Comments

1. eponymousnyc

   
   Posted on: March 04, 2008 at 4:03PM  

   I love rereading this post b/c it always cracks me up.  Nick, is your Vista machine faster than your XP machine was?
2. Nick White

   
   Posted on: March 04, 2008 at 6:19PM  

   Hey eponymousnyc: of my current PCs, most run about the same with Windows Vista on them, but they allow me to do things I couldn't when running I was XP (I'll not bore you with the details - I could point you to a whole blog on the topic ...;).  My 64-bit box is indeed a screamer, I have to admit.
3. Superpotato

   
   Posted on: March 04, 2008 at 6:54PM  

   Guys, asking questions to Nick about XP vs Vista performance is quite pointless.

   A man in his position does not have the privilege to contradict the company's position on a given subject.

   Even if Vista has reduced his PC into a $2100 email machine, he still has to tell us is wonderful. It's his job and livelihood.
4. Nick White

   
   Posted on: March 05, 2008 at 12:56AM  

   Hey Superpotato:  actually, my employer pays me to post my honest opinion on this blog, and I include it when and where it's appropriate.  That's not all the time, but now is one of those times:  I cannot go back to using Windows XP after having made the switch to Windows Vista.  You can take that for what it's worth.
5. MikeJay

   
   Posted on: March 05, 2008 at 8:31AM  

   I'm at my friends house right now. He has a quad-core desktop tower, a SATA drive, 4 gigabytes of memory, and whatever the latest ati card is that costs hundreds of dollars.

   We timed it. From a cold boot it took 2 minutes 53 seconds to boot and log into Vista. After that it took at least 5 minutes before the hard drive calmed down.

   He's an MCSE and works on computers for a living. That's the fasest he can make his Vista run right now and he's shut of necessary services, etc. That's reality. That's not whatever world Priciple Technology lives in.

   It would be great if we could all write customized non-independant scripts that show our products in great light and get our jobs done in the timeframe Principled can. The problem is, I live in the REAL world, where pictures of Vista dancing in fields with pixies and only taking 30 seconds to boot are mere figments of my imagination.
6. Korn1699

   
   Posted on: March 05, 2008 at 9:44AM  

   Vista has been faster for me than XP on the machines that I have had both OSs, BUT that was with increased memory.  I had Vista on my old laptop that had a 1.7 GHz Centrino and 1 GB of good memory.  It ran slower than with XP until I increased that to 2 GB of cheaper memory, and now it is faster than when it runs XP.  I also noticed a big jump in performance with Vista on my 5 year old desktop after I increased the memory from 1 GB to 3 GB.  
7. eponymousnyc

   
   Posted on: March 05, 2008 at 11:22AM  

   Benchmarks or not, I can't connect to an Xserve with anything close to the speed I could with XP, so it looks like I get to come in this weekend and roll my machine back to XP.
8. pworthy

   
   Posted on: March 05, 2008 at 1:37PM  

   My 2 cents. Many people justify keeping Vista by saying that they get a "jump in performance" by increasing memory. No one seems to mention the fact that increasing memory also gives a huge performance gain to XP. So XP on that same machine would still outperform Vista.

   In the last week alone I have had 3 friends with small businesses ask me to Upgrade (yes Upgrade) their machines to XP simply because many of their programs wouldn't work properly,their hardware was now buggy and they complained about speed. For instance on one system after installing a corporate vista version of a virus scanner, the install disabled windows defender. Said it wasn't compatable.  Fine, but now he started getting nags. So he said he turned off the nags and his wireless stopped working. He checked the web and found it was a common problem so he turned them back on and the wireless worked again. Go figure. Every time he used a memory stick to back up his data, half his files and directories were deleted from the stick. After about a week and dozens of other problems he had enough. He just couldn't use it with his business.  He is a real world typical user who needs something that just works and doesn't require his constant attention. He needed to focus on running his busIness not spend his day trying to get Vista to do what XP did without all the time and attention. That's why he went back to XP.
9. Korn1699

   
   Posted on: March 05, 2008 at 1:54PM  

   On my machines, XP ran the same OR SLOWER after my memory increase due to it not needing that extra memory.  When I went with the cheaper memory, I think the latency was higher, so that could be why that machine preforms slower with 2 GB of ram than it did with 1 GB..
10. Brandon LeBlanc

    

    
    Posted on: March 05, 2008 at 3:52PM  

    MikeJay, I am running a quad-core Dell XPS 420 with 4GB of RAM and 2 SATA drives and I can tell you that it does not take no where near 2 minutes and 53 seconds for my machine to "cold" boot. It probably takes less than half that. And I'm running Vista as-is with no services off or anything. I find it odd your friend's PC takes that long to boot on a PC with those specs.

    - Brandon