Windows 8 boot time faster than windows 7?

I know windows 8 boots up faster than windows 7, but if you follow this guide Speed Up Windows 7 - Ultimate Tweaks For a Blazing Fast Windows 7 or any other guide (basically disabling a lot of stuff), will Windows 7 be just as fast? To me Windows 8 seems to be stripped down (less eye-candy features) to allow for faster boot time rather than an improvement in code optimization.

 

short of doing a side by side compare, I can't offer much help. But my guess would be, if you stripped windows 7 down and took away the eye candy, it would be within margin of error on boot times, especially with SSDs rapidly approaching single digit speeds for boot times.

As for eye candy with 8... I noticed that too. I miss the sleek glass look of 7. I have Start8 to make it behave like 7, but that's about it.

 

I doubt it would still match windows 8's speeds specially with UEFI enabled. the tweaks you posted mainly deals with how windows should behave after the initial loading of system files, while the way windows 8 works with UEFI enabled) is caching memory (think of it like hibernate on windows 7)

aside from those, on a cold boot up windows 8 architecture is much more streamlined and has a lot less system files being loaded at startup compared to 7

 

Windows 8 "fast boot" is all about UEFI, has little to with Windows 8 really. Windows 8 still loads stuff once the OS is up and running. It *is* impressive, however how fast UEFI does allow for the OS to boot however. If you time your Windows 7 from the splash screen to the point of useable desktop you'd have similar times. Not to mention Windows 8 is primarily a fresh install on everyone's machines now, time will tell how much it is or isn't bogged own with Win rot over time.

Installing Windows 8 on my Sager NP9150 without UEFI, boot times were comparable to my Windows 7 of 6 months with tons of crap installed, well within a couple seconds.

 

I find boot times "Non-UEFI" to be comparable between the two, like WingNut said within a few seconds. Where W8 gets deceiving is in a dual boot environment. It appears it boots faster from the boot load screen and only because it's basically booted. If I select W7 my laptop reboots back into W7.

 

Windows 8 logs the user out (closes user programs) and then hibernates. It's called a hybrid boot because it's not a full hibernation nor is it a full shut down. This is why it's so much faster than Windows 7's boot time.

 

interesting that my experience is different, usually I get to a working desktop on windows 8 in about 13-15 secs, while with a fresh install of windows 7 it used to take 22 secs and up (from old benchmarks i did when i got my laptop), this is without uefi as my bios doesn't support it as well.

 

So that's what it is. I have windows 7 and was contemplating on upgrading to windows 8 for $40. Do you guys recommend upgrading to windows 8? I've used it and can fairly adapt just fine with the new interface. How is it for you guys? Stability, compatibility, and workflow that is.

 

Honestly, for most users there's really no reason to upgrade. I just did because of work
otherwise I wouldn't have since there's nothing in windows 8 that you can't do in 7 (unless uefi boot is worth the 40$ lol)

 

Are boot up time is really that important? I mean, 15 sec or 1min, does it really matter?

 

On a modern machine (IB chipset) and Intel Rapid Start support, Windows 7 will boot exactly as fast as Windows 8. My Samsung Series 9 UltraBook cold-boots Windows 7 in less than ten seconds. Other than that, you have to decide if you can live with Win8's god-awful UI. That's a matter of both taste and usage pattern. Some are perfectly happy with Win8, while others can't stand the thing. YMMV.

 

It is to a point. 10-15 second difference? Meh, who cares. But honestly, I see zero reason to pay to upgrade to Windows 8. If you get it with a new laptop, well it will likely ship with UEFI BIOS and you can say "ooh ahh" all you want the first few times, then "meh, who cares".

The only real advantage I see of Windows 8 is the "Storage Spaces" and "Thin Provisioning" which has everything to do with backup of your data. It's a great, thing, just not something most users will make use of.

 

That is one of the key questions that everyone has to answer for themselves.

All of my machines are on 24/7/365 with the sole exception of my "travel" laptop which runs Linux anyway. So for me, a new OS has to offer a lot more than just a great boot time if I'm expected to spend $$ on an upgrade...

I see no reason to upgrade to W8 after trying it out and am quite likely to skip it altogether like I did with Vista, but to each his/hers own...on other words, YMMV...

 

hmm I suppose I can wait until Windows 9. I don't have any qualms between Win 7 and Win 8. The $40 upgrade is until the end of January. After that, I definitely will not upgrade to Windows 8. I'll be running it off an SSD so I don't think it matters much. I gave my brother the windows 8 key, and I have the windows 7 key (both from my university).

 

With legacy boot, I think they are close. I feel Windows 8 load the startup item(stuff in the notification) delayed a bit more.

Some under the hood change is nice, but the "app" aspect and UAC are disgusting to me. Upgrade only because my win7 installation went bad though.

Longer boot time mean I start banging on the palm rest real hard, which usually attract attentions.

 

I'm thinking of upgrading because Windows 7 driver support from notebook manufacturers is slowly fading and I usually replace my machines every year/year and a half or so. Eventually I'll have Windows 8 forced on me anyway, might as well get it over with now

 

What notebook manufacturer isn't supporting Windows 7 anymore?

 

I agree. Where do you see Windows 7 driver support "fading"? With the speed at which Windows 8 is going nowhere, and with Windows 7 support extended to 2020 as it is, I see no reason to worry about driver support at all. By the time you might start worrying about that, Microsoft will have rolled out Windows 9 certainly, and possibly also Windows 10. We'll see what those versions bring, but for now Windows 8 is a non-starter, for me and many others.

 

Sorry if I came out as generalizing. Going trough 4 Alienware machines (soon to receive my fourth) I can see in the driver support section how Windows versions were dropped from model to model. I was actually considering getting the new Asus G75VX model until I realized it's a Windows 8 exclusive, no driver support for Windows 7. Seeing as how the Alienware M17x R3 supported Windows 7 exclusively, and the R4 is supporting 7 and 8, I can only suspect the "R5" will be a Windows 8 exclusive, given their previous trend. But as you all say, since Windows 8 is panning out to be another Vista flop, the trend might not happen.

I'm in no way implying all manufacturers will be dropping Windows 7 support for all their lines and I seriously hope I can hold on to 7 for another couple of years. Doesn't matter much seeing as how Dell hasn't updated their Alienware drivers in over a year

 

I don't believe any of the drivers on that Asus G75VX are Windows 8-exclusive.

ASUS - Notebooks- ASUS G75VX

Operating System Windows 8 Pro
Windows 8
Windows 7 Ultimate
Windows 7 Professional
Windows 7 Home Premium
Windows 7 Home Basic

They just don't preload Windows 7.

 

It is true that newer laptops may only support Windows 8 out of the box, without support for Windows 7. The G75VX states Windows 7 but driver downloads are only available for Windows 8. That being said, it's a little shortsighted for manufacturers to not support the latest legacy OS. In many cases those drivers are eventually available or can be found by contacting the manufacturer. And in many cases they use standard components so you can just get the drivers from the individual component websites. I don't think there's any hardware features unique to Windows 8 that wouldn't run on Windows 7.