How fast should Vaio Z w/ Windows 7 be?

I just clean installed Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit on my Z610Y.

I noticed that the speed didn't change much from when I had Vista Ultimate. After rebooting, I have 64-65 processes running (although that includes my AVG antivirus program).

Just how noticeable of a difference should the new OS make? What differences did you notice? And what can I do to speed my computer up?

 

Windows 7 is really Vista with a few tweaks and GUI changes. Don't expect it to be a lot faster.

Some of the changes actually leads to a slower system, but a more responsive system, i.e. a perception of it being faster. Like a less aggressive prefetching, caching and indexing.

The main real speed benefits are few -- the W7 GUI has been optimized more, and uses your graphics hardware better than Vista's Aero did. And speed with certain hardware has improved (like SSDs). But all in all, it's still Vista at heart, much like XP (Windows 5.1) was really Windows 2000 (Windows 5.0) with new make-up.
The hype is that Windows is OMG so fast and wonderful and Vista is just horrible. In reality, the two are near identical (compared to XP), and the hype is just that -- hype. Yeah, it's good. No, it doesn't fix everything that was wrong with Vista, and definitely doesn't break any speed barriers.

 

I disagree, I have seen pretty impressive speed improvements.

Even compared to older Xp installs, there can be a big speed improvement, in fact it should speed up compared to almost any old installation being that it is a clean install.

As for the processes, is this showing for all users or just you? Either way this is high. You should be able to go into the low 50's maybe even high 40's.

My desktop (sorry all I have access to at the moment), shows 57 for me, but 60 processes total from all users.
This includes:
Antivirus, Logitech mouse, winamp, firefox, instant messenger system, VPN program, virtual disk manager, punkbuster (anti cheat for games), 2 remote desktop programs, and a desktop enhancement.

My Win7 file server only shows 42 (for me) and 44 (total). It's not exactly stripped down either. If I have a chance later I will report back with my SZ, but I suspect with nothing open that it will not break mid 50's.


See what all is running and see what is and is not needed. Also what are you basing your speed on, feel, boot times, individual program load times? there are ways to tweak the interface that can make it feel quite a bit snappier.

 

I agree with arth1. With a clean install of either, they will be about the same speed wise. That said, you should make sure that you have the latest drivers installed. I had an acer 3680 before I bought my sony and it had a Pentium D (533mhz FSB) with only 2GB of memory, and a GMA950, and I can say that on my new sony (see my sig) with a fresh install it really doesn't feel all that much faster. Sure it has a little faster boot times and anything slightly processor intensive is a world of difference, but just windows and the antivirus running I could tell a very small difference. Actually try ClamWin instead of AVG, that should save you some precious CPU time. I recently had to uninstall AVG to solve a firewall problem and I was AMAZED at how much a performance gain I got from uninstalling it.

 

Interesting topic...... myself I have found that Win7x64 is a great improvement in boot up and shutdown times over Vista albeit I only have 2gigs of RAM at the moment... However, after running it stable for over a month or two, it's kinda slowed to Vista pace now.... Yes, I use the laptop to death, I have Adobe software running, iTunes, Office, Norton and a whole manner of Sony software... My process average 60-62... but I still think it's faster than Vista, but only marginally now... Was it worth the £ to upgrade... hell no.... lol

 

Well my boot until logon screen is about 28s. Shutting down is much quicker than with Vista (up to 5s), but it's probably just because it's newly installed system. What's much faster is waking up from hibernation...

 

What is fast?
There is no simple definition of fast.

Basically as long as no programme hangs without reason your system is "OK".

A lot of things depend on the Hardware as well - booting and application launches are limited by the HDD - I can boot Vista, log in and open Outlook in less than a minute - HDD took more than 2 - but on the HDD it was fine.

Check the "self diagnostics" I linked to in my sig - that will tell you if you have anything that cuases problems.

Oh, and the two minutes on the HDD are with KIS 2010 which slows it down quite a bit...

 

If you are concerned about start-up time and how quick programs load then try out the ready boost application that comes on windows 7. Although it is only a paging application it will speed things up considerably. Your hard-drive will do less work looking for the information and you may even get longer battery run times. I use a commercial version that somewhat imitates this software on my XP called eboostr.

 

The rule of thumb for data entry is that it should never take more than 1 second between action and reaction, and preferably less than .25 seconds.
A task doesn't have to complete in a second, but the user has to get confirmation that the system is processing the input.
Whether the input is entering text in a search box, double-clicking an icon, or following a link is irrelevant -- if a system takes longer than a second to give feedback, it will be seen as unresponsive and (often incorrectly) slow.

The windows systray is a prime example on how not to do this -- you can double-click an icon there and don't get any feedback until the app has started. Which may be 30 seconds later, if the system is busy and the app needs to page in a lot of data. The Quick Launch bar, on the other hand, gives a short change of the icon, as well as the mouse pointer switching to "busy" until the app has loaded. So what did Microsoft decide to do? Kill the Quick Launch, and expand the toolbar... Gah.

 

windows7 64bit is a great improment over Vista.I happy with it on my Z

 

I suppose there is some truth in it... see FF on a HDD...click it, 30 seconds later you get the window... on a SSD it's bearable (and without KIS IE8 is full of ads, and KIS became a mess )

Good points

 

I don't know if any one else has noticed same thing or not,
My Z610Y takes for ever to come back from sleep, I don't see an option for just standby like XP/Vista, Win 7 only got Sleep option.
I have updated the bios to M3A_R4043M3. This helped me with brightness issues when I upgraded to Win 7.
Again, any help will be great.
Thanks

 

Is that the actual wake up or is it lag after waking up?

I Have the Intel Matrix and Intel Rapid Storage Manager creating lag on an SZ... that's after teh wake up though...

 

That seems like a lot of process for a clean install. I only have 49 running right now, including AVG 9.