Sunday, November 18, 2007

Vista SP1 a Performance Dud

Note: We've updated our data set to include results from Vista with 2GB of RAM and also with Office 2003 instead of 2007. Check out our revised numbers here.


With the initial performance characteristics of Windows Vista leaving much to be desired (see our previous post on the subject), many IT organizations have put off deploying the new OS until the first service pack (SP1) is released by Microsoft early next year. The thinking goes that SP1 will address all of these early performance issues and somehow bring Windows Vista on par with - or at least closer to - Windows XP in terms of runtime performance.

Unfortunately, this is simply not the case. Extensive testing by the exo.performance.network (www.xpnet.com) research staff shows that SP1 provides no measurable relief to users saddled with sub-par performance under Vista.

How We Tested

The above conclusion is based on an analysis of the RC0 (v.658) build of Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista. Testing was conducted on a dual-core Dell notebook with 1GB of RAM. The staff ran a variety of test scenarios against both "before" (RTM w/no updates) and "after" (RTM w/SP1 installed) configurations, using the DMS Clarity Studio testing framework to capture scenario scoring and metrics data for upload to the exo.repository.

  • During office productivity testing, the staff used the DMS Clarity Studio OfficeBench test script to drive Microsoft Office 2007 through a scripted set of productivity tasks, including creating a compound document and supporting workbooks and presentations materials.
  • To test multitasking performance, the staff used the ADO, MAPI and WMP Stress modules - all part of DMS Clarity Studio - to generate a multi-process workload scenario involving client/server database, workflow and streaming media tasks.

Note: DMS Clarity Studio is available as a free download from the exo.performance.network (www.xpnet.com) site. Simply register for your free DMS Clarity Analysis Portal account to access these and other free tools from xpnet.

Test Results

During OfficeBench testing we noted a statistically insignificant delta (~2%) in favor of the SP1-patched configuration. CPU Saturation, Memory Pressure and I/O Contention factors were all comparable, as were process specific metrics - including the Thread Utilization and Thread Growth Potential Indices.

image

Figure 1 - OfficeBench Completion Times (Seconds)

The multitasking scenario was also comparable, with the ADO and MAPI Stress workloads showing a delta of less than 1% in favor of the SP1-patched configuration. As with the OfficeBench test scenario, system and process metrics for CPU, Memory and I/O were all nearly identical between the two configurations.

image

Figure 2 - ADO and MAPI Avg. Transaction Times (Seconds)

Note: For more information on the various system and process metrics employed in this article, please login to your private DMS Clarity Analysis Portal site and refer to the Glossary section of the Online Help

Not yet a member of the exo.performance.network? Sign up today! It's free, and you'll be helping us to build the world's first global repository of computer performance-related knowledge and data.

Conclusions

After extensive testing of both RTM and SP1-patched versions of Windows Vista, it seems clear that the hoped-for performance fixes that Microsoft has been hinting at never materialized. Vista + SP1 is no faster than Vista from the RTM image.

Bottom Line: If you've been disappointed with the performance of Windows Vista to date, get used to it. SP1 is simply not the panacea that many predicted. In the end, it's Vista's architecture - not a lack of tuning or bug fixes - that makes it perform so poorly on systems that were "barn-burners" under Windows XP.

113 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mind you, they'd be charging you for SP1 if the "market allowed".

gjv said...

How does this compare to the results of the same tests run under XP SP2 on the same hardware?

Research Staff said...

giv,

See our previous post on "What Intel Giveth, Microsoft Taketh Away" for numbers from XP SP2 vs. Vista RTM. Basically, Vista is roughly 2x slower than XP on the same hardware across the board.

RS

Anonymous said...

How is this relevant without comparing the same thing in XP. Your previous article only compared Office 2007 on Vista vs Office 2003 on XP.

Is it really Vista that is the problem or is it Office 2007? If it's Office 2007 that is the problem any change in Vista SP1 would not make any difference for the benchmarks.

Anonymous said...

Not only are you comparing Office 2007/Vista with Office 2003/XP you are running your tests in a virtual machine. This is notoriously unreliable as Vista contains performance enhancements that use the hardware better, e.g. better ordering of I/O requests based on priority / position on physical disk that will be negated by running in a virtual environment. It is also more a test of how well you Virtual Machine software handles XP vs Vista as all virtualisation solutions contain optimisations for each specific OS. I would even expect the gap to be closed if you repeated the same tests using updated versions of your virtualisation software now they have had more optimisation opportunities.

Repeat your tests running Office 2007 / XP with Office 2007 / Vista on physical hardware with no virtual machine and you may then have some meaningful results.

Until then you have some numbers that may or may not bare any similarity to the real situation. You may as well have used a random number generator for all these comparisons tell you.

In fact Long Zheng performed some peformance comparisons between RTM and an earlier version of SP1 in a virtual machine and saw no difference. He repeated on physical hardware and suddenly saw performance gains.

miya said...

Everybody is whining about Vista Performance. Guys guys, let me tell you something...IT DOESNT MATTER. Microsoft is Microsoft. Consumers dont do squat to avoid Vista getting installed into their brand new laptops/desktops. It just a matter of time. Eventually, in a couple of months/years almost everybody will be using Vista.

Remember, *it doesnt matter if it sucks*, unless people start doing something about it. (Like me, I just dont buy any Microsoft stuff and using Gentoo.)

cya!!

Research Staff said...

mog0,

I think you're confusing the two articles. In the "What Intel Giveth" posting we indeed used VMware for some of the tests. However, the SP1 vs. RTM testing was all done on native hardware, specifically, a Dell XPS M1710 notebook with a 2GHz Core 2 Duo CPU and 1GB DDR-2 667MHz RAM.

RS

Anonymous said...

Actually, I'm really glad to see these results.

I have already eliminated Vista from around ten PCs and I will keep on doing that until Windows 7 is out or people finally decide to get free of the Microsoft claws.

As for me, I've been running Linux for almost a decade.

// Artem S. Tashkinov

Anonymous said...

Excuse me, but this is really just pointless. Why would you want to compare performance on hardware configurations that work great with XP, to Vista? It's rather idiotic! Why don't you just do a performance comparison on hardware that run Windows ME to XP. With every new operating system, you need more ram and better video capability. If you're too cheap to buy new hardware, then you don't need to be running Vista. If you're happy with XP and 1 gig of ram, then don't try to run Vista. If you do want Vista, go get some hardware that will run it or at the very least, buy another gig of ram. It's really that simple. I can't believe the mentaility of people that think they should be able to run the latest operating system with the same performance as an old operating system. Do you recall when XP came out and how long ago that was? The whole test is very stupid! It reminds me of those university studies that say there are differences between men and women or that dogs behave differently in the wild than in domestic situations. Really? And you spent time and money to conclude this? Tell, ya what; just stop wasting everyone's time with idiotic comparisons on minimum spec hardware. In fact, maybe you should just go back to running Windows 98.

