Windows 7 is overrated - No difference in terms of performance compared with Vista

looking to get windows 7, where can i find a good deal on a full install. on home or prem.

 

I never had issues with Vista64 but i have to admit that i waited for about a year after it was launched so i think i skipped all the driver issue stuff. I don't normally trust MS (or most software manufacturers for that matter) to release products that have been tested through and through, same thing for the likes of Adobe and Autodesk. You would expect everything to be smooth at release but that's just never the case, i just give em some extra time.

Win7 saw a change in that aspect, after 2 weeks of running the RC i switched to it completly as my main OS and i never had ANY issue with hardware, software, anyhting! I absolutely love the new features and interface and it DOES definetly feel snappier. Not saying it has very much of a performance boost but in general i get laptops that would easily run anything anyway so yeah, i would've been VERY surprised if my M4400 had problems with either Vista or Win7.
Smooth sailing here

 

no. always take windows update. they are certified drivers that are not only supported from your manufacturer of choice, but toroughly tested from microsoft, too, to behave well and not fail on your system.

the only thing is, they might be one, two month more old.

if you have no problem, use them. if you have one, search for the fix. by default, go for windows update. only if that fails (so far, never on any win7 system), go further.

 

have to admit I rolled back to vista on most my machines after a couple of weeks, got 7 installed on 1 but i rarely use it..

 

Win7 is faster than Vista but your systems mileage may vary. As a general rule of thumb if you have a system that is fast already with Vista you will notice little to no improvement with Win7. Lower end systems such as netbooks will notice the most improvement.

This could also be said of lower end, older, desktops capable of running Aero too. The one thing that can be said is it is the first M$ OS release that doesn't require more hardware than its predecessor but actually can be a relief for some systems running the older OS.

That is just one more reason this appears to be more of a service pack for Vista than a true new generation OS. Win7 just doesn’t seem to have that added feature set that justifies calling it a new operating system. Also with resource management Win7 is what Vista really should have always been.

This is why at Vista release Linux users had a field day. Vista was dogging all but the best of hardware. Even Apples OS did not squash hardware performance as M$’s flag ship did. How soon we also forget Vista stability issues at release that Apple reminded of us daily in their commercials.

Personally I had little to no real issues with Vista other than early hardware performance. Win7 is giving me no real headaches other than a battery issue that seems to be cropping up. I only have a slight issue where I’ve heard others are having a big issue with this but I’m sure M$ will fix it, but to what leftover damage….

 

It's amazing what a little PR will do for a product. XP to Vista was a huge huge leap in terms of technical changes. Terrible reception. Vista to Win7 was a small leap. Great reception.

 

Well i worked with Vista and it was painfull, with W7 while it has its issues i am at ease.

 

Windows 7 is not over rated. It's Windows Vista that was underrated

 

I have so many people come into Best Buy and complain about how slow and bloated and annoying Vista was. They can't all be coincidences. Vista still isn't as nearly good as Windows 7, and I'll just leave it at that.

 

I Like The New Taskbar

 

PR, yes, however, despite the premise that Win7 is not such a big departure from Vista (because both effectively use the same core), fact remains that 7 is cleaned up, slimmed down, more stable, some new goodies and faster in comparison.

Could they have delivered what they did in Win7 in SP2 or SP2.5 for Vista?
Yes, they could have done so and still retain the Vista name. But it was easier to simply call it a new OS altogether and make a clean start because of the lousy reception Vista (in name) received.

Although I fail to see as to why M$ simply couldn't make a SP2 that transforms Vista into what Win7 is, publicly announce that they essentially repaired the OS altogether and kept it around until Windows 8 came out.

Win 7 does numerous things, though it does feel like a refresh (such as it's done in the cpu and gpu industries).

We'll likely have to wait every 4 years to get some substaintal differences between the OS-es and features they offer ... unless every new version will involve a transition ala 'XP to Win7' for example.

 

I jumped from XP to W7 with my new computer skipping Vista. From what I read Vista had many bugs and was a resource hog. I liked XP it was very stable. W7 seems a improvement but requires a learning curve. I would not mind being "stuck" with XP.

 

Making a new OS was a better business plan than modifying the old one. Even if they had transformed Vista into 7, Vista's early life reputation would not have gone away.

