Researchers Sour on Vista Service Pack 1 Performance

Stony Stevenson passed us a link indicating that a group of researchers has described Microsoft's upcoming Windows Vista Service Pack 1 as basically a performance dud. Researchers from the Devil Mountain Software group is claiming that a series of in-house benchmark tests showed that users hoping to receive a speed boost from the update will be disappointed. "Devil Mountain ran its DMS Clarity Studio framework on a laptop Barth described as a "barn burner" -- dual-core processor, dedicated graphics, and either 1GB or 2GB of memory -- to compare performance of the SP1 release candidate that Microsoft released last week with the RTM version that hit general distribution last January. The Vista RTM was not updated with any of the bug fixes, patches or performance packs that Microsoft has pushed through Windows Update since the operating system's debut. 'One gigabyte, 2GB [of memory], it didn't make a difference,' said [CTO Craig] Barth. 'SP1 was never more than 1% or 2% faster.'"

Anonymous King Sours on Slashdot

nobody gives a shit about vista and neither should you.

Straw Man?

Did Microsoft say it would improve overall system performance?

Re:Straw Man?

Yes, they did. In the SP 1 white paper [microsoft.com]. They talk a lot about some of the specific improvements, and are sort of vague on exactly why there'd be an overall performance increase. They certainly give the impression it would improve overall performance.

Re:Straw Man?

No. It's fair to call a straw man when someone puts words in someone else's mouth and then defeats that argument. In this example, (I did not RTFA, nor anything else related to this btw)if Microsoft did not say anything about performance, but this group tore MS apart because of a lack of performance improvement, it would be a straw man because this group is attacking a claim MS never made. On the other hand, if MS did say performance would be improved, it wouldn't be. From what others have said, and my own personal expectations of this SP, this is probably a straw man. I wouldn't expect a service pack designed to fix security holes and other issues would by default improve performance significantly. Service packs are, generally, a roll up of all the previous security updates, plus any additional security or features they want to add.

An example from the wikipedia article [wikipedia.org]:

An example of a straw man fallacy:
Person A: I don't think children should play on busy streets.
Person B: I think that it would be foolish to lock children up all day.

Re:Straw Man?

Either way, Vista performance is poor and not getting better.

It's not just Vista [blogspot.com] though. Microsoft Office 2007 on Windows Vista consumes over 12x as much memory and nearly 3x as much processing power as Office 2000.

Re:Straw Man?

Perhaps you should google on logical fallacies. All that saying "straw man" means is that someone is making an argument against a claim that was never made. If Microsoft never claimed SP1 would improve performance, than it would truly be a "straw man" criticism to berate them because SP1 does not improve performance, and thus the "straw man" defense is valid. However, if MS *did* tout SP1 as improving performance, then the "straw man" accusation is invalid as the article would have a valid point in pointing out that performance gains appear to be dismal.

The guy who posted that MS *did* claim performance improvement makes an actual argument that the OP's "straw man" claim *is* invalid, which is perfectly fine. However, you are simply implying that *any* claim of "straw man" is a "diversion tactic", which is not.

Re:Straw Man?

Now this is a picture of Chewbacca.

...

Lookit the silly monkey.

Re:Straw Man?

Here is what Microsoft specifically claimed about SP1 performance (thanks to faoli for the link):

Performance
The following list describes some of the performance improvements that Windows Vista SP1 will include
      Improves the speed of copying and extracting files.
      Improves the time to become active from Hibernate and Resume modes.
      Improves the performance of domain-joined PCs when operating off the domain; in the current release
        version of Windows Vista, users would experience long delays when opening the File dialog box.
      Improves performance of Windows® Internet Explorer® 7 in Windows Vista, reducing CPU utilization and
        speeding JavaScript parsing.
      Improves battery life by reducing CPU utilization by not redrawing the screen as frequently, on certain
        computers.
      Improves the logon experience by removing the occasional 10-second delay between pressing CTL-
        ALT-DEL and the password prompt displaying.
      Addresses an issue in the current version of Windows Vista that makes browsing network file shares
        consume significant bandwidth and not perform as fast as expected.

Hmm, file shares are slow? Perhaps Microsoft should switch to Samba, which is fast.

Are we shocked?

