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4 Sep 2024 03:15:46 EDT (-0400)
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From: Tom Austin
Subject: Re: Windows XP
Date: 15 Jul 2010 19:41:19
Message: <4c3f9c9f$1@news.povray.org>
On 7/15/2010 5:59 PM, nemesis wrote:
> Warp escreveu:
>> I have heard the claim that Windows is the only operating system where
>> each
>> new version has been slower than the previous version (iow. other
>> OS'es, both
>> free and commercial, try to always be faster or at the very least equally
>> fast than the previous version).
>
> that's obviously not true in the large. It's certainly possible to
> optimize and improve released versions by fixing bugs etc. So, SP3 Vista
> is certainly better and faster than BS1 Vista. But in the long run, a
> next iteration of any OS includes far too many new features, extra APIs
> and such that it's certainly slower than previous iterations from years
> ago. Try running Ubuntu on 2001 gear... or even some pure CLI Linux from
> Scratch based on 2.6 kernel rather than ancient 2.4...
>

I think he was getting at that new OS's are faster - on faster hardware 
of course.  But somehow each version of windows is usually much slower - 
even on faster hardware.


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From: Darren New
Subject: Re: Windows XP
Date: 15 Jul 2010 20:07:17
Message: <4c3fa2b5$1@news.povray.org>
Tom Austin wrote:
> I think he was getting at that new OS's are faster - on faster hardware 
> of course.  But somehow each version of windows is usually much slower - 
> even on faster hardware.

I think you're misremembering. Working on Windows used to be PITA slow.

What does it mean for "Windows" to be faster, anyway? Knock your graphics 
card down to 640x480x16 and see how fast you can copy files to a floppy? 
What part of Windows is "slow" that nevertheless was possible in 1990?

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    C# - a language whose greatest drawback
    is that its best implementation comes
    from a company that doesn't hate Microsoft.


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From: scott
Subject: Re: Windows XP
Date: 16 Jul 2010 03:48:36
Message: <4c400ed4$1@news.povray.org>
>> Maybe nobody wants to buy the timber anymore because there are two 
>> generations of newer timber available for almost the same price?
>
> Given the number of people screaming and wailing about "Vista sux", this 
> seems a very unlikely explanation.

All the people complaining "Vista sux" presumably have a copy of XP already 
so don't need another one.


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From: scott
Subject: Re: Windows XP
Date: 16 Jul 2010 04:02:42
Message: <4c401222$1@news.povray.org>
> I think you're misremembering. Working on Windows used to be PITA slow.

Yeh, I remember back on XP it used to take almost a minute every time I 
wanted to open my CAD software.  Vista seems to have a much better caching 
algorithm as it opens within a few seconds usually now (at least from the 
second time on).


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From: Invisible
Subject: Re: Windows XP
Date: 16 Jul 2010 04:43:22
Message: <4c401baa$1@news.povray.org>
Darren New wrote:

> I think you're misremembering. Working on Windows used to be PITA slow.

I can remember waiting literally 3 minutes for MS Access to open. And I 
remember sitting there and thinking "oh my god, what the *hell* is 
taking so long?? This thing has 8MB RAM and a 33MHz CPU. My Amiga has 
far lower specs, and just about every program I want to run takes less 
than 15 seconds to start. And that's from floppy disk!"

> What does it mean for "Windows" to be faster, anyway? Knock your 
> graphics card down to 640x480x16 and see how fast you can copy files to 
> a floppy? What part of Windows is "slow" that nevertheless was possible 
> in 1990?

The thing that always used to get me is just how long it takes to move 
windows around. In a system without virtual memory, moving a window is 
almost always instantaneous. But once you have virtual memory, it 
becomes possible for whatever's behind that window (or whatever code 
needs to redraw it) to be paged out to disk. The result is glacial GUI 
performance.

Try running Windows NT on a Pentium III system. Then try running Windows 
XP. Don't ask me why, but the difference in speed is vast. And apart 
from a different colour scheme and all the icons and commands being 
renamed so you can't find them, there's no user-visible difference 
between the two OSes. (The only really significant difference is better 
hardware support. NT unsurprisingly tends not to support hardware 
developed 10 years after it was released.)