I'm not saying otherwise though, but it's not like the OEM helped Microsoft by installing non-bloated Vista haha.

 

They did. It's called an in pace upgrade from Vista to Win7. It is effectively exactly what you asked for. Since the architecture of the OS did not change at all, the transition is nothing more than a code base change, exactly the same thing as in any service pack.

Gary

 

I'd blame it on the people...
Quite a few will have bought a underpowered computer, or a medium range computer - then kept all the bloat from the manufacturer.

Added to this the negative opinion Vista has gained - it'll feel slower to them.

Next thing:
Most people don't notice the advantages - they'll see 1,2GB or RAM used and start ranting how much is used with no idea why its used...

 

This. There is also a large placebo effect too.

 

Windows 7 is snappier. When I want to minimize a window in windows 7 it does it. When I want to minimize a window in vista Instead of closing a window I get 5 corrupted files then it tells me to run chkdsk scan so I run t but the scan never starts...EVER. So I reinstall vista, a week later same problem...Then my computer blows up (Exaggeration but not far from the truth.)

 

Wow, everyone loves this phrase. While agreed Placebo Effect can and does exist as a general rule of thumb the ardent hobbiests here are immune to this. The reason is we usually do not just take gains for granted and either time or someother benchmark of them. We will need to know the gains to decide if the upgrade is worth the costs.

I can tell you of my percieved gains I have timed them and they are there. When ever I see a gain I first suspect it as only percieved, not actual, and then I'll go in and try to find if there is a real gain that can be quantified. If it can't or hasn't been quantified then I will only list them as just a percieved gain. Usually here it still isn't imagination but may just be a gain that is so minimal it is percievable but not measurable to a degree to satisfy statistcally showing the gain.

Also Placebo effect dosn't really qualify here. A placebo, IE: sugar pill, means you have really done nothing other than saying you have done something and asking if there is an improvement. Win7 actually does quite a few things under the hood over Vista so by that definition alone it does not qualify as a "Placebo/Sugar Pill"...........

 

I feel very compelled to post in this thread. I'm actually installing Win 7 on my computer as I type this (very excited). Setting up a dual boot with XP in the meantime. I really hope that Win 7 is as great as they say it is. I tried Vista and I simply hated it. I tried home edition, ultimate edition, 32 bit, and 64 bit. I even went through SEVERAL guides on here and elsewhere on how to optimize it (way too much effort IMO). Mind you, this is on a BRAND NEW computer AND a fresh install at the time. The simplest tasks seemed to be daunting for Vista. Simply switching between windows could take up to 5-10 seconds. And god forbid if I actually ran a program that required some power. I did A LOT of searching trying to figure out what the problem was, but long story short, I got rid of Vista and went back to XP. Between the two OS, there were HUGE differences in performance. My fps in certain games would differ by up to 500% (~60 fps in vista, and ~300 fps in XP). I tried various drivers for my GPU's as well. 3DMark, PCMark, my matlab codes, etc. all differed significantly and XP won in every single comparison. Quite frankly, I couldn't understand why on my computer Vista performed so poorly (and frankly I don't care at this point). I'm actually on my gf's computer typing this (Vista) whose specs aren't even half of my computer's and her computer is faster than mine with Vista on it. Now to answer what everyone's thinking, here are my specs

Sager NP9262
Core 2 Quad 2.83Ghz
4GB RAM
Dual Nvidia 9800M GT in SLi

And mind you, this is on FRESH INSTALLS (I must have formatted my HD's at least 10 times before scrapping my Vista endeavor). My computer should NOT be slowed down by simply switching between windows. Did I mention my temperatures were higher as well?

Long story short, even with my "hopped up" laptop, Vista was PAINFULLY slow and I simply hated it. It makes no sense to me how my gf's computer (2Ghz Turion64 w/ 2GB ram) is faster than my NP9262. I really hope Win 7 is different and will be posting here again after I've finished installing it and all my programs. Otherwise, I'll be sticking with XP until I am simply forced to upgrade.

 

Hmm that slow in Vista is really not normal. I ran fine Vista 32-bit on MUCH slower systems and performed a little slower than XP, but nothing drastic (about 5 fps slower in games)
AMD Athlon XP 2500+
2GB of RAM
120GB 7200RPM HDD
Geforce FX 5900 S.E (Sucky Edition),
Nforce 2.