Microsoft has all but given up on Vista. A lot of corporate customers are going to sit it out and wait for the next iteration of the OS to come out. People who have it generally aren't that impressed, at least among the family and friends I've spoken to about it (not a large sample set, I'll grant you). Vista is the new ME, the sooner it dies and MS dumps it the better off we'll all be.

Re:Are we shocked?

So what you're saying is that you don't care because it's not your primary OS. Those that do care may be thinking of it running as their primary OS. Heck they may be forced to do so at work in a couple of years. Their LIVING may depend on it.

I do use XP as my primary OS at home and at work and you bet I care. It ain't my spare car. It's my primary ride.

How is the parent modded as insightful? He's saying he doesn't give a shit because he hardly uses it.

Re:Are we shocked?

The RAM usage at startup for a newly-installed system is simply absurd. 600-700MB is not an exaggeration. The graphics card needs for the new environment (without which it's mostly XP right? It's not like there's a new object-oriented file system in there right?) are quite hgh for most business needs.

The slow file copy isn't a joke. We're talking 1hr+ to copy 2.5GB to a FW hard drive from internal SATA. That's about 25MB/min, 120 times slower than the peak speed of FW. I think you can get more out of a parallel port.

There are some nice additions. But it's not worth the trouble, as some of the flaws totally override those.

Re:Are we shocked?

The RAM usage at startup for a newly-installed system is simply absurd. 600-700MB is not an exaggeration. The graphics card needs for the new environment (without which it's mostly XP right? It's not like there's a new object-oriented file system in there right?) are quite hgh for most business needs.

And yet another person who doesn't understand the new memory manager. High levels of allocated memory are a good thing for performance. Coding Horror [codinghorror.com] has a decent primer on all of this, but the short version of the story is that people who are used to how Windows has traditionally handled memory management rather than how an ideal memory manager should work love to complain about Vista being a memory hog when, in fact, I'd suggest that the Vista memory manager may arguably be one of the best out there right now.

Re:Are we shocked?

Bad permissions cause Vista to copy files VERY slowly because it has to reset them on all files.

On the Lame Excuses List, this falls somewhere above "You can't take bottled water on an airplane or the terrorists might win" but still doesn't beat out "He only hits me because he loves me."

If the equivalents of "cp -r" and "cp -pr" take noticeably different amounts of time to complete on your operating system, something is broken, because a multi-gigahertz processor can finish fiddling with even complicated permission bits long before a 50MB/s disk needs to have them ready to write.

Re:Are we shocked?

Vista is the new ME, the sooner it dies and MS dumps it the better off we'll all be.

Vista would have to re-animate the dead into blood thirsty zombies before it could rival the utter horror of ME.

Re:Are we shocked?

Won't happen - they wouldn't give users the ability to reanimate the dead without the permission of the copyright holder (presumably FSM or Odin or someone). I suppose they could get official backing by releasing something (Holy Windows?) which makes you pray for half an hour before booting but, now that I think about it, that's pretty much the current position... ...oh, shit.

Can someone lend me a cricket bat, please?

Optimization

50 million lines of code and they couldn't find anything that needed optimization?? Or were their priorities elsewhere? These days, optimization always seems to be relegated to "low man on the totem pole."

Re:Optimization

Well I did go with a compsci degree but I'm sure I could find something. Here's my proposed patch:

+/*

40 million lines of DRM, WGA, Windows Media Ultra Control Restricted Mode Crap

+*/

Done!

Re:Optimization

Does average joe care about optimizations? Probably not. Are they important? To people like you and I, sure, but not to average joe.

Yes, it DOES matter to Joe. Joe, however, won't call it "code optimization". Joe will simply say that "Vista runs slower than my XP did!" He doesn't care WHY it's so, but even Joe can tell the difference in speed.

We have a lot of Joes come through our shop. They notice.

Re:Optimization

Most worthwhile optimisation is done by rethinking the design, and to a lesser degree hand-coding parts where you know the realities better than the compiler can guess, and just how to exploit that.
Neither is something Microsoft is likely to do -- the first costs too much (including accepting incompatibilities and devising workarounds for them), and the second requires ace programmers, not run-off-the-mill visual-anything. Changing a few compiler flags here and there, or re-compiling with a new compiler version is cheap, but usually won't have much noticeable effect. However, it's what you're most likely to see from huge corporations.

