No, Windows 7 isn't slower than Vista, even at booting

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    No, Windows 7 isn't slower than Vista, even at booting


    Posted: 13 Oct 2009
    The manufacturer of a Windows maintenance toolkit featured on our Fileforum told CNET's Ina Fried last week that it believes boot times for Windows 7 are typically slower than boot times for Windows Vista. Iolo Technologies told Fried that it gauged the amount of time required for the CPU to reach a "true idle state."
    As many veteran Windows users already know, the operating system doesn't actually boot to an "idle state" -- it's not DOS. Since that time, Iolo has been characterizing the time it stops its stopwatch as the time that the CPU is "fully usable," which seems rather nebulous.
    The discussion over whether this means Win7 is slower was declared moot today by TG Daily's Andrew Thomas, who wrote, "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury: I put it to you that there are no occasions when the boot time of a PC is important in any way whatsoever."
    Unfortunately, there is one situation where the boot time of a PC is important: It affects the public's perception of whether the PC is actually faster, and thus better. And as we have seen with Vista, an operating system that was by all scientific measures much more secure than Windows XP, the perception that it was less secure -- by virtue of its highly sensitive behavior -- was as bad, if not worse, from the public vantage point as being insecure to begin with.
    The public at large typically perceives the boot sequence of a computer as the period of time between startup and the first moment they're asked to log in. Betanews tested that interval this afternoon using an external stopwatch, and our triple-boot test system: an Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600-based computer using a Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 motherboard, an Nvidia 8600 GTS-series video card, 3 GB of DDR2 DRAM, and a 640 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 hard drive. Both Vista and Win7 partitions are located on this same drive.
    The interval we tested is between the pressing of Enter at the multi-boot selection screen, and the moment the login screen appears. While the tools I used for timing were an ordinary digital stopwatch and my eyeballs, I will gladly let everyone know that I use these same tools to test qualifications at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and my measurements vary from those at the Timing & Scoring booth usually by about 0.05 seconds.
    In tests of what I'll call the "perceived boot interval" on the same machine, Windows 7 posted a five-boot average time of 24.214 seconds. Windows Vista, booting from the exact same machine and the exact same disk (just a different partition) posted an average of 36.262 seconds -- just about 50% slower. Exactly how much time is required for a Windows-based system to start idling down and doing relatively nothing -- the "fully usable" state that Iolo is looking for -- typically varies wildly depending on what drivers are installed, and what startup applications may be running. On a well-utilized XP-based system (and we have a truckload of those), that time may officially be never.
    However, it's worth noting that in a separate test conducted by ChannelWeb's Samara Lynn this afternoon, she discovered that boot times for a system running Windows 7 with Iolo's System Mechanic software installed were typically slower than for the same system with System Mechanic not installed. This may be because System Mechanic was authored with Vista in mind -- which could explain a lot of things about Iolo's own evaluation.
    No, Windows 7 isn't slower than Vista, even at booting up | Software News - Betanews
    QuackPot's Avatar Posted By: QuackPot
    13 Oct 2009



  1. Posts : 301
    Windows 7 Home Premium
       #1

    Wow, this sheds a whole new light on the subject!
      My Computer


  2. Posts : 334
    Win7 64bit Ultimate
       #2

    Some people will try so hard to put 7 down and I think some of those people were some how invested in vista and therefore are trying to justify a reason to hang on to that even though it was a poor decision.
      My Computer


  3. Posts : 434
    7 x64/ Back-Track 4
       #3

    Lolollll @Iolo... Never used their trash software - by my belief - and never will...
      My Computer


  4. Posts : 415
    W8 Pro, W7 Ultimate, XP Pro x64, Vista x64, Ubuntu
       #4

    Great article QuackPot. Thanks for sharing.
    Tom
      My Computer


  5. Posts : 396
    Windows 7 Professional x64
    Thread Starter
       #5

    Corpsecrank said:
    Some people will try so hard to put 7 down and I think some of those people were some how invested in vista and therefore are trying to justify a reason to hang on to that even though it was a poor decision.
    Exactly.
      My Computer


  6. Posts : 202
    Windows 8 Pro 64 bit
       #6

    mine boots in 16-17 secs from the bios going of to the desktop.
      My Computer


  7. Lee
    Posts : 1,796
    Win 7 Pro x64, VM Win XP, Win7 Pro Sandbox, Kubuntu 11
       #7

    Please would somebody explain to me why this is important. As long as your computer starts up why is it important whether it does it in 20 seconds or 55 seconds.

    To the average Joe computer user it doesn't. To them it is magic, and that is all that matters.

    Please lets hope this is the last of this topic we will see.
      My Computer


  8. Posts : 5,941
    Linux CENTOS 7 / various Windows OS'es and servers
       #8

    Hi there
    I don't wish to disparage keeness and the willingness of people to do research

    but isn't this whole topic a LOAD OF

    Cheers
    jimbo
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails No, Windows 7 isn't slower than Vista, even at booting-bull-full.jpg  
      My Computer


  9. whs
    Posts : 26,210
    Vista, Windows7, Mint Mate, Zorin, Windows 8
       #9

    I agree that boot time is not the nec plus ultra. I do, however, question those whole measurements unless I know whether the 2 systems are identical in the number and type of programs that are on them. E.g. a "virgin" Win7 with a 10GB footprint will boot faster than a loaded Vista with a 60GB footprint - or vice versa. Stating only the Hardware environment parameters is no proof of apples to apples.
      My Computer


 
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