Anyway, that was the past.
Windows 7 64-bit is very fast, and unless you have a hardware problem, it should be a little faster than XP in many instances under a new Win7-ready system (as you have). I don't mean faster boot or shutdown.. I mean faster when using large applications (start them up, and use them), and game FPS should be similar. The reason for this, is due to it's memory management which is act the following way: User RAM first, when full, use page file. While XP is: No mather how much RAM you have, you are low in memory and I am putting everything on the page file as soon as I can.

Also, unlike XP and older Windows, having Aero uses your GPU to render the UI, so more CPU power available for your applications.

Just a note: If you use iTunes, don't expect it to be fast. It needs a few hundred super computers to make it run smoothly, so just ignore it. Apple doesn't know how to program (or probably done on purpose to push Mac sells by showing how iTunes on Macs runs much faster).

Well, enjoy your Windows 7 64-bit, and hope you did not waist your money on it. Again, if you have the latest BIOS, latest drivers from manufacture for everything (sound card, GPU, motherboard, network, etc.), and you have a speed issue, something is broken.

 

On Win 7 now. I'm happy to say, so far anyway, it's smooth. I've only installed 2 programs (AIM and mozilla) and VERY PLEASED to see that there are only 38 processes and CPU usage is STAYING at 0%. That number is definitely going to increase once I install everything and update my drivers, but I expect to be far less than Vista (was pushing 50-70 processes (I don't remember exactly, but I do know it was more than 38) and 30-80% CPU usage even after a fresh install). I'll put some hurtin' on the system tomorrow and report back. I'm going to bed now....

 

Well, that isn't Vista's problem - its more something like:
Malware you caught
a bad driver installed by the manufacturer or you

 

No, It is vista's problem. I had kaspersky and malwarebytes. They didn't find anything. There was absolutely no way to get the corrupted file off vista, I tried to run chkdsk scan like it said but nope, whenever the compute restarted guess what? It just went right past the ckdsk scan and ran windows vista normally. ? I tried everything to get the chkdsk sacn to run but nothing would work. Nothing. I made sure never to save all my files and programs to one partition as I heard that makes corrupt files sometimes. I ended up having to reinstall vista.....A few months later the same exact problem.

Now on windows 7. I have been on windows 7 since it was released. No corrupt files. I can run chkdsk scan whenever I like. No problems.

 

Well, I wouldn't say its Vista's problem because so far you're the only one who has complained.

Makes me think something broke on your laptop.

Bad drivers? And "tweaking" on your side??

 

Vista was broken, end of story. I did a clean install of Vista x64 when I first got my T400 and it was the buggiest, more picky POS OS. Ever.

 

Well, I'll admit that Vista had its problems pre SP1.

But else Vista is a perfect OS.
It works well - runs well - is less trouble than XP - oh, and it doesn't blue screen all the time as XP does (or did for me).

Worst of all, I never knew why XP blue screened... the only time it happened on Vista that I'm sure about it at the beginning, the default Sony Vista Install, and it was caused by KIS - oddly enough, on a recovery from the recovery discs KIS worked fine...

Else, maybe I had a BSOD - I don't remember any - in total it would be less than possibly 5 in over 1,5 years.

Vista is not by default broken, bad or anything.

Yes, Win7 is a more mature OS, yes it is what Vista should have been, yes it does use less resources - but its not that much better.
Vista is fine - and provided you don't have a specific Vista problem - e.g. the company doesn't produce any decent drivers - then its fine and there is NO reason at all to upgrade.

 

This was the same attitude people compared XP/XP SP1 to XP SP2.

 

I have to agree with DetlevCM, Vista had his share of problems, but nothing like what was being mentioned. The trick with Vista, to have a smooth experience was to have 2GB or more of RAM with a mid-range gaming GPU (at the time... now they are considered very low end GPU's), and a multi-core CPU. I am not saying it was Win7 like... it had other issues, but it was stable and smooth.

 

With the disk problem I notice you are 2x250GB on the drives. If these are Raid0 then the raid drivers may be your issue not Vista as an OS...........

 

This may be.....