Anonymous said...

my Vista runs faster than XP. Your tests are fault.

DarwinOSX said...

"With every new operating system, you need more ram and better video capability."

Not with Mac or Linux.

blink4blog said...

sometime it is true that Windows is getting worse, from one release to another. time and effort by competitors had shown copy cat trick back in Windows 95 time is overed.

my 800ghz g4 with 640mb of ram still rocks running mac os x 10.4.10 without much hiccups during normal operation, but i bet these kinda of speed can run windows xp or windows 2000 smooth as silk.

Anonymous said...

"Not with Mac or Linux."

Not exactly true, Leopard needs a higher hardware spec than the previous version.

I'm not defending Microsoft, but generally you add more features to any program, the code gets bigger and requires more resources.

Anonymous said...

Terry you are retarded....Are you telling me that you didn't a memory upgrade oe that your mac wasn't much slower when you upgraded from os 9 to osX. gimme a break, you would be the only person in the world. then.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for taking the effort and time to do these performance tests and posting them in your blog. Don't listen to those who say your tests are idiotic. It just means they're not your target audience. We are your target audience (those who thank you).

Again, thank you, and I hope to see more of your test results in the future.

Anonymous said...

It's not a "Service Pack", it's a Marketing Pack.

Customer: This sucks, I'll wait for SP1.

Marketing: Quick release something and call it SP1.

Anonymous said...

Do you really think running this test on only one machine is a accurate way of determining if there has been a performance gain in SP1?? Any logical tester would run this test on multiple machines (new & old) to be sure that they are measuring the actual performance of the OS and not some hardware limitation.

Not to mention this is a beta release of the SP not a RTM.. So it's going to be inaccurate anyway.. What about debug code?? You guys know what that is?

You have no credibility what so ever..

BTW so you flamers can back off. Not only am I a Systems/Network engineer with 14 years experience but this was written from my Mac (Leopard) which is currently hosting Vista (Boot camp), XP and Unbuntu (parallels).

Anonymous said...

From France...
I have Xp Sp2 and Vista32 and Vista64 on a multi boot PC
(Asus A8R32 mvp deluxe, AMD opteron 175, 2GB crucial ballitix, samsung 320 gb 16mb cache, ATI x850xt pe)
My impression is: vista 64 is impressive, faster than vista 32.
Vista 32 is on par or just a little bit faster than XP.
All in all, my choice is Vista32...
(fast, stable, pretty, compatible)

Important : i cleaned xp, vista32, vista64 services and startup sequence with codestuff starter freeware, i use nod32 antivirus...

Anonymous said...

Vista tests should be run with 2 gigs + of ram. Ram should be at least double that of XP. Vista openly demands more resources than XP. 2 gigs of ram (2 x 1 gig dual channel ddr2) can be had for $50 - $70. If a business can't afford to spend this amount for a ram uprade and a move to a modern system (chipset/cpu released within the last 2 years) then running Vista is a very strange choice. Just like cutting off your right foot before running a marathon. 2 gigs of ram is the minimum any respectable system builder would recommend for a basic home setup under Vista. I believe that you should either run tests again with more ram or include something to indicate what a poor choice 1 gig of ram is for Vista.

Thanks.

Anonymous said...

almost useless- until the same test is run on the same hardware with a copy of xp.

how in hell a sp should improve performance? it could tweak a bit here and there, fix some redundancy and other cleanups, but is not the passage from a rc0 to a release.

Unknown said...

1 gig ram?? With 1 gig ram Vista is IO bound to the HD. Please re-run the tests with 2 gig ram, this is a more realistic scenario. When recommending a system for a family member or friend, I don't spec anything less than 2 gig for any OS.

Anonymous said...

Stupid test, always the sames articles, always the sames shortcut.
Most benchmarks except for gaming (photoshop, vs compilation etc) said one thing : XP & vista performance are very near.

Anonymous said...

http://www.spec.org/gwpg/publish/vista_paper.html

Anonymous said...

Vista performs poorly with 1GB of RAM—you might as well have performed the benchmarks with 512MB. Try this again with 2GB please.

Unknown said...

In response to all the comments claiming you should use at least 2gigs of RAM.

The mere fact that Vista requires another gig of RAM over XP should reason enough to despise the operating system.

XP, Leopard, and Linux all run perfectly well with 1G of RAM. I don't see why Vista shouldn't be held to the same benchmark of efficiency on hardware. The fact of the matter is Vista is bloated and poorly made.

And finally to the poor soul who commented he was waiting for Windows 7. Don't get your hopes up buddy.

Unknown said...

In response to network_jim.

While I don't doubt your experience, (okay, maybe I do just a little). Debug code should not be an issue. If it is then MS needs to learn how to use #if 0.

Anonymous said...

I am pulling Vista from a Toshiba Laptop as we speak and loading a copy of XP Why,?? They were stupid enough to sell this thing with Vista and 512 Mb of ram :) The customer is now ticked and says she'll never buy another Toshiba. I'm not gonna tell her that it was the ram that is causing the thing to be slower than the first computer she ever owned. Toshiba deserves that for putting a Laptop on the market with vista and 512..Stupid people. M$ too, what a pig this vista is "Continue"? or "Deny". They just can't leave well enough alone. Finally XP is somewhat stable, then they put out IE 7 and refuse to admit that it causes HP scanners to not work anymore among other wierd things to happen, Then they come out with Vista Pig, Then MS Office 2007, which by the way you have to "back save" documents to be compatible with a previous version of Office. How stupid. Giving us all the more reason to look at pushing Ubuntu on destops to residential customers.

Make another Buck Bill, just like capitalizing on the Y@K craze with ME Edition!!!

Unknown said...

Why are we comparing Linux, XP, OS/X to Vista in this article? The article was about whether Vista SP1 is any faster than Vista RTM. To make this a valid comparison on Vista, take hardware out of the equation by running it on a high end PC - quad core, 2-3 gig ram, and an 8800 GTX or Ultra card and a 10-15K rpm HD.

I have an Athlon XP 1800 with 1 gig ram running Ubuntu, and when I upgraded from 7.04 to 7.1, I noticed a decrease in speed so it's not just a Windows issue.

Anonymous said...

