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- Windows "Workstation" 2008 results lead to backlash from Vista zealots
- Windows "Workstation" 2008: One week later
- Windows "Workstation" 2008 Clobbers Vista in Benchmark Testing
- Microsoft owns up to Vista's flaws (sort of)
November 18, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Vista SP1 a Performance "Dud?"
Heads-up, Windows fans. I've got some bad news. You know all those nagging performance issues that have been plaguing Windows Vista since it went RTM last fall? Well, it looks like they're with us to stay. My colleagues over at the exo.performance.network (www.xpnet.com) have published some preliminary benchmarking numbers for Vista SP1, and the results are not encouraging. Here's the link to the their blog site:
There's a lot of meat in there, including performance numbers for Office 2007 and some complex multitasking workloads. As for the conclusion, to quote the exo-blog: "Vista + SP1 is no faster than Vista from the RTM image."
This, of course, will come as a disappointment for those of us who were hoping for some relief. As these same folks point out in another exo-blog post, exhaustive testing confirms that Windows Vista is at least twice as slow as Windows XP when running on the same hardware. So it's doubly painful to learn that the rumored performance tweaks Microsoft has been hinting at for SP1 simply "never materialized."
Bottom Line: Vista's performance is what it is, so "get used to it."
Note: While you're checking out the exo-blog, don't forget to drop by the main www.xpnet.com web site. As their home page describes it, the "exo.performance.network is a global, community-based effort to gather real-world metrics data from Windows-based systems and to analyze that data to extract common threads of knowledge and information."
It's a mouthful, but it also seems like a noble goal. They're actively looking for people or organizations that are willing to contribute metrics data to the "exo.repository" and thus help them build what will ultimately become a representative sampling of the global Windows community.
I've got several systems hooked-into the site right now. It's free, requires only a small (500KB) agent download, and in return you get access to some cool tools (including Clarity Studio) and analysis templates for conducting your own real-world performance studies and monitoring projects.
Maybe it's all that time I spent in Ubuntu, by I find I'm now a sucker for any cause that makes me feel like I'm contributing towards the betterment of my fellow IT users. I'd encourage other like-minded souls to hook-up one or more representative systems to the exo.performance.network. Let's help these folks build-up the kind of independent knowledge-base that will one day lead us all to a better understanding of how Windows works in the real-world.
Posted by Randall Kennedy on November 18, 2007 11:11 PM
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. . . of which is he counts himself . . .
Evidently the grammar checker isn't any good, either.
Posted by: Dave at November 20, 2007 11:17 AMDid anyone really expect SP1 to solve Vista's myriad issues? C'mon, Vista's ugly goes clear to the bone, and no amount of technical-botox-shot service packs are going to be able to help cover that up.
I'm tossing it overboard in favor of XP. Hopefully Microsoft, or Ubuntu, or someone, will step up with a nice OS that's at home at home.
Posted by: EJ at November 20, 2007 11:22 AMThank you, Microsoft, for making Vista as crappy as you could, for you have just secured my job as an IT professional for years to come. :)
Posted by: Eric at November 20, 2007 05:10 PMQuote: Vista's performance is what it is, so "get used to it."
Why would you? If you know that a certain brand of car sucks, why would you want to get used to that?
I'd say, if Vista sucks, stay away from it.
Stay with XP, or if you want something new and better, invest some time to learn Linux. Each new version of Linux (Mandriva Linux in any case) is better AND faster then the previous. Or, if you need a new machine anyway, have sufficient cash and don't mind to be locked in by one company again, you can buy a mac. But hell, don't just mindlessly take that crap! What kind of an attitude is that?
Posted by: sitor at November 21, 2007 01:15 AMWith regard to the comment about being locked in by one company and buying a Mac, if you do buy a Mac and decide OS X is not for you, WinXP, Linux, BSD and Solaris/OpenSolaris, etc., etc. will run on a Mac box.
Posted by: mark at November 21, 2007 06:55 AM"if you need a new machine anyway, have sufficient cash and don't mind to be locked in by one company again, you can buy a mac."
Not so.
After using M$ products since DOS3.2, I bought an iMac, due to exposure to Vista on clients' machines. No way am I subjecting myself to that! It's rubbish, a major step backwards from 3.11, with its silly boxes every third mouse click demanding if I really, really want it to do what I've just told it. And S.L.O.W.......
So I bought an iMac, and I'm locked into nothing. XP under Parallels runs my Windows programming apps and all my other Windows bits and pieces perfectly, and I've got Open Office on it as well.
How about that - Apple, Windows and Linux all playing happily together on the same desktop. It's like all of a sudden I don't have to have a number of different cars, depending on which town I want to visit.
And it's much better looking, and QUIET.
At last, Twenty-First Century computing.
Posted by: David Walker at November 22, 2007 06:58 AM