Re:Optimization

Most worthwhile optimisation is done by rethinking the design, and to a lesser degree hand-coding parts where you know the realities better than the compiler can guess, and just how to exploit that.

Micro-optimisations in the right place (not even at the assembly level, just tweaking a few algorithms or data structures, or even the code layout) can give huge benefits. I got a 25% speed gain from some code I was working on a few years ago just be moving a couple of functions into a header and marking them as static inline so the compiler could inline them. Memoisation of frequently-called functions can also give some benefits.

The hard part is usually not the optimisation, it's working out where the optimisations need to go. This typically involves wading through huge amounts of data from profiling runs.

Re:Optimization

Well, seeing how this machine was so "hot" in the hardware section, it could be that the bottleneck wasn't in the OS at all. IT could be that it has cycles to spare but is waiting on the memory bus to see any increase in performance. They could have been maxing out everything that would have restricted the OS from performing and never saw the "issue" in the first place.

Of course there was/is an issue, Vista just seems slow. In the former example, they wouldn't have seen the issue because something else would be slowing it down. But on a lesser machine, I'm wondering if the optimizations would have a more dramatic effect. I mean a machine where the memory or processor is limited and the actual execution of the code was keeping it slow. Will it allow the code to be executed faster on a processor that is maxed out all the time?

SP a Performance Dud?

Wouldn't the summary be more accurate by saying "Vista a performance dud"?

Doomed

To paraphrase a certain 90's scifi series "SP1 was Vista's last, best hope for sales. It failed. But in the year of OS X Leopard it became something greater, Apple's last, best hope for victory".

Of course, Microsoft want to force everyone have to buy Vista after June 2008, so Moore's law has got to get a shift on to make sure that PCs are going to be fast enough to actually make it usable. Or perhaps it will encourage Microsoft to extend XP's availability. Or perhaps's it's time to stock up XP licenses if you need to run Windows.

Standard reply from most vendors is...

"This is a BETA, it is not finished yet. Everything will be alright when it is released."

Dupe?

Is not that article a dupe (http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/18/188235&from=rss) ?? Or don't our dear editors even read old articles in their dispair of bashing Vista?

In our university we have now completed the upgrate of 25 computer classrooms (35 computer each) from XP to Vista. At the moment, there havebeen no major problems. yes, the system has some problems and child diseases (like Abbles leopard) but that's just natural. Vista is a big step forwars security wise and it will get more and more polished with time.

But hey, please feel free to continue bashing... I don't want to spoil the party for you. Me? I'll continue using it.

Bias

I'm sure the only thing tying you to Windows these days is your own aging skill-set. Let's face it, Windows has always been your bread-and-butter as a programmer right? Well one could see why you would feel slighted when others bash what you've spent a large amount of your life learning and suffering with. The cold truth is: The Windows skill-set is in danger if MS keeps dropping the ball. Every time MS drops a steaming pile of OS on the market, more people make the switch to Apple, or Linux, and your skill-set degrades just a notch. The thought of mass defections from Windows probably makes you wake up in a cold sweat at night. Well, I'm not going to sugar-coat it: Vista is turning many people elsewhere, and Apple is making all the right moves in the market right now to swiftly pick those disenfranchised folks up. It's only a matter of time before the market tips and non-windows machines are the minority in many areas. It may not be tomorrow, or even ten years from now, but I've lost all hope in MS pulling up from the tailspin they are in.

In closing, I think that there is no better time then RIGHT NOW to expand your skill-set to include Windows agnostic developing. Because I'm of the opinion that there is a huge shift happening in the market right now, just very slowly...

Game over man!!

Last one out of Redmond, please turn off that god damn useless big ass table [youtube.com]...

Has it ever improved efficiency?

Without wishing to troll, when has a Window service pack ever improved the speed of a Windows OS?

In fact, and I'm sure someone on Slashdot has raw data on this (that perhaps even shows I'm wrong), Apple are the only company who has ever achieved this on a regular basis.

I've found in my rather short development career is something scarily similar to the first law of thermodynamics: "Bad code once created can never be destroyed." In most commercial situations, the risk of breaking a routine far outweighs the benefit the change brings.