I purchased a consumer notebook six months ago. All of the machines I looked at in the stores shipped with standard 1gb of memory and were advertised as "Vista ready". So I don't think the test configuration is unreasonable.
Boot time 2-3 times longer than XP on the same machine; inexplicable delays copying ridicuously small files; software incompatibilities requiring upgrades (Photoshop 7 works fine - Acrobat 6 Professional not). Too many "there seems to be a problem with this software" dialogs.
Installed XP. Fast. Happy. Voids warranty.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for doing the tests. Great info.
The more you add to any bit of code the more resources it consumes. So far we have noticed that only our retail customers are purchasing Vista. NONE of our business customers have purchased Vista.
We have several machines of varying specs on Demo with Vista and XP. Vista does require more grunt just to keep up with XP. This is a fact. However the same thing occured in the transition btn DOS and Windows, 3.11 and 95, 98 and XP. I believe the biggest problem is hardware manufacturers trying to offload machines at a cheap price and the stupid consumer cant get enough of them. Yet they still expect them to perform ??? You do get what you pay for.
Apart from third party driver issues we have had no other problems with Vista.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for doing the tests. Great info.
The more you add to any bit of code the more resources it consumes. So far we have noticed that only our retail customers are purchasing Vista. NONE of our business customers have purchased Vista.
We have several machines of varying specs on Demo with Vista and XP. Vista does require more grunt just to keep up with XP. This is a fact. However the same thing occured in the transition btn DOS and Windows, 3.11 and 95, 98 and XP. I believe the biggest problem is hardware manufacturers trying to offload machines at a cheap price and the stupid consumer cant get enough of them. Yet they still expect them to perform ??? You do get what you pay for.
Apart from third party driver issues we have had no other problems with Vista.

taki said...

"With every new operating system, you need more ram and better video capability. If you're too cheap to buy new hardware, then you don't need to be running Vista."

No wonder you posted Anonymously, because that's one of the most moronic things I've read in ages. With every new version of OS X, it runs faster than the one before on my 3.5 year old, 1.3GHz Powerbook. OSs should get more efficient with time, not less. And you should never have to buy faster hardware unless you have some new computing need that is more hardware intensive than your old needs.

You obviously know nothing of either computer hardware or operating systems.

Anonymous said...

Can XP Support 8GB RAM like Vista Ultimate x64? I here you shout XP 64. Does XP 64 have better driver/product support than Vista, no. Hence why I use Vista. Also I find Vista runs faster than XP on my hardware. XP good for people who have 3GB RAM or less. Vista 100% more stable for me ;P.

Anonymous said...

It looks like Vista SP1 may not provide much of a performance increases. If this is true, then it...

Eileen Langdon said...

Quote: "Basically, Vista is roughly 2x slower than XP on the same hardware across the board."

Every reputable test run that I've seen as well as my own observations from installs of Vista vs XP have concluded that Vista runs at the same speed or slightly slower than XP. Also, to run these tests on a laptop with 1GB of ram is laughable.

This blog has absolutely no credibility when it makes patently false comments and conducts tests that are not realistic. No one in their right mind would run Vista with 1GB of ram if they want any kind of decent performance.

Anonymous said...

taki said: "And you should never have to buy faster hardware unless you have some new computing need that is more hardware intensive than your old needs."

Wow, if this is true I should be able to run practically any OS out there on my old 200 mhz HP. I don't have any new hardware intensive needs. You should have saved yourself some money and purchaed an old original MAC.

Vista has a lot of new services running compared to XP so it runs slower on meager hardware. Examples are desktop search, the image library and anti-spyware to name a few. You get decent hardware and it is a nice OS.

Look at what IBM has done since the early sixties. Practically every new OS for a mainframe required new hardware. New services use more cpu cycles, memory and disk space. It is the way of life in the computer business. Users want new and more powerful programs so upgrades are necessary.

Anonymous said...

my vista doesn't run any more..........i've switched to linux

Anonymous said...

Vista--an operating system designed to make a Intel Core 2 system with 2 Gb RAM feel like an 8088 with 64 Mb of RAM. --AC

Anonymous said...

Has this blog been overrun by M$ employees? What is up with all the vitriol? And the lame excuses for Vista?
We should "expect" that the OS become increasingly lamer? We should put up with the lame OS requiring 2Gb(!!!) of RAM??
To lame M$ employees: Please check what your customers are buying. Go to Dell: Almost every system is sold with only 1Gb of RAM. Yes, you can upgrade, but most people won't.
Every Linux distro and OS X manage to run well with 1Gb of RAM, so please quit the lame excuses. Vista is a dud. Period.

Anonymous said...

I can confirm, that there is no performance benefit with this SP1 pre-beta, for now. I've tested the 32 bit version. As someone above explained, the SP1 build available today contains Debug-Code. So it is possible, that the SP1 Vista final will be faster. On the other side, my PC runs very much smoother with XP SP2. Tested with various benchmarks, games ... That's a fact. Greetings

Anonymous said...

My Readyboost Stick dosn't work with this build anymore. Has anybody else noticed this issue too?

Research Staff said...

We have an 8GB Corsair Flash Survivor in the lab we use for testing (*very* nice stick, BTW - extremely fas writes). Seems to work just fine with SP1 under Vista x64.

RS

Anonymous said...

Curiously it is working fine with Vista RTM. With this Vista SP1 build, vista tells me the stick is to slow. That's definitivly wrong.

Anonymous said...

A poor SP1 comparison
http://brandonlive.com/2007/11/19/a-poor-sp1-comparison/

As I read up on the latest TechMeme news this morning I saw a headline that didn’t seem quite right, "Vista SP1 a Performance Dud" it said. Intrigued, I clicked on the link and discovered an entire blog devoted to rather poor performance testing and entirely unhelpful rants.

The author of the SP1 comparison claims to have run the SP1 "RC1 Preview" build on a virtual machine to compare its performance in various tasks against that of an unpatched RTM system. I assume by "unpatched" he means no updates at all - as there are several "pre-SP1" hotfixes out there that will undoubtedly make it more difficult to quantify the degree of difference between Vista and Vista SP1.

So what were the various tasks he compared? Apparently, he used two scripted productivity benchmarks I’ve never heard of. One drives Office 2007 through various tasks, and the other is supposed to measure multitasking performance by exercising "ADO, MAPI, and WMP."

The author then notices a 1-2% performance improvement, and goes on to say that Vista SP1 is a "performance dud."

The problems

Virtualization. Running performance tests in a virtual machine is good for one thing: Measuring performance of the virtual machine. It is far from an accurate representation of what users will encounter on real hardware.
Coverage. The most substantial performance gains in SP1 affect the areas most hindered under Vista RTM: games, file operations (copy / move / delete), standby/resume, and citizenship of background services. It appears that none of these were tested in this comparison.
Perceived Performance. While measured performance of file operations in Vista SP1 is significantly improved, even further gains exist in "perceived performance." This is mainly due to improvements to Vista’s file transfer dialogs, which now begin reporting data about transfer rate and time much sooner and more accurately.
Advertising. The comparison includes advertising for the benchmark tool used. Apparently it is developed by the same company publishing these results, and they want to rope you into signing up for some kind of membership. This increases my skepticism level slightly.
Ranting. The entire blog seems devoted to ranting about Microsoft, complaining about Vista and Office, and making sweeping conclusions from insufficient data.
It is my hope that we’ll see more accurate comparisons start to spring up that clearly demonstrate the sometimes substantial performance gains included in SP1. Of course, SP1 isn’t going to turn a slow computer into a fast one. But if you’re facing compatibility issues that are affecting your system’s performance - it very well may help. In some areas, like gaming or copying/moving files via Explorer, everyone will notice the improvements.