 

Well then, now that I am fully up and running Windows 7, I must say, I am VERY PLEASED! It must be the new drivers on my GPUs, but my fps have gone up SIGNIFICANTLY. On my game, used to hit 300 fps usually and I actually hit 500fps (didn't stay this way though). I'm going to try some more intensive games to see how it performs. Everything seems to be working fine. Outside of a few "hiccups", I am very happy with Windows 7. Still gonna hold on to XP for a while (need to make sure my "intense" programs still run well), but quite happy.

For me anyway, this is a night and day difference. Like a firecracker to a nuclear bomb difference. Yes, it's that drastic. Vista was not a good match for my system for SOME ODD REASON that I never figured out. Anyway, see ya!

 

I tried installing Vista Ultimate on my 4 year old Dell computer, it lagged like crazy.

I recently installed Windows 7 Ultimate, and it ran smoothly and beautifully. I think it's much lighter-weight and less bloated OS than Vista.

 

It's not. It just feels that way because they've made some tweaks to it that should have been in Vista to begin with, what with the indirect, non-blocking rendering and so on. Even if it is no faster (try a benchmark... it should be the same as under Vista) it'll feel faster because one application doesn't block another one from rendering. And that's what you were noticing as lag and blocking, and why you're thinking that 7 has less bloat. It doesn't

 

Still.....in the end Win7 runs fine and Vista doesn't. Doesn't matter what the underlying reason is, what matter is the result for the user.

 

Don't generalize this statement. Vista ran as fast as Windows 7 (runs) in my laptop.

 

It's funny how as long as this thread is, it seems to be that people ain't figured out that not everyone is getting the same results between the two OS. Ok, for you there was no difference, but for me and many others, there was. Just because you didn't experience a difference doesn't mean that others didn't either. I'm really surprised that this thread is so long. I can understand arguments over why one person saw a difference and why another didn't. But come on guys... really? These programs have like a million lines of code and we are all using different hardware and different drivers, seriously, is it really so hard to believe that some had differences and others didn't?

 

Well, to argue the other side it could be said that the differences, although there are many, are pretty minimal in terms of actual performance.

To me the everyday aspects of W7 are smoother, but not necessarily truly meaningfully faster on same hardware. But then I never actually bought into the 'Vista Sucks' camp fully either. I know that nVidia and ATI were responsible for most of the Fubars for the vast majority of users until Q3 2007, but since '08 it's actually been a pretty solid user experience, if a little over-susceptible to doughnutting. W7 for me is a 'met expectations' upgrade with some nice additions, but not significantly more.

A lot of the hype and 'omg it's so much faster / better' is because people have conditioned themselves into believing that Vista sucks, and actually facing a new version of the OS without the drooling-Mac-fanboi-tech-press-lead Vista hate - having seized on the incompatibility aspects at release - caused many people to view it for what it was, instead of what they'd believed it to be. As a result, the aforementioned tech press - and indeed many Vista haterz, justified or otherwise - *had* to hype up W7, because saying anything else meant their cries of 'Vista Sucks' post-'07 would be, relatively speaking, shown to be the tosh it was.

Essentially, IMNHO the Windows 7 hype comes from a giant arse-covering exercise by the Apple-addicted tech press, and essentially 'normalises' the actual reported experience of a prevailing Microsoft OS.

In all honesty since W7's app compatibility is essentially the same as Vista there is no reason to keep Vista running on your systems... but to pretend a titanic gulf of speed / usability exists between the two is a tad delusional.

 

I was talking about QuantumPSI laptop. Mine ran Vista64 fine to, never had issues. But i like Win7 better, interface and all.

 

1)When Vista was released drivers were not ready so poor execution correlate to poor experience in contrast Windows 7 can use the matured Windows Vista drivers without tweaking
2)Vista requires more powerful hardware to run it so many older devices which could no longer run it causes bad experience, while Windows 7 is a slim down OS which could run decently on legacy hardware.

 

Actually, it's of the order of 100 million lines of code now...

 

Actually, since Microsoft hasn't released this information to the public yet I(as far as I could find), you can't say that. But Vista had about ~50 million lines of code, so Windows 7 won't be too far from that.

 

I understand all of your points, but I got my computer October 08. In fact, if you look at some of my previous posts, you'll see that from day one I had problems with Vista. Tried going to XP 64, and that didn't work out. And like I said, to this day, I have no idea why Vista performed so abysmal on my machine. And for ME, Win 7 is a HUGE improvement, I can't explain why and for some odd reason, it's even faster than XP in some areas (but also slower in other areas).

