Windows 7 Review: XP vs Vista vs 7 in 80+ Benchmarks

[DainBramaged]

Finally, Microsoft releases a successor worthy of Windows XP

For the Windows faithful, it’s been a tough eight years. With the launch of Windows XP in 2001, we thought we were poised on a brink of a new world of NT-based goodness—but two years and uncountable exploits later, the future of Windows was grim. Facing a never-ending torrent of new ‘sploits, worms, and trojans, Microsoft fired back with the single greatest operating system update of all time—Service Pack 2. In the single fell swoop of SP2, Windows XP went from Swiss cheese to secure, and once again we were poised to enter the promised land with… (wait for it)… Vista.

Of course, we all know how Vista turned out. Haunted by poor performance in everything from games to disk access to networking, Vista is widely considered to be Microsoft’s biggest failure. Nonetheless, Vista laid the groundwork for a host of new technologies, all absolutely vital to pushing Windows into the 21st century. Vista’s new, modern driver architecture was designed to move core functionality from the kernel (where any instability can bring down the whole system) to user space—an absolutely necessary development. Likewise, Vista’s proper enforcement of permissions for both users and applications enhanced security, even though UAC remains very annoying. And once vendors fixed their driver flaws and Microsoft squashed some underlying bugs, Vista morphed into an entirely workable operating system, even if we still wouldn’t describe it as “good.”

So, as 2009 draws to a close, we find ourselves testing another new Microsoft OS: Windows 7. Building on the now-mature technologies introduced with Vista, but with a renewed focus on performance and ease-of-use, Windows 7 seems poised to succeed where Vista couldn’t. We’ve finally received a final build of Win7, and have run it through the wringer in both the Lab and in the real-world. Here’s what we found.

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/reviews/windows_7_review

[hobbit709]

1. I tried the 32 bit version on an older Socket A setup.

Athlon XP 2000(1.66GHz) with 1Gb RAM and NVidia FX5200 video card. It actually responds faster than XP did. The only problem is there is no driver for the video so I had to use the standard Win 7 VGA driver(NVidia has no 7 drivers for any series below GeForce6) but it works just fine on Aero and everything else. Had to try 4 different LAN cards before it found one it liked(an old D-Link TX-530)
The first thing I do is install as many nonM$ applications as I can to see if the OS doesn't glitch. It works fine with WordPerfect 11 and OpenOffice 3.1, SeaMonkey 2.0, Foxit Reader, my NTI burning software, AVG, Spybot, Malwarebytes, my old MindBoggling Fractals, and even my Trayplay-a 37Kb .exe that plays audio and sits in the system tray(It has now worked on 95, 98, 2000, XP, XP X64, Vista and 7)

[RC]

2. What M$ needs to do is get rid of the Registry.

It's a kludge, but has been around so long people think it is somehow needed

[DainBramaged]

3. I love the registry, always full of surprises........

:evilgrin:

[woo me with science]

4. Thanks for this.

I had been looking for something that describes the changes in detail. Appreciate it.