Anonymous said...

The demo of SP1 I saw at Tech-ED in Barcelona last week showed real-time difference between RTM and SP1 in 2 areas:
Copying a 400Mb file (same partition)
Zipping a 600Mb file (using in-built compression)
The test scripts are focused on Office productivity and ADO/MAPI so these benefits will not show up.

Research Staff said...

brandon,

Please take the time to actually *read* the post in question before commenting. If you had done so you would note that we tested SP1 on the *bare iron* of a Dell XPS M1710 notebook. Nowhere did we mention virtualization. Please get your facts straight before attempting to discredit the hard work of our dedicated team.

RS

Anonymous said...

"Steven Oliver"

If you think that running a poorly constructed benchmark on a preview release (essentially a late cycle beta release) SP1 is good procedure and that it will provide a valid outcome, your experience is way more suspect then mine.

Show me any beta or any program that contains debug code that runs at the full speed of the final release..

Face it these guys are computer quacks..

To all the winers who are complaining that Vista uses more memory where have you been for the past 30 years?? I have Vista, Leopard & Linux and guess what each time the OSs have been updated to a major revision they need more ram.. SO WHAT ram is a commodity.. It's cheap.. I'm sorry if your no willing or capable to upgrade your hardware regularly but face it new hardware is the price of progress. Next you'll be complaining that Vista runs like garabage on your 286.. waa waa Linux runs on it blah blah blah.. YA WITH NO FEATURES, NO GUI, NO Modern applications.

Get over it you big babies. Its just a OS.. damn..

Anonymous said...

Hi,

I've got some new/old hardware mix in my PC. intel 915 chipset, 3.4Ghz Pentium, 2X WD raptors on Raid 0. Had 1 Gb of RAM and Radeon 800XT when first installed Vista (been playing with it since early betas). Because I touhgt that betas are far from good I did not change anything in hardware until final release hoping that it will fix preformance issues which I had plenty.
After dissapointed with final release (it worked even slower for me) I added another gig of RAM. Performance increase was quite obvious> Then I replaced video with radeon HD2900 - no difference.

Sorry for long post but 2 points mostly discussed here:

1. Its vital for vista to have at least 2 Gigs of RAM if you dont want to suffer

2. Because I had XP on the same machine prior to Vista - Vista is a lot slower than XP on same hardware

Anonymous said...

Laimis,
on my old PC with 768MB only and a geforce 6200, Windows Vista is faster than XP

Eileen Langdon said...

I can't believe anyone would whine about Vista needing more memory to run efficiently. Anybody who runs PCs knows that the more memory you have the better. Why would you try and run Vista with 1GB when you can upgrade to 2GB for the insane price of around $50.00?

Anonymous said...

Want a horse to run faster but do not want to feed it grasses? Can your boss pay you the same amount for more works and better performance from you?

Guys, don't give illogical and unfair criticism on Vista. How can you expect Vista to run as fast or faster than XP on the same piece of hardware (and at the same time enjoying the graphical rich aero effects from Vista)?

The above comparisons are just trying to prove that Vista SP1 will not give significant improvement over Vista RTM (so don't wait until the release of Vista SP1 for your purchase decision). Nobody is talking about XP here my friends. XP is out of topic here.

Anonymous said...

Aero uses the DirectX9 graphics card to render the whole desktop and so it frees the CPU and improve the system responsiveness.

Anonymous said...

Windows Vista has a lot better memory managment.

Anonymous said...

i have two serious problems with vista:

1. hard drive thrashing. it is unbearably bad on my home computer (a 1 year old dell dual core with 2 gb of ram). it is not a problem on my laptop. i have tried everything to stop the thrashing--no help. sp1 needs to fix this problem.

2. nvidia dual monitor display support. it is ridiculous--i have to reset the monitors almost every day--it forgets the settings. when i hooked up to a different monitor--the hard drive thrashed for 20 minutes and i gave up.

and as for this performance test--no one is complaining about how fast office works in vista. people are complaining about file copy times, startup times, hard disk thrashing, and various parts of vista that seem to hang.

Anonymous said...

Oustanding!
People comparing OS's with horses, such a consumist, that sees natural to spend hundreds of dollars to see fancy colors in a desktop, and
accept naturally the hogged experience.

You can toss gigs and gigs of ram with multicore processors, but what the heck that got to do with it?
Let's just adapt vista on a future cray supercomputer and will go fast sure.
Now just take a statistically normal pc, load it with, xp, linux, vista, and see what happens, vista is a fat pig!
You need to compare to get measures of things!!!

If you want to make rich M$ and hardware companies buying whatever shit they sell, that is ok, but don't rumble about because people doesn't run it on abnormally fast pc to make it look like something that works, because even when it works, does it like crap.

Anonymous said...

your hard drive is thrashing because you've installed an incompatibile antivirus such as kaspersky.
Install AVG Free 7.5 and your hard drive will keep in silence.

Anonymous said...

I would like to see additional testing from you guys with different test parameters. I wholeheartedly agree with the majority of the comments posted here about the ridiculousness of an operating system that requires such signifigant hardware and resources just to run a freakin OS. I myself am, unfortunately, one of these guinea pigs right now and although a part of me wanted to see SP1 actually do something, the realistic side knew this would happen. However I do appreciate the tests and keep up the good work guys. And judging by this thread as well as many other ones I have seen I will soon be upgrading to XP.

Anonymous said...

"Oustanding!
People comparing OS's with horses, such a consumist, that sees natural to spend hundreds of dollars to see fancy colors in a desktop, and
accept naturally the hogged experience."

Why not comparing DOS with Vista for the same hardware spec and say Vista is a fat pig? You will definitely say that DOS does not have the functionalities of what Vista has - and same to XP too!

Vista definitely needs some improvements but don't give irrational criticism, which can only show your hates toward Microsoft but not your wisdom. Don't be jealous of Bill Gates simply because you're too incapable. Let's face it and you always have the choice. Go for Linux/Mac then (or perhaps DOS if you like).

Anonymous said...

So people make comparison between mammals and OS's and i'm being irrational?

I don't have emotional disorders surrounding M$ ir Bill Gates, but you do seem to have it.
Vista can't do anything beyond other OS's capabilities, you just name something.

Oh yes, it does something that almost any other OS can't, and is eating RAM ALIVE, 1 gig to sustain the kernel and Office?? c'mon!

I have made a objective comparison, and you want to mislead the point comparing DOS, there's all your wisdom, because you can't deal with the facts.

"Go for Linux/Mac then (or perhaps DOS if you like)."
I will take care myself of my choices, you take care of yours, even if you'r "too incapable" to use other OS's besides kids OS

Anonymous said...

