-=PCTechTalk=- Win7 upgraders
- From: "Larry Southerland" <larrysoutherland@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <the_bullhorn2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, <thebullhornsbest@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, <Puters_N_Such@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, <pctechtalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2009 09:05:11 -0400
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="us-ascii"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=1431
<http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=1431&tag=nl.e589> &tag=nl.e589
Windows 7 in the real world: 10 PCs under the microscope
Posted by Ed Bott @ 2:37 pm
Categories: Hardware <http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?cat=6> , Windows 7
<http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?cat=24>
Tags: Notebook <http://updates.zdnet.com/tags/Notebook.html> , Dell Computer
<http://updates.zdnet.com/tags/Dell+Computer+Corp..html> Corp., Media
<http://updates.zdnet.com/tags/Media+Center+PC.html> Center PC, PC
<http://updates.zdnet.com/tags/PC.html> , Driver
<http://updates.zdnet.com/tags/Driver.html> , Microsoft
<http://updates.zdnet.com/tags/Microsoft+Windows+Vista.html> Windows Vista,
CableCard <http://updates.zdnet.com/tags/CableCard.html> , Intel Core 2 Duo
<http://updates.zdnet.com/tags/Intel+Core+2+Duo.html> , RAM
<http://updates.zdnet.com/tags/RAM.html> , Intel Corp.
<http://updates.zdnet.com/tags/Intel+Corp..html>
When the slow-motion launch of Windows 7 finally ends and it hits store
shelves next week, will it erase the memory of Windows Vista? Yes, it's
gotten good reviews in the run-up to its official release, but so did
Windows Vista. Harry McCracken has put together a retrospective of those
Vista reviews from late 2006 and early 2007 that's well
<http://technologizer.com/2009/10/12/windows-vista-a-review-recap/> worth
reading, and he closes his analysis with a warning about the need to
postpone judgment until the product has been in the marketplace for a while:
"There's never been a new operating system that didn't cause significant
headaches for a meaningful (if, in the best cases, small) percentage of the
people who installed it, and there's never been one that wasn't
significantly improved by the first major round of post-release bug fixes."
Absolutely right.
An operating system doesn't exist in a vacuum. It is inexorably tied to CPUs
and chipsets, storage controllers, display adapters, external peripherals,
drivers, and third-party programs. Give me the right hardware and
well-written drivers and I can make any modern OS (even the despised Windows
Vista) run with impressive performance and reliability. Throw in a flaky
motherboard, a bad BIOS, or a buggy driver, and your computing experience
will quickly spiral into unpleasantness. One hopes that the PC industry
learned the painful lessons of Vista and that the wave of new PCs that will
begin shipping next week will be properly tuned to the new operating system.
<http://content.zdnet.com/2346-12354_22-351931-1.html>
In the meantime, I've done the next best thing. Over the past three months,
I've been test-driving the final version of Windows 7 in my home and office
on a variety of PCs, performing a variety of roles. The 10 systems I cover
in this article include six desktops and four notebooks. All of them were
put into service in January 2007 or later. For each one, I've listed the
current hardware configuration, the price I paid (including upgrades), the
version of Windows 7 currently installed, and whether I did a clean install
or an upgrade. The PCs I looked at represent a cross-section of the market
as it exists today, minus two extremes: I didn't include any low-powered
netbooks, and I left out high-powered gaming machines and workstations.
During the research for this article, I spent a lot of time looking at two
numeric measurements you can find on any Windows system. One is the Windows
Experience Index (WEI), which provides a broad-brush measure of performance.
(You can read some overall conclusions about these systems in last week's
preview, Measuring <http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=1414> Windows 7
performance.) The other is the stability index, a 1-10 rating found in the
Reliability Monitor section of the Windows 7 Action Center. Overall, I
discovered that the WEI actually does a pretty good job of predicting how a
system will perform. As the detailed discussion on the next few pages makes
clear, though, the stability index can be extremely misleading because of
some curiosities in the way it makes its calculations.
In this article, I don't talk much about the features and capabilities of
Windows 7. Instead, the question I wanted to answer is the one that keeps
Microsoft's product managers awake at night: Will their new OS work properly
on new PCs and upgraded machines? Will it make people happy? Or will it
suffer from the crashes, glitches, and slow performance that doomed Vista in
the six months after its launch?
The reports I've put together here are anecdotal, to be sure, but I hope
that the range of hardware I've chosen will provide some good clues as to
the experience most people can expect, especially when upgrading.
<http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=1431&page=2> Page 2: A desktop workhorse
This Dell XPS 420 is nearly two years old, but it has become my preferred
PC. Here's why.
<http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=1431&page=3> Page 3: A very small desktop
PC After it failed the Blu-ray performance test, this ultra-small Dell
desktop found new life as a business machine.
<http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=1431&page=4> Page 4: Two ultralight
notebooks Two review units, a Lenovo X300 and a Sony VAIO TZ2000, were built
for portability, not for speed. Which one gets better battery life?
<http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=1431&page=5> Page 5: Notebooks for everyday
use How well does multi-touch work? And how well does Windows 7 work on a
13-inch notebook with fast, modern components?
<http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=1431&page=6> Page 6: Three Media Center PCs
Despite its checkered reputation, Windows Vista was extremely reliable on a
trio of Media Center PCs here, from Dell and HP. Windows 7 continues that
tradition.
<http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=1431&page=7> Page 7: Windows on a Mac Last
month I started using a Mac part time so I could make informed comparisons
with Windows 7. With a brand-new 2009 model, Windows 7 runs surprisingly
well.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Please remember to trim your replies (including this sentence and everything
below it) and adjust the subject line as necessary.
To subscribe, unsubscribe or modify your email settings:
//www.freelists.org/webpage/pctechtalk
OR
To subscribe to the mailing list, send an email to
pctechtalk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "subscribe" in the Subject. To
unsubscribe send email to pctechtalk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe"
in the Subject.
To access our Archives:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PCTechTalk/messages/
//www.freelists.org/archives/pctechtalk/
To contact only the PCTT Mod Squad, write to:
pctechtalk-moderators@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
To join our separate PCTableTalk off-topic group, send a blank email to:
pctabletalk+subscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
---------------------------------------------------------------
Other related posts:
- » -=PCTechTalk=- Win7 upgraders - Larry Southerland
