Drag race: Windows 7 vs. Vista

WTB: Comparison of Windows 7 boot speed with Windows XP.

Why is everyone so facinated with Windows XP boot times VS Windows Vista or 7??

Whoop de doo, XP boots faster than Vista, but I could sit here and say "Windows 3.11 boots faster than XP".

What does this prove? Older OS's have less functionality and therefore boot faster!

Why is everyone so facinated with Windows XP boot times VS Windows Vista or 7??

Whoop de doo, XP boots faster than Vista, but I could sit here and say "Windows 3.11 boots faster than XP".

What does this prove? Older OS's have less functionality and therefore boot faster!

I'm interested in all speed peformance comparisons with XP. WHY? --
XP does everything an OS needs to - let's me connect to the internet and network, it let's me load apps - that is the point of an OS - not to show fireworks displays when I click on a Window. A transparent border doesn't make me more productive - and if it slows my PC - it only pisses me off.

I want a comparison of large file copies to a network server, I want comprisons of folder copies to a server - both lots of files and large and small files, I want single file copy speeds both large and small. I want to see how long before I actually can open an app after boot - not my desktop background. I want to see how long it takes to open some standard apps - e.g. Word, Outlook, adobe acrobat pro - standard apps that most people have.

Maybe a game performance comparison - of standard games - crysis, q3, UT, WOW etc. With all the video settings cranked on both with both an old and new video card - e.g. 4870 and an 8800

This demo really didn't show anything to me except I can get to my desktop faster - not how soon after I boot a PC can I actually be productive.

They went on about fast load times with Vista. And you know what? On my modern gaming rig, a clean install of Vista with all the latest drivers and nothing extra starts up bloody quick. The green bar generally only scrolls across once on the boot screen and I'm logged in in seconds.

Install Chrome, Everest, Diskeeper, iTunes, VMWare, Office 07 etc and boot times go to pot. Bizarrely Office seemed to noticeably slow down my boot time despite the fact it shouldn't add anything to the core Windows system apart from a few context menus.

I accept that Vista and Win7 boot up fast. However, unless MS come up with a way to better manage 3rd party programs at startup they're fighting a losing battle. Itunes for example wants to load 3 .exes at startup on a default install.

Vista has the delayed startup option for services that I now use for Diskeeper, the ipod service etc but not (I believe) for regular startup programs. Maybe Win7 will have a startup manager that gives better options on this.

Oh and another thing. I used to wonder (back in the days of bootvis on XP) why microsoft didn't load device drivers in parallel given that they account for a chunk of the system boot time. Apparently they're doing this now. Given that they said they won't make any changes that break drivers since Vista, why didn't they just do this in Vista? Weren't bothered? Not enough time? Baffles me...

Simpo... Well, if you're going to push that boot times are better if you upgrade, show me. The fact that Windows 7 boot times are faster than Vista could mean it's very fast... or that Vista sucked in comparison to XP and Win 7 just gets back to where XP was.

And, really... BOOT TIMES? We're really comparing boot times as a major point of a modern OS in 2008??

Who cares about boot up speed? I say the average computer user cares a lot about boot times. People really expect the computer to turn on as fast as their Television. This is the #1 issue I hear from my customers. My business customers see their kids Mac start up at blazing speeds. They want the same from their their Windows OS in their office. Plus I'm sick of tweaking the start up configurations.

Sleep. Not you, your computer. I've not shut my Macbook down in 12 days and my Windows XP desktop in even longer.

But yes, I understand that it's an issue... it's just that... in 2008 it's silly for it to BE an issue. And I'd hope a major upgrade to Windows would have more to tout than 'boots faster'