"(and at the same time enjoying the graphical rich aero effects from Vista)"
Even without overvaluated aero is an elephant.
Linux has better effects that run on older hardware many times faster.

Anonymous said...

A lot of heated arguments are going on here.

Basically, what the article is trying to say is that with the tests run, there is barely a performance improvement within Vista SP1. NOT ABOUT WHETHER VISTA SUCKS OR NOT

I don't deny that I dislike Windows. I for one thought the original XP was quite nice. In fact, if you customise XP to strip out your unneeded processes, it can run as light as Linux. However, that is no excuse. I have seen Vista, and it is bloated. No other words for it. When you compare Leopard with Vista, Leopard has more features, along with fancy graphics AND runs faster even with less RAM.

I know that OSX runs faster with each release, from 10.0 to 10.5. To people who talk about from OS9 to OSX, to say fairly, it's like going from W98 to WXP.

I still think though that Vista is overbloated, and MS could have done something to optimise the code. This might have prompted me to get a copy.

Even better, if they included WinFS and made it about as efficient as XP, I would have no qualms about paying for it.

However, right now I prefer sticking with Ubuntu 7.10. It just works for me. It has the fancy desktop effects. I'm not saying it's better than Vista in every way. I'm just saying it's better for me.

In conclusion, people with different needs will have different OSes to suit them. Me a couple of years back would have loved XP Pro. And would have upgraded to Vista. However, my needs have changed since then. And my ideal OS is OSX. It all depends on what you need.

So, please stop the flaming wars. There are forums for those.

Anonymous said...

nice... hope that tester were from APPLE INC...
lol
u guys never say truth..
and u will be a MAC fan..so u did the test wrong.

Anonymous said...

Anytime a test shows something not being optimal, people brags against it.

Sometimes is just because they are users of that less than optimal solution, in this case Vista. Do they feel less self respect about themselves?

Can't they accept that the choices they made AREN'T perfect?
If there's a need to comfort themselves about his choices, that's not good.
That is true for the other options too.

Saying that the test is unacceptable because the test wasn't run on 2 gig RAM, is like saying that a slow car is being slow because it isn't being tested downhill...

And don't forget that such amount of ram isn't freely used, there is a huge workload of process making use of it, and less cicles to do the user application.

Stop using flimsy argument against the test, if you wan't to argument, use facts, i see that the research staff do answer, so make an objective, sustained point to defy the test metodology.

Anonymous said...

What about extract, copy and paste? Is it any faster. I dont care about office...

Anonymous said...

XP is perfect. Vista just waste your computer resources for something you don't need. Just wait another year for them to perfect Vista...

Anonymous said...

1g of ram? ram costs $20 a GIG right now? a "dual core" cpu? how fast? a cheap dual core cpu is $50. Is that the one you are testing with? This test seems "designed" to make things look bad for vista. I saw an add for 4g of ram for $60 the other day. Please get Real.

Anonymous said...

research staff,

You are entirely missing the point.

You are asserting that Vista SP1 is a Performance Dud on the assumption that Vista was a performance dud in the first place.

You cite your previous article that showed that Vista was 50% slower than XP, and presumably you expect a significant part of that performance delta to be fixed in SP1.

The only problem is that Vista wasn't 50% slower than XP in the first place, because you ran the XP tests with Office 2003 and the Vista tests with Office 2007.

That is the problem, not that you are seeing small performance increases in SP1 compared with RTM.

Anonymous said...

"Designed"?, in a scenario where any other operative system does the job perfectly, it sucks. Seems that vista is "designed" to to eat more and do less.
"Eat the hardware, hog the software, wow is vista experience!"

Anonymous said...

Funny how people want it to be faster on the same old machines they ran XP on. Just like throwing a new air cleaner in an old car. Will run better but its still an old car and i am not expecting it to run better than a new one. Quite being cheap, it doesn't help you and in fact leaves you in the dark to dark for so long, you think MAC products are "new", like the Iphone, hahah thing does what my Dash did year and a half ago, but because the losers didn't get it back then they dumbed it down for the Apple folks to understand/ Only "advancement" was the touch screen, which will fail, due to screen issues uts like is has for the past 15 years.

Unknown said...

I agree with what some other users said. If you have more than 3GB of RAM and a 64 bit processor then go with Vista 64-bit. If not go with XP. But as long as you don't care about games you should really be going for Ubuntu. It doesn't have great driver support but at least you don't have to pay out the butt to build a Ubuntu machine and have it running good.
I built one for a friend with:
AMD Athalon 64 X2 2.2Ghz
1GB DDR2 800Mhz RAM
nVidia 7200GS
Some cheap motherboard (can't remember but I believe it was MSI)
160GB 7200RPM HDD
DVD Writer
Wireless Mouse+Keyboard
and an Apevia Micro ATX case

The most expensive part was the case and that was only 75$

All together the thing cost around 300$ with rebates, maybe 400 without. It runs 7.10 with graphics settings on high and with no hiccups.

wow this post really brings out the ADD in me...

Anonymous said...

my Windows Vista RTM runs faster than XP on every scenery:
- startup is faster
- I'm ready to use Windows as the Vista desktop appears
- responsiveness is better
- multitasking, I/O and memomy managment is excellent
The real benchmark should be based on these: responsiveness, multitasking, memory managment, I/O managment!!!

Anonymous said...

Then you must suffer from the worst installation of XP ever

Unknown said...

My Vista runs faster than XP.
If u don't have min 2G, XP will be faster, but with more than 2Gs Vista is a lot faster.

Anonymous said...

How can you test Vista with a setup with only 1 gig?

It's not strange that you get slow results. Same goes for XP if you only give it 512mb.

Why you didnt try it with 2 or 4 gigs? Look at the current prices for ddr2, this shouldnt be an excuse for the consumer not to upgrade.

Anonymous said...

Mijn Windows Vista Ultimate
are working bad , after using Regcure program it going better
But my Flash player are haking when I using IE7 (surfin)
Greeting John NeherlandsT

Anonymous said...

Personally, I think Microsoft now needs a performance reset. As I have said in some of my previous posts, I think software in general, and Microsoft software in particular, is getting slower at faster rate than hardware is getting faster. And this problem acutely affects Vista. I think Microsoft needs... (Pingback)

Anonymous said...

My question is: how can you call this "extensive testing"? You tested XP vs. Vista on a _single_ laptop. One. And from that _single_ laptop (which very well could have buggy Vista drivers or some process sucking down cycles) you conclude that XP is _two times_ as fast as Vista.

I can tell you this: I've used XP and Vista on four different systems, both notebooks and desktops, myself _personally_, and extensively, and I think I would notice a 50% drop in performance from XP to Vista.

Run your test on more than a single notebook, and you might be more credible. Incidentally, I'm not pro-Microsoft or pro-Vista, I'm pro-reason. And your test isn't reasonable.

Anonymous said...

Want to comment on some of the comments...

