Windows XP SP3 boasts speed boost, testers claim

Vikingod · Nov 25, 2007, 01:07 PM

Source: ComputerWorld
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Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3), the update scheduled to release next year, runs Microsoft Corp.'s Office suite 10% faster than XP SP2, a performance testing software developer reported Friday.

Devil Mountain Software, which earlier in the week claimed Windows Vista SP1 was no faster than the original, repeated some of the same tests on the release candidate of Windows XP SP3, the service pack recently issued to about 15,000 testers.

"We were pleasantly surprised to discover that Windows XP SP3 delivers a measurable performance boost to this aging desktop OS," said Craig Barth, Devil Mountain's chief technology officer, in a post to a company blog Friday.

CDsDontBurn · Nov 25, 2007, 01:41 PM

interesting. another bonus for winXP!

BiGBrOwNPimpsta · Nov 25, 2007, 02:21 PM

The amount of hell that vista is getting is no better than what XP got, it will take some time for Vista and it will be better.

Zelig · Nov 25, 2007, 02:26 PM

I've been waiting for this set of benchmarks to get linked on here...

The site that benchmarked this thing is crap, it's a blog where 90% of the posts are bashing Vista and promoting its unheard of benchmarking tool.

Tried getting the benchmarking tool to try for myself, but it doesn't even work, it spits out "Session Error - Current Task Aborted", at the end of the tests, and won't give me a time. I'm not going to install XP simply to test this, but using a stopwatch to time their test, I get ~22 seconds, compared to their 80+ seconds in Vista, on similar hardware... not that that's a useful measurement, but it's about as good as the benchmarking done by the site releasing these reports.

WaltC · Nov 25, 2007, 07:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zelig

I've been waiting for this set of benchmarks to get linked on here...

The site that benchmarked this thing is crap, it's a blog where 90% of the posts are bashing Vista and promoting its unheard of benchmarking tool. ...

Good call--I agree 100%...

Sites like "ComputerWorld" give the Internet a bad name. Most sites that have just enough knowledge and experience to be dangerous to themselves and others are run this way. Somewhere along the way they've reached the conclusion that bashing Microsoft enhances their credibility and their public nerd profile when, really, it pretty much does the opposite. This site in particular has managed to convince me that it doesn't know what "Vista" is let alone how to run or how to configure it.

I also think you are right in that this site is primarily a gigantic blog run by morons who think that if you read enough garbage written about Vista that you'll stop using it, revert to XP just to get the "exciting" SP3 which "ComputerWorld" promises will speed up your typing in Word by 10% over SP2, which the site also claims means that you can type 2x as fast in Office under XP as you can under Vista, and that having done all of that you'll then go out and buy an iPod--which this site apparently is hoping will be the precursor to your dumping your Windows OS and all the software that goes with it into the trash and setting yourself up to get buggered by an OSX-powered Intel Mac...

These days when people ask me what I've got against the Mac culture in general I just point them towards "ComputerWorld," and after they've read a few of the blogs-disguised-as-reviews that infest the site they *never* ask again...

Zelig · Nov 25, 2007, 07:55 PM

I was referring to the original site which performed the benchmarks linked from computerworld, which is an actual blog. I didn't even bother reading the computerworld news story.

WaltC · Nov 25, 2007, 08:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zelig

I was referring to the original site which performed the benchmarks linked from computerworld, which is an actualy blog. I didn't even bother reading the computerworld news story.

Exactly. The line between "news" and "blogs" grows ever more faint as time moves on. Sites pick up a headline, regardless of where it comes from, and run with it as though it was "news" instead of someone's poorly framed, poorly reasoned, and completely unproven opinion.

I don't mean to suggest that "ComputerWorld" acts alone in this fashion--there's also "InfoWorld," which, imo, is just as bad. This is is how unsubstantiated rumor and gossip get "legs" on the Internet--the rumors and gossip are repeated so often by "mirror" sites that eventually some people begin to suspect substance in a rumor that has never actually had any substance at all.

If computerWorld actually knew what it was doing, why would the site link to the site you describe which is--as you describe it--in reality nothing but an insubstantial blog? Why, indeed, would *any* site mindlessly link to such as that without any kind of critical analysis of the content? Food for thought.