All I'm trying to say is that not everyone is experiencing the same thing obviously. Have I ran benchmarks? No and I'm not going to. Why? Because the proof is in the pudding (ie game fps (my games anyway) and matlab, solidworks, etc.).

 

"pla, pla, pla"....
"better features then the other" - what other? - There is not "Other Windows 7" - and more features than Vista - maybe, not that many.
Less RAM - no, just reported differently
Fast booting - who cares? A fresh install of Vista took about 1,5minutes - 2 minutes max on my old 5400rpm HDD (SSD nowadays )
1 Minute or 2 is no difference - 1 or 5 is.

"Heavy computer user with advanced software" - such a statement makes you look like someone who only started to use a computer a little while ago and thinks Word is magic...

 

LOL. Agree'd.

Only reason I got 7 was because I was able to snag it for 30$, if it wasn't for that I woulda been on Vista, which I was happy with. All these "gains" I feel like are just a huge placebo affect, backed up by massive media outlets. Gotta accept though that Windows 7 has some major improvements over Vista in terms of productivity (Aero Peek and co are about the only things I can like about 7 over Vista (still bummed I can't resize the thumbnails natively, but that's made up in 7 by just showing the entire window), maybe. Maybe the ability to adjust the System Restore size too by a slider instead of a cmd prompt). Performance wise, I see no real gain, works just like Vista was for me.

 

Well we're not here to really discredit anyone's linguistic skills. I'm sure that in every language/culture, there are those who speak/write very poorly in their own tongue so let's not get into that

I have to agree to an extent that Windows 7 is simply a better Vista, but that in essence they are the same. Microsoft did a very good job at "modifying"(for lack of a better term) Vista into Windows 7 so that the end user seemingly gets(note the key word 'seemingly') an overall smoother, snappier and more fluid experience.

 

believe it or not, vista's commercial success or failure is not dictated by apple related press. the same is true for windows 7. although i do respect your persistence, and i appreciate how you always find the connection between any tech hype and apple-fan-tech-media groups, or apple users in general, regardless of how distant and disconnected it may seem to the rest of our untrained eyes.

my vista experience:

did not like vista. to be fair, i was using it when it came out for a month or so, maybe a bit more. this was back in the time when there really were serious problems with it. so i switched back to XP and rocked XP until 7 came out. so my vista experience is short, (and similar to many other people's) but doesn't necessarily reflect the current state of vista. but at this point, why bother? 7 works.

 

I also respect your persistence in tracking my posts, refuting whatever I said that you don't like - as a clear and present Apple fanboi - with platitudes or irrelevance, such as the above. Dogged, for sure.

 

Can this be an evidence of "overrating"? Frankly, I don't get what they're saying...
"Most Windows 7 PCs max out their memory, resulting in performance bottlenecks, a researcher said today."
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9158258/Most_Windows_7_PCs_max_out_memory

 

Research is idiotic, not well done. Windows 7 has minimum specs.. if you decide to go bellow that, than don' t blame the OS.

Another thing, XP has the put "everything on pagefile as soon as can, no mater how much RAM you have.. you are always low in memory" approach, while Windows 7 is "Ouuu!!! RAAAAAMM!!!! Let me use it, because that is the point of the RAM, else we would not need RAM and simple use the HDD directly".

Also what the research doesn't consider is SuperFetch technology. The "research" seams to just look at Task Manager, while not excluding SuperFetch. This technology pre-loads application before you do, it's RAM consumption is not reserved, and reduce size as you need it.

Also, if half the computer running Windows 7 has such problem, then believe me it would be a big talk on the internet, where the OS would be too powerful and demanding for today's computers (OS from the future). Sadly this is not the case. If the research decided to look at 50% people who have P3's, or P4's with 512MB of RAM who put Win7 without any drivers (as they don't exists - hardware too old), OR some early netbook with low memory, and based there conclusion on that, is just plain bad. How can a researcher not notice that their sample group has an issue. With such BIG claim, a team of researcher would gather several other new groups and restart from scratch to confirm that the first conclusion is correct... this was not done.

 

Ah, but you would need to know some mathematics to understand that I said exactly the same thing.