1. Microsoft has no history of charging for service packs unlike Apple.

2. Windows XP runs seven times slower on the same hardware in comparison to Windows 3.11 -- I assume the authors will want to revert to Windows 3.11 now. [/sarcasm]

3. Terry made a claim that you don't need more memory with Linux or OS X. Really?

OS X 10.0 required a G3 processor and 64mb of ram. OS X 10.5 requires a G4 or G5 or any Intel processor and 512mb of ram (1GB recommended).

Not sure there Terry but that seems to be a need for MORE ram and FASTER processor... you got any more of those denial drugs you are using?

Anonymous said...

I did some informal tests. I don't find Vista x2 slower than XP, though it is a little slower. However, GDI calls seems to be much slower. This is "by design", in that Vista is optimized for DirectX and treats GDI to some extent as legacy. I wonder if this is a factor in your test results?

More info here:

http://www.itwriting.com/blog/?p=430

Tim

Terry Hutchins said...

Okay, but c'mon Vista SP1 is not just about performance. Is about security too. Have you tested it? 1 GB of RAM is a pretty small amount for Vista to run. I am running XP on 2 Gigs and it's not what I want. Running memory extensive tasks such as running VMWare workstations on 4 Gbytes gives a significant performance boost. Have you tested low-level activity and data operations activity in Vista SP1? Ironically, I had to make a scan of my domain with Desktop Authority (it's a desktop management tool from Scriptlogic we use to manage computers here) to get a report of inventory we had in our network. We have near a thousand of computers in our Active Directory and it's nearly impossible to collect information about all this inventory using flat databases. It's even more impossible to extract the main key parameters that are only important for us to get a measure if our hardware meets hardware requirements that are needed to run Vista. But since that we made this check it was just a matter of time for us to make a hardware upgrade to be able to deploy Vista for our users. That doesn't mean we deployed it on every computer within the network. That's surely not true because we can’t install vista on all of our computers yet. That's mostly due to application compatibility issues. I guess, we'll immediately upgrade to Vista all remaining computers once we get updated versions for the applications we have to use to run out business. AS for the performance, I don't feel like Vista is a problem. I believe it's obsolete hardware that is acting as a bottleneck of all performance problems (if we leave alone the notorious application compatibility issues). I recently tested Windows Server 2008 R0 on my domain and I must say it runs like a dream on my old server hardware! And that all runs within a virtual sandbox within a VMware session! You know Windows Server 2008 codebase is based on Vista SP1. So I expect it to get me the same performance boost I see running Windows Server 2008 compared to Vista RTM. I highly recommend that everyone thinking about migrating to Vista add more RAM to their boxes. I see that adding additional 2 Gbytes of RAM to those of our computers that initially had only 2 Gbytes installed on them gives a significant performance computer to what the user experiences when working on 2 gigs. Additionally, I advocate making a detailed report of all the system s you own before migrating to a new system. Believe me, I am working in a fairly large IT department and we have the ability to talk with our users in an interactive real-time mode. We are using remote management and it’s built-in real chat functionality from that Scriptlogic desktop management product that I've mentioned above and belive me, we receive user responses to every action we take that influences their productivity. I remember we just tried to deploy Vista on systems that we're not fully compatible with recommendations written for a keeping best performance for that tasks that were assigned to users that we wanted to install Vista for. And we understood it quickly that we made a mistake deploying Vista to these slow-performing computers with obsolete hardware because once we made it we received a ton of user complaints about poor / degraded performance. At the same time that division that had new hardware running Core 2 Duo with 4 Gbytes of RAM experienced no performance issues. Moreover some users from that division were asking us why we delayed the deployment of a new system as they see it runs faster and easy to use despite the expectations. The best thing here with the deployment procedure that we are using is that we can roll-back the deployments if we see that they don't fit our requirements. So we just configured users to get their old Windows XP systems the next day after we received the complaint letters and chat requests. All the configuration settings were retained much close to what you get using roaming profiles but with a far more granular precision - with that management tool it's possible to migrate settings exactly as they were configured for another environment. So we moved that department back to their Windows XP environment retaining configuration settings they had on Windows XP before we moved them to Widows Vista and these changes we made for them during that single day when they worked on Vista. That's what I love in desktop management with Scriptlogic's tool and that's what I love in working with Windows Vista. They are both smooth and secure. Sure Widows Vista can be worrying for administrator since you never know how it would work for your user and you always need to make a blind test and pray everything will work for you once you deployed it. But with desktop management you just can configure everything from a single console and you don’t have your user to configure anything in his environment on his own. Windows Vista shares the same idea. For example you know services and user processes were separated and now they run in different sessions and cannot interact with user. The same idea is shared within Scriptlogic's tool. You just configure you user to get his standard configuration he needs to have to perform his work. You can prevent him from foing harmful things. You just configure his environment and you can sleep tight and don’t have to worry that he might change somethign and ruin all your work. The same thing with Vista. You can run a software and be assured that its service won't harm user environment and prevent other applications from running. As for performance I am more than surprised with the performance results and that you haven't seen a gain. One of the strong features of the management software I use is ability to configure virtualized environments and distinguish between physical and virtual environments. And all the task or my users perform within virtual environments can be tracked down using reporting collection. I must say that I have seen a dramatic performance boost while performing some operations on Windows Server 2008 that I usually run on Windows Server 2003 R2. That was an easy task because I can monitor and control performance parameters, CPU load, running processes, memory usage live right when the user is working on Vista using remote management feature from Desktop Authority. I am keen to know which parameters are measured in your tool?

Anonymous said...

The author, or should I say nOOb, of this article is obviously not well informed.
Betas or RCs are never as fast as the final realese because of the extensive debugging code they contain. Go back in time and you'll see that has always been the case with every new SP release.

Anonymous said...

Terry Hutchins, you said "You can run a software".

By saying " A <---software" you've pretty much lost all credit that you might have gained before you typed that line...

Anonymous said...

I really find a lot of this rather comical in the sense that people feel the need to spout of what type of system they have, or what operating system they've been using for the last 10 years. Who Cares?

Absolutely no one cares what your hardware specs are, your OS, how many years you've been a network or systems engineer, etc. It doesn't give any more credibility to your post, and it makes it sound rather silly.

Bottom line, Vista is slower than XP. On my home system, I compared Vista and XP on a quad-core duo2 system with 4 GB of RAM, and it's still slower than XP on an older AMD XP 2200 with 1GB of RAM.

In some ways, Vista is better, some nice bells and whistles, some nice overall improvements, and in many ways Vista really blows. Lots of little things have been moved or tweaked, for now apparent reason. Why on earth can't you drag and drop into the command prompt anymore? That SUCKS! Robocopy is included now, which is nice, but things that people have been doing for years, suddenly has to be re-learned now because Microsoft decided to revamp the locations... shake things up a little. :)

Hopefully RTM SP1 will offer performance boosts, and hopefully it's not now because it's debug code and doing a lot more checks and logging (by design).