We've built an entire area of study, refactoring, on trying to sell the importance of keeping code clean. I'm still not 100% convinced that the case for refactoring has been made. If you spend three months refactoring, is the simpler overall structure really going to speed up development sufficiently to justify the capital outlay? In all but the very worst code-bases, the answer is unclear.Bear in mind, refactoring my cause you to notice bugs that you can't fix because it would break an interface. Now your code has to be badly structured to support this bad business logic. This can be enough to render the effort useless.

This is why service packs rarely improve functionality or performance. Windows XP SP2 is a notable exception. The risk is simply too great.

Simon

The sad thing is...

...that a large amount of their userbase doesn't even know that there are alternatives. It's a shame really. Because I guarantee if Microsoft had less of a market share they would focus more on these details like optimization and straight up good code because if they didn't they wouldn't survive. Now it just seems they do only the amount of work required to keep the train rolling and their riders complacent. I'm in a workplace where 99% of the computers run Windows XP, and the sad thing is that it's a technology company that deals with security and networking. You'd expect that a large majority of them would have heard of linux or even unix for God's sake, but hardly any have. It's a Windows world and Microsoft knows it. They'll do the bare minimum amount of work possible.

Why I even care one bit

Vista has one great selling point as far as I'm concerned: DX10. It's inevitable that games will eventually require it, though so far it's not exactly a big deal.

So I notice Crysis has a "Very High" setting that's disabled for me in XP. Ok, I think, the first half or so of the game runs ok with High settings, so maybe it might just barely be playable on Very High. Just to be able to see what it looks like.

I boot into Vista and install the game there. Lo and behold, it runs at almost exactly half the FPS on High compared to in XP. Had to drop it to Medium to be even remotely playable. Needless to say, Very High is what I'd need to be to enjoy it with everything at max.

Is the culprit crap drivers for my hardware, general performance drain by Vista, or DRM using everything it can to make sure I'm actually allowed to use the computer today? I don't know, but I do know Vista has made me seriously try a Linux on a desktop for the first time (only used it for servers until now). If only more games supported it, or ran under Wine, I'd be happy as can be.

How to "speed up" Vista

Do some research and you'll find you don't need a service pack to tune Vista:

Turn off: Volume Shadow Copy (files won't be versioned automatically any more), indexing service (rapid searching won't work any more), and SuperFetch (apps wont be pre-loaded and so will start slower, but you'll have more "free memory" on average - a debatable benefit anyway).

You'll notice XP levels of disc activity (barely any) and lot's more free memory. That's because Vista's not doing anything. Personally, I like to be able to search instantly, have apps load instantly, and have my critical files backed up transparently; so I don't mind the "bloat".

Anyway, if you actually know how Windows works, you'll know what you don't want running and what you do. Turn off the stuff you don't want, but most people are fine with the defaults even if it means using more resources.

Re:How to "speed up" Vista

Do some research and you'll find you don't need a service pack to tune Vista:

I agree...Black Viper [blackviper.com] to the rescue. I printed out his list of services for XP [blackviper.com] and still use it to this day when tweaking systems for friends/family.

Re:How to "speed up" Vista

It seems you have to do a lot of research to get vista working decently. I guess this proves that it is not yet ready for the desktop :)

Re:How to "speed up" Vista

Anyway, if you actually know how Windows works, you'll know what you don't want running and what you do.

I think that sentence basically makes the point for all Mac users on the planet.

Fixed the headline for you

Researchers Sour on Vista SP1 RC1 Performance

Didn't we have a similiar story five days ago?

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/18/188235 [slashdot.org]

Only, that one was from PC World Canada.
AND... they at least listed the RC's version (0.275) and explained the tests (well, kinda...),the difference in performance AND the hardware used. http://www.pcworld.ca/news/column/3eef651f0a010408008b33e8065121c5/pg1.htm [pcworld.ca]
WTF is a "barn burner"?

Also, saying "Office-based test script was "statistically insignificant,"...while a multitasking test panel produced results for SP1 less than 1% faster than RTM." doesn't really say much.

Adding to that the first (T)FA actually bothered to mention WHAT was the RC about...