I wouldn't mind, but it's not like Linux is any better. I can remember 
people pushing Linux because "it's more efficient". And it did seem to 
run faster. But these days, it seems to be getting just as slow as 
Windows. (Booting my Windows 7 VM takes a long time, but booting the 
OpenSUSE 11 VM takes *forever*!)


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From: Invisible
Subject: Re: Windows XP
Date: 16 Jul 2010 04:45:50
Message: <4c401c3e@news.povray.org>
scott wrote:
>> I think you're misremembering. Working on Windows used to be PITA slow.
> 
> Yeh, I remember back on XP it used to take almost a minute every time I 
> wanted to open my CAD software.  Vista seems to have a much better 
> caching algorithm as it opens within a few seconds usually now (at least 
> from the second time on).

Interesting. I've noticed many programs start more slowly under Vista, 
but I've yet to see any start *faster*...

Then again, as soon as you boot Vista, it seems to spend an inordinate 
amount of time thrashing the HD to pieces. It's very hard to tell what 
it's *doing*, but there's a hell of a lot of background stuff running by 
default under Vista.


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From: scott
Subject: Re: Windows XP
Date: 16 Jul 2010 05:06:27
Message: <4c402113$1@news.povray.org>
> Then again, as soon as you boot Vista, it seems to spend an inordinate 
> amount of time thrashing the HD to pieces.

I wouldn't know, my box is under the desk and I can't hear the drive (and 
besides I almost never reboot it).  My suspicion is that XP64 was not 
optimised to make proper use of amounts of RAM like 8GB (after all, when XP 
was released 256 MB was common).


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From: Invisible
Subject: Re: Windows XP
Date: 16 Jul 2010 05:22:18
Message: <4c4024ca$1@news.povray.org>
scott wrote:
>> Then again, as soon as you boot Vista, it seems to spend an inordinate 
>> amount of time thrashing the HD to pieces.
> 
> I wouldn't know, my box is under the desk and I can't hear the drive 
> (and besides I almost never reboot it).  My suspicion is that XP64 was 
> not optimised to make proper use of amounts of RAM like 8GB (after all, 
> when XP was released 256 MB was common).

I've never seen a machine with 8GB of RAM. Not even our servers have 
that much.

I've also never seen the 64-bit edition of XP.

I have, however, seen Windows XP 32-bit running with 3GB of RAM, and 
also Windows Vista running with 3GB of RAM. (Different CPU in each case 
though.) XP is definitely faster - although Vista doesn't seem as slow 
as some people were claiming. Vista is also prettier, and has a number 
of small improvements that are nice. I mean, I wouldn't pay money for 
it, but it's nice to have.

I've never seen Windows 7 except on a VM.

I don't know what the heck "not optimised to make proper use of amounts 
of RAM like that" is supposed to mean, but if one system runs vastly 
faster than the other, I'd argue that the faster system is _not_ the one 
which is "not optimised". :-P

As for boot time... I have Vista on my laptop. It's on my lap. And the 
problem isn't the house the HD makes (it's almost inaudible, even at 
this distance), it's the fact that the system is utterly unresponsive 
until it finishes doing whatever it's doing.


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From: Warp
Subject: Re: Windows XP
Date: 16 Jul 2010 08:48:48
Message: <4c405530@news.povray.org>
nemesis <nam### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Try running Ubuntu on 2001 gear... or even some pure 
> CLI Linux from Scratch based on 2.6 kernel rather than ancient 2.4...

  I would be surprised if it wasn't faster due to new drivers, more
efficient file systems and other optimizations.

  (Remember, we are comparing bare-bones systems where all fancy bells and
whistles that can be turned off have been.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp


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From: Mike Raiford
Subject: Re: Windows XP
Date: 17 Jul 2010 12:56:54
Message: <4c41e0d6$1@news.povray.org>
On 7/16/2010 4:22 AM, Invisible wrote:

> I've never seen a machine with 8GB of RAM. Not even our servers have
> that much.

My desktop system sports 8gb of ram. Definitely makes the system run 
smoother when memory hungry 64 bit apps like Photoshop are running.

> I've never seen Windows 7 except on a VM.

Running Windows 7 now on my home PC. It's like vista but much better. 
The taskbar buttons take a little getting used to, but now I wouldn't 
have it any other way.


-- 
~Mike


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