Showing posts with label Vista. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vista. Show all posts

Beware the Impression of Speed in Windows 7

  December 04, 2009    


I am still exploring Microsoft Windows 7 on the Sony VAIO notebook I bought a few years ago and, like many people checking out Windows 7, I am still getting an impression of improved speed. But this could be dangerous. I suspect the need for speed is driving a lot of Vista and XP users towards Windows 7 but the question you need to ask is this: How long will it last?

Any experienced Windows user knows that fresh installs of past versions of Windows were pretty nippy compared to two-year old install. Sadly, a machine that has been running the same Windows 2000, XP or Vista install for two years is likely to be slowed down by a hugely bloated registry and all kinds of DLLs and taskbar apps and startup items and such, even if you've been using a registry cleaner and optimizer.

A new Windows machine is bound to seem faster, as is a new install. This is particularly tricky for XP users because you can't upgrade XP to 7, you have to do a fresh install of Windows 7. And when you do that you wipe the slate clean, so to speak, and things sure do seem faster. The big question is: How long will that last?

I'd be interested to hear from anyone who has answers to that. Is there anything in the design of Windows 7 that would lead us to hope it remains fast? Just click on COMMENTS below to share your thoughts.

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New Versions of Windows Will Always Be Late

  November 08, 2006    

...and seldom worth waiting for. What you want to wait for is the second update to the new version, the 3.11 to the 3.0, the SP2 to the XP, and so on.

I am quite familiar with the problems of inductive reasoning so I won't say it is impossible that a future version of Windows will ship on time. But I would never bet money on the folks at Microsoft giving me what they promised when they first promised it. Indeed, I would humbly suggest that IT managers who take Microsoft timetables at their face value are gambling with their company's profitability.

Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Remember that Windows 1.0 was announced in late 1983, promised for April 1984, only to be delivered in November, 1985. As someone who tried to use Windows 1.0, I can say in all honesty, it was not worth the wait. Arguably, we did not get a really worthwhile version until Windows for Workgroups 3.11 in November of 1993, a decade after the initial brouhaha. The rest, as they say, is history.

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