Instead, Microsoft says, the service pack beta improves stability, performance, and reliability when reactivating a machine from Hibernate or Suspend mode; enhances device-driver support; increases security; and adds support for new standards such as Extended File Allocation Table (intended to enhance flash storage on notebooks, not desktops).

... kinda makes this (T)FA even more non-informative in comparison.

In fact... first thing that comes to my mind after reading TFA (the "Barth said"-part) is Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction:
"Check out the big brain on Barth!"

That's a release candidate

Wait for the final version, then measure.

Re:That's a release candidate

A release candidate should be identical to the actual release; that's why it's called a "release candidate" and not a beta version. The only things that would be changed between the RC and the release are any major bugs such as crashes, exploits, etc. Any performance tweaks would have already been done by the time it hit release candidate status. Similarly any debugging code that would slow things down would have also been removed.

Re:That's a release candidate

Tell that to the KDE team.

Is that "performance" hotfixe included?

Ya know, "938979 Vista Performance and Reliability Pack". This certainly improved "perceived" performance issues for me as far as ridiculous copy/move operations, etc. And according to this: http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=95709 [nvnews.net] it claims to fix more than just the copy/move thing.

Is this in SP1?

Moore's Law might make it faster - but...

...it will also make Leopard even faster.

Aggressive Key-Accounting and the general uninformed public will keep MSFT afloat, though.

Cancel-or-Allow RSI will be on the rise, too.

Haven't had a performance problem...

I got Ultimate when I bought my new system. It's a nice machine, but nothing ridiculous - low-to midrange core 2 duo processor, 3 gigs of RAM, Geforce 8600. I haven't had any performance problems. Compatibility issues, yes. But no performance issues. Only thing that's vaguely interesting is that it takes a second or two after Firefox pops up for it to access my homepage. What configurations expect a performance issue?

What is not a performance dud today?

I have an old Dell Latitude xp450c that cost someone (not me) probably about $2500 in 1995 but today its not worth anything except to battery, memory and ac adaptor sellers who have more of these to sell, then there are such laptops existing.

This is a 50Mhz 486dx laptop with a 8megs of ram. What OS can I reasonable run on it besides DOS, baslinux (basic linux - damn small linux is to big). and some floppy based OSs like maybe if I can even QNX demo of i can even find it anymore? To bad I can't get AROS to run on it.

I also have an Amiga 4000 Toaster that runs at a warp engine speed of 28Mhz though I have more ram in it. and its still useful.

The point is, when it comes to OSs today the performance is pretty much a dud in a fair comparison to the better OSs of yesterday.

There has been a code bloat to use up increased speed, memory and storage in OSs today.

Today you can buy 1 gig thumb drives that could hold your whole system, personal files and duplicate backups of the same and still have plenty of room.

In fact, we should today have such sub-gig personal thumb drive based systems. Expecially considering what the more common applications are.

Performance sucks today, and its not just a windows bloatware matter.

   

Give up...

...Vista is NOT about performance. It's about security. The market demanded a 'more secure' Windows, and Microsoft delivered. The market once demanded speed, and MS delivered Windows 98.

Windows is like "Star Trek" movies

Let's see. . . 95, 98, ME, XP, Vista. . . Yup, only the even numbered releases are any good. Just to be safe they'd best rebrand Windows 7 as Windows 8. ;-)

Why Would Anyone Be Surprised?

The Service Packs to XP fixed issues and improved the user experience, but each of them degraded system performace by a measurable degree. An average of 20% on many laptops byt some measures. More and more RAM was required to overcome the system sucking done by the Service Packs. That anyone anywhere thought that Vista's performance would improve with a service pack is laughable at best, an indication of some kind of intellectual blindness at worst.

Woo hoo

So my DRM is being upgraded? Should I be excited?
The worst thing Microsoft has ever done was put Mickey Mouse in charge of kernel development. Letting Hollywood dictate the kernel design will prove to be the undoing of the Windows platform.

NEWS FLASH!!!!

Vista sucks, read all about it!!!!

Makin' a post

(!) You're trying to make a post criticizing Vista

[Cancel] [Allow] [Thrash the disc around some more] [This button has been disabled by Warner Brothers (R)]

The missed point...

The things that reviewers seem to be missing...

