hardware latency than my Windows 7 station, or my Ubuntu station.
If you run it on a slow laptop, the OS is ten times more responsive than a program on the same OS, like Chrome. You can be spending 100% CPU and Disk usage on a task, ALT-TAB, and it'll show you some sort of JPEG compressed cache of what the program used to look like before the program finished responding to the PAINT event. (To often hilarious results when the delay is in the order of seconds.) They implemented lots of priority across all aspects of the kernel, be it disk, network, or memory I/O.
I absolutely hate the broken UI (half the "metro" B.S. equivalents wouldn't be so bad if they didn't remove dozens of useful buttons.), but Windows 8/8.1/10 is definitely becoming more efficient, and stressing user experience in regards to perceived latency.