Will Windows 8 Be Faster and Smaller Than Windows 7?

[Crispy]

” Are you passionate about software performance? Are you excited by the potential to have a positive impact on hundreds of millions of users, by improving their Windows experience? The Windows Fundamentals Performance Test Team is look for a software design engineer who can help us do just that – make future releases of Windows faster, smaller, and more responsive than Windows 7. OS Fundamentals, and specifically performance were a major area of focus during Windows 7 and will be just as important if not more so, during the development of the next version(s).“

Full read: What is Windows8 | Windows 8 News

 

[Duke of Alinor]

Have you seen any concrete methods they will use to make Win8 faster?
What parts will be faster?
Sorry, but I remain skeptical. I highly doubt there will be much reduction of services, code optimization or flattening of menu heirarcy. Let alone rewriting the networking stack. Speed will probably come from hardware requirements like most MS OS since 95.

 

[fseal]

Sure it'll be faster, by then computers will inevitably be faster so...

 

[KremmenUK]

The main fight against responsiveness will be partially thwarted by the ever increasing PC threats and the requirement for the AV packages to be constantly on-guard against this ever increasing problem.

I've often considered unplugging the router and disabling my NIS2010 and Spyware Doctor just to see how much faster it would run.

 

[PhreePhly]

The MinWin initiative is still in play. While the media assumed this was a new "minikernel" for windows, this was not the case.

The MinWin initiative is a call by call mapping and restructuring of the NT kernel. Windows Vista was the start of this, but the focus was on security. Windows 7 was more focused attention on optimizing calls between USER and Kernel space.

Windows 8 will be a continuation of this.

PhreePhly

 

[Duke of Alinor]

The main fight against responsiveness will be partially thwarted by the ever increasing PC threats and the requirement for the AV packages to be constantly on-guard against this ever increasing problem.

I've often considered unplugging the router and disabling my NIS2010 and Spyware Doctor just to see how much faster it would run.

I have decades with secure OS's. Windows vulnerabilities are just that, Windows vulnerabilities. OS's can be made virtually virus proof and run stable for years. Microsoft has set their balance on the feature side of feature vs security.
Secure OS's run with instant response on 486 class machines. You can run things like Quake or WoW, but the installs are far from automatic. What is killing our response is ease of use and install, which makes easy prey for hacking.

Look up some of the NRC certified OS for running nuclear plants.

 

[PhreePhly]

The main fight against responsiveness will be partially thwarted by the ever increasing PC threats and the requirement for the AV packages to be constantly on-guard against this ever increasing problem.

I've often considered unplugging the router and disabling my NIS2010 and Spyware Doctor just to see how much faster it would run.

I have decades with secure OS's. Windows vulnerabilities are just that, Windows vulnerabilities. OS's can be made virtually virus proof and run stable for years. Microsoft has set their balance on the feature side of feature vs security.
Secure OS's run with instant response on 486 class machines. You can run things like Quake or WoW, but the installs are far from automatic. What is killing our response is ease of use and install, which makes easy prey for hacking.

Look up some of the NRC certified OS for running nuclear plants.

That is not completely true. If a user, with sufficient credentials, allows a trojan horse to run, even the most secure OS in the world will become infected. Now, by locking down said OS to the point the the User is restricted to performing only a fixed set of instructions, then viritually any OS can be made secure (if it has some form of filed-based access token control).

The problem here is that Windows is on almost 95% of the world's home desktop PCs. The typical user barely understands the basics of computer architecture. How do you expect them to operate such a locked down, fortified OS? MS, more than any other OS vendor has the most difficult job in trying to provide an OS that runs basically on an infinite spread of hardware combinations, has ease of use for the most computer-illiterate population, and is "somewhat" secure.

This is not to say that they haven't made stupid errors. Windows NT should have defaulted to a simple user login and only elevated to Admin ala sudo in *nix. At that point software would have begun the tradition of being written to operate properly in a User only environment. I'm sure others can point out other errors in MS decisions, but don't forget the scale that they operate in and the relative stupidity of the average user.

PhreePhly

 

[jimbo45]

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

 

[seekermeister]

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.

 

[Rhammstein]

The main fight against responsiveness will be partially thwarted by the ever increasing PC threats and the requirement for the AV packages to be constantly on-guard against this ever increasing problem.

I've often considered unplugging the router and disabling my NIS2010 and Spyware Doctor just to see how much faster it would run.

Many of these software developers are actually taking this into consideration. Example...poor as it may be: The new Norton practically hibernates when a full screen application is launched. This is a start, and I feel certain it will grow and become popular. People will not put up with AV software drowning their systems.

However AV hardly slows down the typical PC, except for very low spec machines that aren't maintained well. People are gradually becoming more and more proficient with software, not really hardware, but certainly software. These plus emerging technologies will by a large margin supersede any issue with AV performance loss. Multi-core, 64bit, and much more, simply put.

 

[jimbo45]

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]

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]

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.