1) Some of the performance updates scheduled for SP1 were already released as Updates.

2) Performance on a System of 1GB (the sweet spot) will see virtually no improvement, and they are reviewing systems with 1GB and 2GB or more. If you baseline the performance difference on a 512mb system the performance difference is more dramatic.

3) There are also a few optimization that don't affect most users. Readyboost got a significant jump in how it improves performance, and there has been refining of Superfetch as well. This includes not only USB flash, but Solid State and hybrid Drives will see significant boosts.

4) File copying in RTM did have some performance problems but the majority of the problem was the screen not accurately reporting it was already copying files when it said 'calculating time', so SP1 gets about a 10% boost, but the dialog reports the process more accurately as well.

If Windows Update wasn't doing its job and the updates hadn't already been being released, SP1 would be more of a one time dramatic increase. Also they need to be looking at lower end system when testing if they want to see more SP1 improvements.

Finally, older and pre-Vista designed system configurations see more of a bump as well. If you test SP1 on a system that has the specific chipsets and HD Audio, etc that is designed for Vista, SP1 won't add a lot, as the system components were already designed and optimized for Vista.

wrong performance IMO

I'm not sure there is much you can do to improve overall vista performance say in games etc... If you look at the benchmarks it is whatever it is compared to equivalent settings on XP, and new stuff (DX10) is pitifully slow cause it's pitifully slow, there's not much a service pack can do about that. However if you look at a lot of applications performance in Vista vs Xp is not much different, if different at all (think FEAR), however any exception is a glaring exception and frustrating. Looking at the numbers I bet a 1-2% performance increase in Vista is probably bringing it to the same level as XP using the latest drivers for a lot of apps.

More relevantly are some of the general scheduling algorithm problems in vista which need to be addressed. Why does playing audio with a network running cause glitches? Anyone playing an MMO with VOIP (essepcially in game voip like tabula rasa and POTBS beta) can tell you this is a problem. When my backup is running, why are 3 of my cores idle, no matter what I'm doing and 1 nearly crippled? Why does it take so damn long to start a program? Now some of that is application level, not OS scheduler, but the time for an app to gain reasonable access to performance is strangely poor. Startup is the same sort of thing.

Ok so windows Vista has a transactional file system. Am I actually getting anything out of that I will ever use? Well truth be told probably, if it prevents partial writes to the system registry which leave it unstable (or any file leaving the OS or app unstable) then I guess it's good. But I'm not sure it's worth the cost, i guess that's a matter of opinion. Ok so supporting parallelism at an OS level is an odd balancing act, between trying to do it at the OS level and exposing cores to the app level. Sony's PS3 has probably the simplest idea, which is 1 cell core for the system processes and 6 cores up to the application to manage, but the PS3 has a limited set of programs it runs at once, Vista has at my count 78 running processes (including backup, excel, task manager and opera atm, with trillian, the NCsoft launcher, AlienFX for case lights, desktop icon manager (DIM), my palm pilot software and logitech mouse drivers), can't it load balance some of that crap around between cores?

If you want to start thinking about the not too distant future then there is definately something to say which is XP64 vs Vista64. Basically nothing works on XP64, and it's a nightmare, less of a nightmare than it was, but still a nightmare, whereas Vista64 seems a dramatic (if incomplete) improvement. I'm not sure it's even reasonable to compare these OS's since hardware vendors basically ignored XP64 when it came to life, whereas they're kinda forced to pay attention to vista64. The transition to windows 7, vienna or whatever the hell it's called is going to be painful when it's 64 bit only.

I think vista FEELs slow because of a poor scheduling algorithm for tasks getting control of the system and having a transactional file system. One of those things is fixable with a patch, one not, and the one that isn't fixable is probably not a bad idea, it's just an expensive one performance wise. That's a painful tradeoff between performance and reliablity, but most of us who've had to manage servers with virtualization and mission critical data understand the tradeoff all too well, as time goes on and the desktop PC begins to incorporate more and more of the HPC world of parallel machines with complicated interconnections and the database space of storing critical data (and while it may not seem like it is critical, no one wants to lose the last 5 years of pictures because of a bad file copy algorithm), it's going to slow the OS down. Autosave is a good example of this sort of tradeoff in the application world, and while the benefits are more obvious I'm not sure that a transactional file system is a bad thing really.

