Comments on: InfoWorld, Windows 7 and benchmarks: a trio of trouble

By: Dave Lindhout

Dave Lindhout — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 07:25:20 +0000

@B. Factor: The article you link to was written by Randall Kennedy from InfoWorld, saying PC World has substantiated InforWorld's claims is a bit miss leading. I found value in Randall's, however.

By: B. Factor

B. Factor — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 22:39:51 +0000

PC World has substantiated the Infoworld claim that Windows 7 is Vista: http://www.pcworld.com/article/153624/under_the_hood_windows_7_is_vistas_twin.html

By: BRYAN B

BRYAN B — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 08:57:53 +0000

This is not directly related to your article, but this article from Computerworld may have some value to your testing and exploration of Windows 7 http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9119918&intsrc=hm_list

By: tino

tino — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 08:26:21 +0000

I meant to say "I really doubt it will be faster THAN XP on a MSI Wind." on my previous comment erh!

By: tino

tino — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 08:21:47 +0000

I am sure it’s faster than Vista but I really doubt it will be faster on a MSI Wind. Since I don’t see any blogger bother to do the comparo with a XP.

And waiting for apps like keytweat running smoothly on W7 you know will take a long time.

By: Jake

Jake — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 18:40:40 +0000

James, no business is going to run an alpha build of an OS on production machines so any article that benchmarks that build is worthless. Surely you can appreciate the futility of an article like this.

Even if businesses are deliberately avoiding Vista as you suggest, they will not be evaluating Windows 7 based on an alpha build.

Anyway, I didn’t think anyone bothered with Infoworld after that stupidly pointless save XP campaign they ran.

By: tech001

tech001 — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 16:57:21 +0000

People should remember InfoWorld was the only place that gave Win7 negative comments a couple of weeks back. I seriously doubt those people's intention.

By: bmhome1

bmhome1 — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 16:40:54 +0000

Win 7 on my creaky old 1.2Gz TC1100 is unquestionably faster than Vista on same, even vLite’d and tweaked for speed.

The vanilla 10GB Ultimate Win 7 uses less CPU, had 40 processes running and was speedier across the board.

CrystalMark 04 gave Vista 30,000 and Win 7 just 22,000. Using THAT as reference would color real experience.

By: James Kendrick

James Kendrick — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 16:37:24 +0000

I see both Kevin's and the author of the article's points and they're both right. I viewed the InfoWorld article as pointing out valid points for Microsoft. Enterprises have in large part avoided Vista and MS better demonstrate that Win 7 is different than Vista in the areas that the enterprise need it to be. The author was pointing out that in his opinion the current Win 7 build does not do that and that as such the enterprise will have no compelling reason to adopt it.

By: Vance

Vance — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 16:18:22 +0000

I simply think Microsoft is unable to build an OS that can work both as a mobile system and an all-in-one desktop mega OS. I remember how they said Vista would boot up as fast as a television set. Look how that turned out.

Someday, when notebooks turn on like our cellphones do, we’ll look back at Windows and LAUGH. I don’t have much hope for WIn7 being a truly mobile OS.

By: Joe

Joe — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 16:16:52 +0000

I don't think the article is wrong in any respect. Kennedy does not SAY that Windows 7 will be a failure. He just points out that based on his evaluation of the software... is not much different from Vista. Then he posits whether this is going to be good enough for those that have already passed on Vista.

By: Kevin C. Tofel

Kevin C. Tofel — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 15:07:46 +0000

Tom, I see your point better now. Since there were no restrictions on this pre-beta, test build in terms of NDA status, it's fair game for commentary; good and bad. I can agree with that bit.

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 15:03:24 +0000

Kevin,

We can agree to disagree on this, but to answer your question about Mac OS X 10.5.6, if Apple made a beta available without restrictions on comment (I’m assuming none of the comments about Win7 break any NDA), then OF COURSE you could publish whatever you wanted. Why wouldn’t you? And that’s my point.

But Apple hasn’t released 10.5.6 in such a fashion. MS, however, DID release Win7 that way, and they must take the bad with the good. That’s all I’m saying.

I’m sure many people will look through the InfoWorld piece as being premature, but unless they broke some sort of agreement or NDA, I’m not inclined to think it was irresponsible. Certainly no more irresponsible than, say, Thurrott’s ramblings about how Win7 is The Second Coming.

By: ctitanic

ctitanic — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 14:41:54 +0000

Well, I share Kevin´s concerns. But at the same time I posted what I experienced at my site, and it´s a better performance in a UMPC than when using Vista in that same device. And so far I have other friends of mine testing it in a even slower device using a VIA processor and he shares the same experiences than me. It feels more responsive than Vista.

I hope Betas wont becomes worse than current prebeta. I hope so.

By: B. Factor

B. Factor — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 14:27:32 +0000

Kevin,

I think you misread and misrepresented the Infoworld article. They said by every technical way they had of instrumenting the Windows 7 operating system, it was nearly identical to Vista. It had nearly the same number of kernel threads, they used nearly the same amount of resources, etc etc etc. So Windows 7 is nothing more than Vista RC2 which really shouldn’t surprise anyone given that MSFT is planning to release it in 2009 AND any marketing person would tell MSFT that they have to rename their operating system because so many people hate Vista.

By: Kevin C. Tofel

Kevin C. Tofel — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 14:17:57 +0000

Tom, I’m not suggesting we should be drooling over it either but to make broad leaps about how miserable the performance will be on a pre-beta, test build that’s not optimized for performance isn’t responsible in my opinion. I don’t mind that people criticize a product when it’s a final, readily available product.

Put another way: would it be appropriate for me to get the first seeded test build of OS X 10.5.6, find performance flaws and then claim with near certainty that 10.5.6 will peform miserably when it becomes available in final form? I don’t think that would be any different nor would I be correct for doing so. Just my opinion, of course.