Work PC (XP) Faster than Home Desktop (Win 7 x64)

Krispy1 said:

this is a stupid article.

theres too many variables to make it anything credible. the hardware differences and stuff like if he even maintains his home pc

Article?

Your views are noted.

WindowsStar said:

Ahhh and end users hate us (IT Staff) in corporate IT immensely. Everything is too restrictive, everything is locked down, I can’t change my desktop with that pretty picture, and I can’t put that super cool screen saver I saw on the internet yesterday. But what you are noticing is how much work has been put into your work computer. It is FAST and I bet it is stable no crashing, a great workhorse; you can always get your work done. This is what we in corporate IT strive for; a machine that is fast and very stable. How do you get it that way you have to put a lot time into configuring it correctly, and create some restrictions so the machine is not miss-configured or reconfigured by a playful end user?

There could be many factors on why your machine at work is much faster. Some I can think of, no wallpaper, no fancy screensaver, profile caching, application caching, ad blocking, no firewall on the machine (enterprise core firewall), Enterprise Antivirus (much faster than the home stuff), enterprise hard drive (this can make a major difference) [I have used a HDD that has the following specs 1TB, 7200RPM, 64meg cache, same vendor, one marked enterprise ($275) the other not ($99). The enterprise drive in the same machine same OS, same applications, will be almost 4 times faster booting the OS and launching applications.] As you can see it is really hard to pin down why one machine will be faster than another unless you can match up some of the key hardware and you have to match the OS and applications loaded to be fair. - WS

Sounds reasonable, next time I'll be sure to buy all the enterprise stuff lol.

WindowsStar said:

Ahhh and end users hate us (IT Staff) in corporate IT immensely. Everything is too restrictive, everything is locked down, I can’t change my desktop with that pretty picture, and I can’t put that super cool screen saver I saw on the internet yesterday. But what you are noticing is how much work has been put into your work computer. It is FAST and I bet it is stable no crashing, a great workhorse; you can always get your work done. This is what we in corporate IT strive for; a machine that is fast and very stable. How do you get it that way you have to put a lot time into configuring it correctly, and create some restrictions so the machine is not miss-configured or reconfigured by a playful end user?

There could be many factors on why your machine at work is much faster. Some I can think of, no wallpaper, no fancy screensaver, profile caching, application caching, ad blocking, no firewall on the machine (enterprise core firewall), Enterprise Antivirus (much faster than the home stuff), enterprise hard drive (this can make a major difference) [I have used a HDD that has the following specs 1TB, 7200RPM, 64meg cache, same vendor, one marked enterprise ($275) the other not ($99). The enterprise drive in the same machine same OS, same applications, will be almost 4 times faster booting the OS and launching applications.] As you can see it is really hard to pin down why one machine will be faster than another unless you can match up some of the key hardware and you have to match the OS and applications loaded to be fair. - WS

That is true I suppose, there is obviously a lot more going on my home PC, so I guess a slow down is to be expected. I just wanted to make sure that I wasn’t doing anything wrong!

Fumz said:

Are you sure it's not just because the apps you run at work are loaded into the startup menu (msconfig), and on your home machine they're not?

Even if they aren't loaded into the start menu, it's hard to imagine a relatively old OEM machine, with a mechanical drive, loading apps faster than your SSD, unless you've got those apps installed on the WD Caviar?

Well actually on the Home PC there are MORE apps loaded into the startup menu.

Nope, the apps are installed on the SSD, everything runs from the SSD.

The thing is the difference between launch is about 1-2 s. So, it is not a major slow-down or anything. However, my work PC just feels “smoother”. I suspect (and this has been confirmed on other threads I posted this same question on) that the problem is my AV and anti-malware. I run Microsoft Security Essentials, Spybot S&D and MalwareBytes so these three may be scanning all my data and hence slowing things down.

I will also look into using a SSD toolkit to optimize performance.

severedsolo said:

abhiroopb said:

Fumz said:

Are you sure it's not just because the apps you run at work are loaded into the startup menu (msconfig), and on your home machine they're not?

Even if they aren't loaded into the start menu, it's hard to imagine a relatively old OEM machine, with a mechanical drive, loading apps faster than your SSD, unless you've got those apps installed on the WD Caviar?

Well actually on the Home PC there are MORE apps loaded into the startup menu.

Nope, the apps are installed on the SSD, everything runs from the SSD.

The thing is the difference between launch is about 1-2 s. So, it is not a major slow-down or anything. However, my work PC just feels “smoother”. I suspect (and this has been confirmed on other threads I posted this same question on) that the problem is my AV and anti-malware. I run Microsoft Security Essentials, Spybot S&D and MalwareBytes so these three may be scanning all my data and hence slowing things down.

I will also look into using a SSD toolkit to optimize performance.

that to me is significant.... This is just my own opinion, feel free to take it or leave it.

I think its Prefetch. Think of it this way. In your work environment you probably use what 5 applications at the most? I mean ALL the time, for actually working. How many do you use at home? 10? 20?

What this means is that your work PC know's what you are going to do. before you do it. so it preloads it into the RAM to minimise loading times. (This is called Prefetch.... I'm sure you already know this but it pays to be thorough) Now prefetch on XP is pretty limited... but im sure even XP can handle preloading 1 or two applications that are always used. By contrast. although 7 has a MUCH improved Prefetch system. (so much so that its now called Superfetch) it has more apps to juggle. more apps for you to potentially use at any one time. and more chance of getting it wrong.

I'm going to use the car analogy again Imagine we live in a world with cars that drive themselves. During the week, if you get into your Car at 8am, your car is going to be fairly confident that you want to go to work. Why else would you get into the car at that time? If however you do the same thing on a saturday, the car hasn't got a clue what you want to do.... you would have to tell it. thats the difference between your Work PC and your Home PC, your work PC has a Purpose. it is used for a handful of things. It knows what it is meant for. by contrast, your Home PC hasn't got a clue, its whatever you want it to be.

Of course i could also just be blowing smoke.... but it sounds good to me

I thought Win 7 disabled prefetch? Not sure but I thought this was the case.

Also considering it is an SSD shouldn't it launch faster anyway (regardless of prefetch)?

Using the car analogy: the Work PC is a slow car but knows where you want to go, the Home PC is a fast car but doesn't know where you want to go.