The other serious criticisms of (aside from file copy and game performance and general scheduling) such as too many versions, PITA DRM and UAC, and wierd authentication issues are a whole other ball game. There are clearly too many versions, that's idiotic. I can see where they were going with it, Home, Business (without the home stuff so employees actually conduct business), Home Users who want business tools (ultimate) and 3rd world please buy our product even if it isn't full featured, but really that's unnecessarily complicated, and unnecessarily expensive for Ultimate IMO. UAC and Authentication stuff are just FUBAR. I don't know how UAC could be so massively screwed up, but it was, and the authentication, and general moves away from 'selling code' to 'selling time using our code' is overall bad for MS and bad for the business. DRM I may not like and you, that being anyone who reads slashdot may not like, but some random dude who just wants to play blu-ray on his PC wants it to work, and if you want to keep the PC a credible platform for gaming then you need to support DRM so that devs don't move entirely to consoles or online models. I don't really like it, but it's very difficult to pirate console games (usually requiring a modded console which is well beyond the average user), to downright impossible, and that's a very attractive platform to move to, and really I'd rather they stay on the PC but if you can make more money on a console game, you make a console game.

Same as it ever was....

Same was true for XP SP1 and SP2. Applications were hardest hit in SP1, networking in SP2, but SP2 tended to, outright, break things more than just slow them down.

In the past, MS has usually slowed down the previous release with patches and Service Packs, so installing a new OS was an upgrade, mostly because of large rewrites, instead of the "spaghettified" code that had been patched into place.

This time, they bit off too much in Vista -- so much that they didn't have the resources to release XP-SP3 before Vista's initial release. However, I have great confidence that Microsoft will work hard to address Vista's performance deficit (relative to XP) in XP's next service pack. :-(

This is actually a good sign ...

... because I want to buy a quad core, 4 Gbyte laptop next year.

Obviously, I'm going to run something else on it than Windows :-)

Methodology?

I'm not sure you can say that a 1% aggregate speed increase is a failure -- depending on how that 1% is distributed.

It is also possible that a slower operating system would be an improvement.

The problem with Vista isn't usually that it is slow. The problem is that it inconsistent; it has a way of interrupting the rhythm of your work that is distracting and frustrating. If you took the 95% of the time that the OS is plenty fast, and made it a tad slower, but then redistributed that speed into the 5% of the time you want to throw your laptop out the window, then you'd have an improvement in usability.

The trick is to make sure the user doesn't notice where you are robbing Peter to pay Paul. I have no problem with the idea of the Indexing Service, but personally I do notice. I don't do a lot of searching for files (I prefer to file them intelligently), but I frequently find myself short of disk IO or CPU, so for me at least the Indexing Service isn't a win.

Re:Why would it be faster?

Bug fixes might be faster if the bug in question causes a system slowdown (memory leak being the most obvious).

Re:Article is FUD

That's interesting, would you care to run some benchmarks like the people in the article and posting your own article about it? I'd like to see what areas Microsoft focused their optimization efforts, because it was clearly not the ones tested in the article. As much faith as I put in anecdotal evidence from people on the internet, I would like to see some sort of methodology behind the "greatly improved performance" claim you have made.

Re:Article is FUD

ok, everyone. Delete the story!

GDubs computer works fine so obviously tens of millions of other computers do too and this is all FUD.

Re:I hate M$ as much as the next man...

Oh no... they are not dumb. That is an assumption based on bad product = dumb manufacturer.
They know however that they control the market and they can sell anything they want to as long as there are backward compatibility which is better than what other products offer and, for the private market, games.

Re:Vista

We have switched all our machines to Ubuntu. Join us in the 21st century, dump M$ and the Vista trash!

Not to defend Microsoft or anything (I'm primarily using OS X Leopard these days) but when I tried to install Ubuntu on an older hand-built PC that ran XP acceptably, I found it so slow that it was unusable. While I've used various Linux distros in the past and liked them, I don't think Ubuntu is the be-all end-all of operating systems.

[offtopic] Politics are similar

Consider, for a moment, a similar strategy for a top incumbent Republican. I don't believe for a second he is as stupid as put up in the press.