Windows 7 is coming. Will your PC be ready?
It seems like a straightforward question. However, in the aftermath of the Vista debacle, where many systems that were certified as “Vista Ready” proved to be anything but, the process of vetting Windows-compatible hardware has taken on new complexity. You simply cannot count on Microsoft to provide an honest assessment of Windows system requirements. And as the “Vista Ready” experience has shown us, Microsoft’s vendor partners are no better.
[ Find out more about Windows 7 -- and Randall C. Kennedy's advice to Microsoft on how to make it better -- in our special report. ]
Hence our motivation in developing the Windows 7 Compatibility Testing widget: The need for a truly independent tool that can evaluate a PC’s suitability to run the next version of Windows. By taking marketing, politics and vendor-speak out of the equation, we hope to provide you, the reader, with an honest assessment of your PC’s runtime environment, factoring-in hardware configuration, current stress levels and workload composition.
Note: As with all Windows Sentinel widgets, you’ll first need to register for your free Windows Sentinel account. Once registered, download and install the DMS Clarity Tracker Agent and allow it to collect data for a few hours (preferrably during normal usage periods). Then load the widget and find out if your PC passes or fails (and if the latter, why). You can learn more about the process by visiting the Windows Sentinel sub-site at infoworld.com.
We begin with an analysis of your system’s hardware – specifically, the type/speed of your CPU and the amount of installed memory. As a Vista-derived OS, Windows 7 will no doubt levy the same kind of performance “tax” (high overall CPU utilization spread across a massive thread pool) that hobbled its predecessor. Experience has shown that, to get acceptable performance with Vista, you need at least two CPU cores. Windows 7 will carry forward this baseline overhead while introducing new workloads (touch, web services) that Microsoft is only beginning to describe publicly. That’s why we’ve erred on the side of caution with the widget's calculations, labeling any system with less than two cores – or with multiple cores running at less than 2GHz – as incapable of supporting a post-Vista Windows platform. Likewise, given Windows Vista’s penchant for consuming large quantities of RAM, we’re setting 2GB as the minimum memory configuration for Windows 7.
Next up is an analysis of the current system “stress” levels. Here we examine three key areas of system loading: Peak CPU Saturation; Peak Memory Pressure; and Peak I/O Contention. By evaluating a series of weighted contributing factors – for example, the number of ready threads waiting to execute – we calculate a compound index for each area and then take an average of those indices to see if the system is already heavily burdened. An overtaxed PC, no matter how powerful, will have a difficult time supporting a similar workload on top of an even more complex OS base. In other words, if Vista makes your quad-core monster sweat up a storm today, Windows 7 will have it crying for mercy tomorrow.
Finally, we take an in-depth look at the composition of your current workload. The make-up of a Windows PC’s workload can vary greatly from user to user. In some cases, a small number of tasks consume the majority of the available resources. In others, the workload is spread out across many discrete tasks, with each one spawning multiple execution threads. The granularity of a workload, when factored against the aforementioned stress levels, helps us to further qualify a given PC’s suitability for running Windows 7 by allowing us to quantify what, if any, workload “headroom” is available for additional OS-related overhead. No "headroom" means that deploying a more complex OS image will likely cause a measurable performance hit - never a good thing.
Disclaimer: The Windows 7 Compatibility Testing widget is meant to be a fun, easy way to get a generalized sense of a system’s suitability for running a post-Vista Windows OS. It is by no means comprehensive and should not replace the detailed software testing and evaluation processes that are part of any well-rounded enterprise desktop strategy. Some systems that the widget flags as incapable of running Windows 7 might in fact be capable of supporting it in a limited context. Likewise, systems that we believe will run Windows 7 just fine may prove to be inadequate depending on how workload requirements change during the intervening months.
As with any generalized analysis tool, your mileage may vary, so...download the agent, fire-up the widget, and enjoy!
Posted by Randall Kennedy on June 30, 2008 03:00 AM
