use of WEI
The WEI is a general guideline designed to show you the relative performance of the four major system components: processor (the brain), RAM (the short-term memory), graphics performance (fancy/3D graphics) and the hard disk (long-term memory).
The point of the numbers is to give a general indication of what your system can do, and to compare which parts of your system are stronger or weaker relative to one another. It's handy if you need more speed, but don't have the technical knowledge to know what part of your system may be slowing you down. It's not a perfect absolute indicator; it's a general guideline of the relative performance of 4 quite different components.
For example a user might have a decent processor and only 1 or 2 GB of RAM, and not realize that more RAM will give them much faster general performance than getting a new processor. The WEI gives you a general RELATIVE score, so you can say - ah! I see, my processor is quick, but my ram is my system weak point. Or - my system is fast enough for general use (RAM and processor), but bad for games (a weak 3d graphic score). Or, if you have a bad windows AERO score, you can turn off the Aero feature for simplified windows appearance and better system speed.
Sure, expert users who know their systems will not find it very useful - but since they know their relative strong points, they don't need it anyway. It's designed for novices. From that point of view, I would say it's an extremely useful (and general) system evaluation tool.
The WEI is particularly useful for laptops, as many laptop users do not realize that their system may be as powerful as a desktop in terms of processor and RAM, but be short in terms of graphics cards. (Graphics cards tend to produce a lot of heat - difficult in laptop design). Likewise, Netbooks are often very deficient in RAM, and looking at the WEI would make it clear that this is the area where an upgrade could most improve performance.
Comments claiming that the WEI designed for processor companies to sell you faster processors are suspect. That's like saying car companies publish the amount of horsepower a car has in order to 'lure' you into buying a bigger engine. By showing that RAM may be the best and least expensive way to upgrade your system (which is often the case), the WEI may encourage the upgrade of other components instead of a costly processor/motherboard upgrade. Those who don't know much about their systems should find the WEI a very handy general indicator of the relative performance of the different parts of their computers. It's so simple that it's possible even my mother could understand it. Anything about a computer that my mom could possibly understand could only be, in my opinion, the result of engineering genius.