As for "if a company can't spend $70 for more RAM", you have to take a step back for a second and realize some companies, like the one I work for, have over 15,000 desktops. So deciding to make 2GB the new standard across the board suddenly becomes a huge investment. Especially considering when there are budgets in a dozen other areas that are more important relative to infrastructure (SAN upgrades, Server provisioning/consolidation, software licensing, support costs, hardware refreshes, software lifecycles, etc).

I would agree with you for a small shop, but not everyone works in those environments.

I was really hopeful for Vista, but it looks like it might turn out to be the WinME of this century. Let's hope MS learns from this one, and gets it right with Windows 7 (or whatever it ends up being).

On a side note, it looks like Server 2008 is shaping up to be a great product, and definitely steps in the right direction.

Anonymous said...

I am a database developer working with SQL Server 2005. At the customer I'm using a dual-core 3.06GHz Xeon with 4 GB memory and Vista Business. At my home office I have a 2.8 GHz P-4 with 2 GB memory and XP Pro SP2. My 4-year-old P-4 is noticeably faster than the Xeon, in spite the powerful CPU and double the RAM.

Anonymous said...

32-bit: stick with XP
64-bit: go with Vista

Vista seems to really shine when you're using 4+ GB of RAM. Otherwise, it's a dud.

Anonymous said...

Oh dear, what is all the fuss about speed!!! Does shaving half a second off Word opening or closing mean anything?? NO. Vista is far better than XP, nicer to use and more secure. All the people who moan about security issues should stop visitng porn sites and downloading unknown software. I am online 24/7 with AVG protecting me and not once have I had any kind of infection. And those of you waiting for Windows 7 wont be happy either, you're the sort of people who never by any electronic item because you want to wait for the next model! The next model never comes, its called progress, then next model has been surpassed by the time it hits retail.

Anonymous said...

Linux, you are having a laugh arent you. For a start theres about 5 million different versions, all the software is crap. The ones I've tried takes ages to install then make the process of installing drivers and software amazingly over complicated. The only think Linux is any use for is running servers! Home users and office users dont have time to try and fathom an OS which has been cobbled together by 6000 people from all 20 corners of the globe! LINUX SUCKS!

OSX is now overbloated with Leopard, hang on a mo, it looks just like Vista! I have seen more MAC users convert to Vista PC's than PC users want to convert to MAC. Mainly because Apple are overpriced, expensive to repair and look like toys!

Face it will you, Windows is No 1, always has been and always will, its easy to use, works and thats all that matters!

Anonymous said...

Wost test scenario I have ever seen. Could you not afford another gig of RAM. These Mickey Mouse test scenarios being run all over the internet by self proclaimed experts is amazing.

Anonymous said...

The tests here are pretty much negative to my initial impression of Vista... My XPS M1330 comes with Vista Business, and my, I'm surprised its actually faster than my XPS M1210 with Windows XP Pro SP2 in terms of loading Windows, loading apps and running my day to day tasks... Both comes with the Intel Core 2 Duo T7500 CPU and 4GB of memory... I don't game on my lappies, so I'm not sure where does the 3D performance lies, but heck I'm an IT Architect, gaming is the least I need to be concern of... Back then when Windows XP first came out, everyone is complaining about how slow Windows XP is and they swear by Windows 98, crucifying Windows XP. And now? They swear by Windows XP saying its the fastest OS, did they forget about how fast Windows 98 was? My oh my people forget stuff really fast nowadays, hypocritical I can say...

Unknown said...

So many flamers here are saying, in effect, "if you don't EXPECT to increase hardware with each new OS release, your either a cheapskate or a noob!" The marketing folks at Intel and Microsoft must be jumping in glee to know their dysinformation campaign has been so successful. It is to boggle the mind.

I wouldn't mind the hardware entry fee for the next-greatest-OS from Microsoft if I had a compelling reason to use it. What is the compelling (erstwhile "killer app") feature in Vista that makes me want to upgrade RAM, upgrade CPU, upgrade (whatever) to get it?

....waiting....

no answers, eh?

That's the whole point. There isn't one.

You can scroll the Windows 3D Rolodex and giggle for a few minutes, and play with a few gadgets on the sidebar, but after that, what's new? What's *really* driving you to Vista?

Nothing, I'll bet.

Right now, Microsoft's flagship OS has flagging sales, because corporate adoption rates are abysmal. Vista's success rate is due almost entirely to new PC purchases, which is the only reason I have it. Every day, I get that much closer to blowing it away, reformatting the drive, and getting XP on it while its still available.

The tradeoff? I probably won't be able to use my new fingerprint reader. As I can barely get it to work anyway, I hardly consider that a loss.

There were compelling reasons to move from old, original Windows to 98, and from 98 to NT, and from NT to XP. But this time, I've yet to see a compelling reason.

Mind you, I don't *dislike* Vista. I just don't see anything *compelling* about it. And when I see its network performance issues, its idiotic security interfaces, its poor disk transfer rates, I start to see *lots* of reasons *not* to keep Vista - especially when I see people argue like 10 year olds that I oughta just pay up and get more hardware. And that's just plain silly.

Tradeoffs of cash for OS features are made consciously, not merely for the sake of watching money fly out of one's wallet. Right now, I don't see anything in Vista that compels me to spend $1 for it when XP lurks as a proven, demonstrably faster, and entirely viable alternative.

-David

Anonymous said...

"The more you add to any bit of code the more resources it consumes."

Hmm. Well, Service Pack 3 for Windows XP is still in RC (Release Candidate) stage. You can torrent for version 3282 and test it. Preliminary tests between XP SP2 and XP SP3 RC1 show SP3 to be faster. So much for that expression.

MSFT has continually released slower products because of sloppy coding. After all: how long will it last? New hardware covers their sloppy code by executing it quickly. Eventually they pull the plug (XP will no longer be supported in roughly 150 days from the date this was posted) and leave that version drifting into past history.

I dare say Windows 7 will likely be a horror story, based on MSFT's release history. I feel sad for those who are hoping to skip Vista for the Windows 7 "lifesaver". It'll probably be a heavier anchor.

The Point
Newer doesn't have to be slower. We're just so used to it that we've come to accept it. We're drawn by the glitter of MSFT promises that a computer will be able to do so much more. I only see a clown balancing too many plates on top of sticks and the definite sound of crashing china reveals the failed mission.

Anonymous said...

You don't even receive some of the benefits of Vista unless you're using at least 2GB of RAM (and the more the better). One of the main enhancements is it's ability to trend your program usage and load those applications into unused portions of memory before the times you typically use them throughout the day (i.e., if you start Firefox every morning at 8am it will load Firefox into memory during idle time beforehand).

