Will Windows 8 Be Faster and Smaller Than Windows 7?

jimbo45 · 23 Apr 2010

seekermeister said:

If that was the generally accepted perspective, we could probably go back to the Model T. Just because the driver may be old or slow, doesn't mean that he doesn't appreciate a fast, slick sportscar.

However even a brand new Ferrari hasn't made the Horse obsolete -- many people still like riding them (or betting on them too). Actually there are plenty of places where a Horse works far better than a car in any case.

Of course we need progress - but most of that will be done in future by specialized components which will perform individual functions -- look at mobile phones -- whatever the advance in "Smart phones" etc and their built in OS'es it still takes us just as long to communicate via voice or text as it did with the old "Brick" phones. Humans don't speak or text any faster than they did years ago in spite of the fact that todays phones are LIGHT YEARS faster than the old ones.

What my point is saying is that as far as the USER is concerned there isn't a huge more we can do to speed up the current version of the OS. Even if you do have a brand new Windows 8 OS which requires half as much memory and gives us double the amount of disk space the average user will barely notice it.

I'm not saying we shouldn't invent / design new OS'es - certainly for specialized purposes like "Virtualisation" -- but don't expect the average user to actually see any benefit. What a typical user needs these days is FAST INTERNET access and this is usually totally outside the control of the OS.

Cheers
jimbo

not so gray matter · 24 Apr 2010

jimbo45 said:

Hi all
I really wonder at the "Usefulness"of a "Faster OS" -- at least for around 90% of users out there.

Most users aren't constrained by the speed of the OS but often by totally external factors like the speed of their Internet connection or the "Officey" types of applications they are running - such as word processing or Power point presentations.

There's NO point in having a super slick OS if 99.99999% of the time if it's waiting for keyboard input from the user.

Even the much aligned VISTA could be made to run acceptably if the hardware was OK and you had decent fast DISKS / I/O devices and graphics card.

I think we'll see more "Specialized" OS'es for Gaming and very high speed complex mathematical computation but I doubt whether we will need "faster OS'es" just for the sake of it.

Cheers
jimbo

Very good point. Kudos.

Duke of Alinor · 24 Apr 2010

You two might consider getting out of your Windows box. People do test these things.
YouTube - Mac OS X Leopard vs Snow Leopard Speed Test
the 64 bit OS boots and runs programs noticeably faster and it is well documented in the video.
Saying Win 7 can be no faster and/or OS speed does not matter is not going to change it. Timed trials and constructive comments might. You are correct that internet speed usually is a larger portion of perceived speed. But Windows 8 can be MUCH faster and that is our subject.
Does it need to be faster than Win7 running on the same hardware? I think yes, Microsoft will advertise yes, if you think no then I am happy for you.