08.06.09
Vista 7 Hard to Install, Slower Than Vista Sometimes
Summary: Computer expert wrestles with Vista 7 to no avail; benchmark of Vista 7 (RTM) delivers bad news to Microsoft
KVUE-TV has this rather enjoyable new article where the reality behind Vista 7 is shown in a semi-direct comparison with GNU/Linux. It says:
Linux is an alternative operating system that is freely available. I had squirreled away several discs (bonuses from British computer magazines) that let you boot up to Linux from a CD without the need to actually install it.
Guess what?
My computer ran with Linux and didn’t shut down.
That would seem to indicate that the computer hardware is just fine, right?
I had a copy of the new Windows 7 operating system ready to go; perhaps whatever incompatibilities my L100 had with Vista would be rectified with Windows 7!
So, I started installing Windows 7, and things seemed to go pretty smoothly… at the start.
But after 51 minutes, guess what? The installation shut down!
When I pressed the power button, the “Windows Error Recovery” screen popped up.
After following all the directions (and attempting to load Windows 7 several more times), I finally stopped trying.
What will happen when Vista 7 hits the shelves and many ordinary people have similar problems? Yesterday we wrote about a nasty new bug in the to-be-boxed version of Vista 7 and John C. Dvorak believes that Microsoft’s policing of the image of Vista 7 is going out of hand. In his latest column, he seems to refer to Microsoft’s perception management [1, 2], which we last mentioned in our complaint to the FTC — a complaint that they responded to.
Why has Windows 7 suddenly fallen off the track with negative publicity? What happened? What changed?
This is one of the strangest developments I have ever witnessed—even rivaling the reverse publicity that began to pound OS/2 beginning around 1987, which eventually destroyed that OS as a viable alternative. The OS/2 destruction was orchestrated by Microsoft; who is orchestrating this?
I knew something was up beginning a few weeks back when studies and reports began to emerge about how businesses will not upgrade to Windows 7. Everyone is trying to save money or something. It was never fully analyzed. The data point that sticks out was one report that said 60 percent of businesses are going to hold off on Windows 7 implementation. And these are companies that probably did not upgrade to Vista.
These announcements came on the heels of an extremely positive pre-publicity campaign that was probably orchestrated by Microsoft or one of its agencies. In January of this year everyone—and I mean everyone—was raving about Windows 7. Microsoft gave out the beta, which was praised, and then gave out copies of RC1, which was also praised. It was the best thing ever!
Some Web sites that wrote negatively about Vista 7 got targeted and their authors humiliated by Microsoft employees at times, including those who dared to show that Vista 7 was about as heavy as Vista [1, 2, 3, 4].
Another new benchmark which includes Vista 7 simply shows that it is slower than Vista in some tests. SoftPedia showed the same thing a few months back.
Interestingly, the results were mixed. Boot times, despite dedicated tweaking from Microsoft were slightly worse than in Vista SP2 or XP SP3 (by over a second). Shutdown times, though, showed much improvement over the slow XP, and even some improvement over Vista.
One Boycott Novell reader added that “With benchmarks like that, Microsoft is stuck talking about “look and feel”, but it’s hard to see what kind of good feeling a slow, buggy system will yield.”
Fewa responded by saying, “that’s what happens you insert huge DRM schemes into your products, making them less useful and performing.” █
“My initial evaluation of Windows 7 shows that it’s really just Vista with a fresh coat of paint.”
–Randall Kennedy
twitter said,
August 6, 2009 at 11:02 pm
The most interesting thing about the new benchmarks is that Windows 7 is still slower than XP and Ubuntu beats them both. Ubuntu is not even the speediest GNU/Linux, their goal is to maximize freshness without sacrificing stability. M$ has been hyping Vista 7 as everything GNU/Linux is. The last benchmark’s author also lamely compares Windows 7 to the “beautiful” OSX. If anything, Windows 7 UI is a rip off of KDE 4 but no UI is going to make up for the performance and bugs people are starting to report.
Robotron 2084 Reply:
August 7th, 2009 at 12:10 am
Willy, I have a feeling you have never tested Windows 7 personalty and ONLY rely on the negative results published by others, as you would never defile yourself by touching non-free software.
Robotron 2084 said,
August 6, 2009 at 11:55 pm
Here’s a prime example of how Roy takes advantage of ignorant users in his “reports”. So, we have a story about a guy trying to install Windows 7 and it doesn’t work. Must be Microsoft’s fault, right? Right?
Well, not so fast. There just isn’t enough evidence here to say that with 100% certainty. While Roy is happy without all the facts, as a reader you should want more. In some cases, a faulty hard disk or RAM can cause erratic problems that would only appear in some situations. Personally, I once had a hard drive that would reboot the entire computer when a bad part of the disk was accessed. An ignorant person would have blamed Windows, but a disk check utility provided by Western Digital proved that Windows was not to blame. You can guarantee Roy would have blamed Windows without any further investigation.
You’d be amazed how bizarre computer problems can be. Take my original Amiga 500. I replaced the Fat Agnus chip with the “Fatter Agnus” chip. The new chip allows the machine to use an additional 512k of Chip memory. Fat Agnus also manipulates graphics memory, so this can be thought of as part of the graphics system. OK, everything is good, right? Well, games worked great. Zero problems, even with games that had action all over the screen….. but the Amiga OS? I noticed funny things. Sometimes graphics would get corrupted on the screen. Moving a window would leave garbage pixels behind. At it’s worst the computer would crash when trying to move a copied brush in Deluxe Paint.
What was the problem? The Amiga OS? No, in fact it was a bad Fat Agnus chip. I removed the new chip and replaced it with the original. All graphic problems and crashes went away. You’d think a damaged chip would have WORSE problems with fancy games and have less trouble with mundane OS graphics, but with computers the smallest details can have amazing results.
Remember. Roy will use ANY, and I do mean ANY negative story about Windows, no matter how weak it’s foundation might be. You will never see him post a positive story about Windows in any way. I also suggest readers double check the article Roy quotes to notice the parts he omitted.