Software firm finds Windows 7 doesn't boot faster than Vista
By Donald Melanson 
posted October 8th 2009 2:11PM
posted October 8th 2009 2:11PM
There's no question that Windows 7 promises plenty of improvements over Vista, with one of the biggest being faster boot times. While that's certainly been the experience for some, Iolo Technologies (a maker of PC tune-up software) found some significantly different results in their long term tests, which they say show that Windows 7 isn't faster than Vista at all in real world use. Specifically, they found that while Windows 7 actually got to the desktop fairly quickly, it took a full minute and 34 seconds to actually become usable, compared to a minute and 6 seconds with Vista. They also unsurprisingly found that things got worse over time, with a three-month old Windows 7 install adding a full minute to the boot time, although in that case it did actually fare somewhat better than Vista. Of course, we are talking about complete reboots here, and it's a different story when Windows 7 is simply coming in and out of sleep mode. Details on the tests are otherwise a bit light, but Iolo is promising to release its complete findings next week.
How long was there startup time? I've seen P4's with 256mb of ram and a 5400 RPM hard drive boot old Vista faster than that.
Perhaps they should pull a generation old Core 2 Duo system off the bargain shelf at Best Buy and try their little tests again.
SSD !
Problem solved !
Iolo is the worst company ever!
their iolo system mechanic program is junk!
On the box of the software it says 100% money back guarantee
I hated the software, it actually made my computer slower, I emailed them and asked for a refund
They emailed me back about 5 months later, unwilling to refund the money
Wait, so what you're saying is, that a company that specialises in selling junkware to make your PC 'faster', is somehow getting 'slow' boot times on a several-months old windows install?
I'm shocked.
As an MSDN subscriber, I have been running Windows 7 x64 since its posting to the subscriber downloads. I decided to perform a full shutdown and restart.
Time for a full BIOS post: 8.1 seconds
Time until the login screen appears: 56.9 seconds
Time when Firefox appeared and was usable after the boot process was complete: 77.3 seconds
77.3 seconds is not instant-on, but pretty damn good in my eyes. I am what you would consider a power user as well. I have numerous apps installed which includes several startup items. This test was performed on a Q9450, 4GB RAM, G92 8800GTS all at stock speeds. Coming out of sleep, the OS responds almost instantaneously. Their findings are bogus and as previously stated are being published to justify their product.
Therein lies the problem with being the champion... nobody likes you anymore. Redmond couldn't get it right even if they got it right. The geek / nerd demographic will never allow it! Everyone roots for the underdogs even though the bigdogs make the world go around.
Bottom line is Windows 7 is what Vista should have been had they not rushed it consumers the way they did. Everyone knows that the problems with winbog over time will never be fixed as long as MS holds onto registries, dlls and poorly designed file system architecture. People want the security of Linux, and the ease of use and compatibility of Windows, but most people don't understand the paradox between security and ease of use... Most of the time those two are not intrinsically compatible with one another.
Apple thinks they have it all figured out, but BSD has security issues too and requires a lot more patching than Apple releases, but they rely on the fact that scriptkiddies and malware designers don't want to bother with their OS X when Windows is such an easy shiny target. Apple's day will come if they get their way and take more of the market share from MS.
I hear good things about IntegrityOS but I don't know if it will ever see a consumer PC... So heres to Chrome! Lets see what Google can do to light the fires of the OS war. HURAH!
@Annoying Poster,
I'm a developer and have been working with Windows almost all my IT life. I have Windows 7 installed on my main computer, develop software using Microsoft.NET frameworks. Due to all sorts of reasons I've been having good look at Macbooks, so much that I've bought one for my wife and lately myself.
I guarantee you that from my experience boot times is a non issue in Macbooks. Now I develop for Windows using virtual machines.
For that matter I would prefer to pay $39 of an upgrade to an OS named after a cat then $100 for for an OS named after a window.
I sincerely hope that Microsoft get their act together, because its an all new ball game now and there is no monkey dance that solves these issues (Bill come back).
Cheers
System Mechanic was (when i tested it) the best suite for fixing PC problems and for speeding your PC. It really has useful utilities and they ACTUALLY WORK, unlike others... And i could find utility for almost every feature of System Mechanic, my favourite is the Disk Defragmenter. But System Mechanic had a big flaw, which was it's 'Monitor' on the system tray that kept 'eating' your system resources trying to speed up your PC. So, in the end, the performance gain would be about the same as the performance lost due to the monitoring process. And is my experience that's what happens with all software of that sort.
So, in order to keep my pc fast, what i do is try to install the minimum amount of software as possible, try to install it only when needed, and when i do install something, i try to choose one that is small, fast, and doesn't install icons in the tray, and auto-updaters or adwares or anything of the sort. And when my pc does becomes slow, i format and star again. And that's what works for me ;)
On topic...
Windows 7 is definitely better than Vista. Is more usable, more responsive and more functional. But it's not perfect either. In some aspects, it's even worse than Vista, for instance: the power schemes, in Vista there used to be 3 options right away (Performance, Balanced, Saver) and in W7 i have to go to the power schemes to change between Performance and Saver, and that is just stupid IMO!
IMO, for Windows (in general) to be perfect, it has to meet ALL the following requirements:
- Be open source (i have the right to know what's running on my system)
- Let me choose what to install (i don't want just the option of removing something that was installed without my consent, as IE, or Media Payer, i want the ability of not installing that crap in the first place)
- Compile drivers in the kernel (this would allow for a greater performance in video games ;) )
- Have the 3 power options :P
I have a dell, do I need the blue one or the green one?
Who cares how long it takes to boot up....Is getting to your porn site 30 seconds faster that much of an issue?
All else aside, can any of you even come close to matching this?
4 1/2 years using, first a PowerPC ibook, and now an Intel Core 2 Duo Macbook for six to eight hours a day, six days a week running Diskwarrior every few weeks being the only maintenance I've ever done. And this isn't most of the time, usually, almost every time, it's every single day for 4 1/2 years.
Total time from turning on computer to being online with desktop up and ready: 25-30 seconds.
Total time it takes browser to fully load: 4-15 seconds
Number of crashes of any type in 4 1/2 years: Zero
Number of screen freezes in 4 1/2 years: Zero
Twice I had a problem when web pages were loading unbelievably slow because a setting on AirPort screwed up and it took about a half-hour to figure out and fix.
And after loading Snow Leopard my logitech mouse didn't work and that took about ten minutes to fix. (Apple mouses totally suck, I can't use them)
I've been using Vista, no clean ups, for about a year. I get to the desktop (fully functional) in 35 seconds or less. I can't speak for Windows 7 but I'm sure this report is crap.
I don't like the fact the Engadget reported on this and didn't even question the credibility of the company. I know some conspiracy theorists on here complain that they are biased. I thought they were all crazy, but now I'm starting to believe them.
see, this is not true, im a microsoft product tester, and ive had a full working, activated, REAL, copy of windows 7 ultimate for the last 4 months, and by god it still runs much much faster then vista.
look my computer for testing has.
8GB ram,
cor 2 quad 2.86GHz
2220GB of hard drive space.
2GB diamond video card
now my real computer that is also running windows 7 has
24GB ram,
AMD phantom II x4, 3.40 GHz
7000GB hard drive space,
and the same video card
they run the same in everyway, no matter how much faster one is from the other,
aslo tune up sucks
This is such a BS post. 7 honestly boots WAY faster than Vista did for me. It's not just perception, I've timed it. Is Apple paying you guys off to post such slander?