Vista clearing needs more hardware power than XP, that's without question. I tried with with 512MB of Ram, talk about ugly. I've tried it with 4GB of ram and it was very impressive. Sucks I had to buy $60 with of ram upgrades but in comparison to the money I would have shelled out on a Mac it's nothing (no offense to the Mac, it has a stunning interface but cost wise is just too expensive).

Anonymous said...

You don't have to wait too long running vista to encounter that performance issues are true! I'm happy with ultra fast XP!

Anonymous said...

BTW. After I have installed SP1 on vista, my performance has risen. Strange? isn't it?

Anonymous said...

Vista works just fine for me. Some of the new features with the WaveRT drivers I like VERY much. Sonar flies on it... FL Studio absolutely smokes... Reason 4??? Oooh Weee... I love it!

Anonymous said...

The truth is windows vista handles dual core better than XP

Anonymous said...

I been using Vista since before it was released and the only time I had any problem with it, is when I was beta testing. When came RTM then I never had hardly anything bug me. I had maybe around 10 bsod in Vista since 2006. I notice alot of complaining because of speed but there are soooo many people that said already that every new OS needs hardware upgrade. Anyone knows technology changes and that they need to upgrade to use. Just like buying games. You think games are going to stay with same technology every year for years? No. New hardware means making games faster, means making OS updated, means faster hardware to run OS, and games. Any person that is Computer knowledge knows that everything in computer world is updated to faster capabilities, comparing an old OS like xp sp2 to newer OS like Vista, is like Comparing nvidia geforce 7xxx series with geforce 8xxx series, and asking why there is such a big difference? Obviously the difference is technology, duh. Point made.

Unknown said...

"Terry Hutchins, you said "You can run a software".

By saying " A <---software" you've pretty much lost all credit that you might have gained before you typed that line..."

Exactly my thoughts too! hehe

Anonymous said...

good bye microsoft

Anonymous said...

100th Post!!!
ya Uh Vista is way slower but we have to use it because of its new DirX10

Anonymous said...

I have Vista and from the start the only problem I had with two different configs was learning that Third party TRASH is the cause of 99% of the faults. MS offers clear and well defined rules and parameters for those wishing to create both software and drivers for Windows, but then tose very vendors refuse to follow such, thinking that they know more than MS. Don’t follow the rules and you don’t work. Of course from the responses here I can see that most of you think you know more than MS and will continue to use useless Registry trashers amongst the other list of garbage out there and then blame Bill who doesn't even sit on the board of MS anymore. You don't have anything better to do with your time than to try to defame people and organizations with your hate and vitriol in order to puff up your own. This is what our society has come to. No wonder we are rapidly becoming the worlds laughing stock. We spend more time trying to destroy the nation and those in it in the name of self importance. Vista works wonderfully. SP1 is even better. Oh! By the way I did read the instructions AND followed them before installing either. For the uninitiated and losers go buy Applesauce. You won't have any options and even less ability, on top of paying 3 to 5 times the money. For those who know how not to trash out their machine before the warranty even runs out. Go for it. VISTA rules.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for your article
Nice piece of work! I'm expecting more soon!
Keep up the good work! Cheers

Anonymous said...

I dont know about you guys but ever since i got it my wireless has been slow as hell, most of my net anyways its horrible! I'm getting rid of it.

Anonymous said...

Honestly, Service Pack 1 didn't do anything to Vista as far as I can tell on the performance level. I've used many different apps and even in some cases I've noticed MORE sluggish performance. I don't trust Microsoft, never did, never will. They have built shoddy operating systems for a while now.

Anonymous said...

I bought a Vista-loaded notebook a few months ago and it looked like a huge mistake. With SP1, Microsoft has confirmed that it was indeed a huge mistake.

My next buy will be a mac, regardless of what wonders Microsoft does in the coming days.

Anonymous said...

Vista !
to be,or not to be:that is the question !?

Anonymous said...

I agree we have to accept Vista needs more resources if it does more than XP. I didn't upgrade to Vista, I bought a new notebook - it was time to replace the old one, I got a dual processor, 2GB, compared to slower single processor and 1GB on the old machine. I didn't want Vista I just wanted a new and faster machine with a bigger hard drive, but Vista was all I was offered, so that's what I got - I was advised pay more for the 2GB for optimum performance, I now realize that was another way of saying I needed the 2GB for any performance. If I wanted Vista then I would be more accepting, but I had no choice. I loaded the same software as before, even the same Office but it felt slower, I haven't got any measurements but for sure it wasn't faster. I didn't like the prompts either but that's a minor point for me. The thing that bothered me was that I had more than doubled the machine spec expecting performance and I experienced no performance gain. (I also couldn't run an app becsue of no driver available). I had spent a lot of money, and all I really benefited from was a larger disk. I bought an OEM XP and installed that, wiping Vista, and it is fantastic now because I'm seeing some gain from the new hardware I paid for. We need to consider that the cost of Vista is not just the cost of the OS, we are all buying hardware as part of the deal, the real cost of Vista is also the hardware upgrade, that's what we are all paying and that is costly. I didn't need Vista, it chose me, I'm sure a lot of people will want it, cool graphics etc, but I'm happy for now. MS will kill XP, they dominate the market and they can do it. I guess I'll have to switch sometime (I don't want to use the word upgrade) but then maybe there will be quad processor notebooks and I'll feel better about a new OS.

Anonymous said...

Wow, it's getting busy here. I see people aren't happy with SP1! (as usual!)

Anonymous said...

I agree with all I heard and read about Vista. It's my 2nd trail of starting Vista. I got an Asus G2Notbook with 4GB RAM and Vista Ultimate 64. What I see and feel is unbelievable disappointing. I went through all development cycles of MS products since MS has started. We had some troubles with NT, W2000 and XP - but what I see and feel with Vista is the worst ever and unbelievable: always keeping in mind what HDD, CPU, BUS, Video and RAM power we have to support and run the same SW application bits since ages. SP1 did nothing to make it any better. Very very sad and extremly expensive for every enduser, who is forced to use Vista in a preloaded version.
I have switch back to XP - which I can say became very! reliable and quite stable - at least with older applications.
I hope that MS will respect what happens in the field and enhance this product to what is should be.

Anonymous said...

After reading your post and all the comments I am convinced that Service Pack 2 on Windows XP is so far the best to have.

Anonymous said...

Vista is the most secure, stable, reliable OS from Microsoft Those who claim that its a slow and bloated os don't meet the recommended requiremets or the minimum requirements to run the new features then just downgrade to Windows 95 or DOS and dont't annoy other people with stupid tests and comparisons .

Anonymous said...

I ..VISTA purchase.. have worried because I read your article.
The VISTA purchase will be waited for a little more.

Anonymous said...

Why does everyone whine about how new operating systems run on thier piece of junk computers? Get a job , buy a new PC.. I wouldn't own a PC with less then 8gb DDR3 Ram and at least 3 video cards and less then 2.21 ghz cpu... and Vista is way faster on my computers then XP ever was