Thanks Iolo Technologies, I just don't get enough advertisements posing as research in my daily internet browsing.

How about if you defrag every month? I've been using vista 1 year so bear and i get no noticable increase, 1second> if harddrive defragged

fail spelling

hmm...

i seriously think almost everyone here at tom's knows how to keep things fresh and fast[if not, google is your friend]. iolo is just doing their job at trying to sell their products, which is not a bad thing, but it makes them look like fools here at TH

Windows 7 offers very little that Vista doesn't, Vista got a bad name for no real obvious reason. People were so contempt with XP that at the time nobody had a real need to goto Vista. Well when Windows 7 got announced Xp lovers ears stood up beause now the Xp novilty has finally wore off. Most XP people would like Vista now, but since the price of Vista will be the same as Win 7, people might as well just buy Windows 7. If your already a Vista person, you might as well stay where your at. You can get Vista drivers on a numerous of different web sites that perform windows 7 operations. Pretty much any driver that works for Vista will work for Windows 7 and Vise versa. Enjoy!

Interesting how people have been openly testing Windows 7 for a year now, and here we are a few weeks from Windows 7 release and miraculously these details start to pop up. Im pretty sure not only would I have heard at least a mutter about this over the past year but that I would have noticed it myself.

But this is only second time Ive heard this and both times were today.

QFT

I've been running on the same install of Windows XP for 5 years now. Still has the same boot time it did after I finished setting it up on day 2. What's all this about Windows rot?

Tom's do your own damn research. You have a research department for a reason! Stop reposting things from sites that have a VESTED INTEREST in the numbers they produce. Its like asking the Congress how much something is going to cost! The people for it are going to give you stupid low #s and the people against are going to give you stupid high #s. Which both usually turn out to be stupidly wrong in a random direction!

Those guys are only trying to sell their crappy software, maybe for the average user their software actually helps, but for us, the average tom's readers, is only crapware, we know how to keep our PC's running like we want them to run. Totally agree with Honis.

Did anyone (I think at least a few commentors did) think maybe they forged the results that says Windows 7 is not faster and more efficent becuase iolo creates sells services to make Windows faster and more efficent?

Don't you dare say anything bad about Windows!

I stopped reading this nonsense as soon as I got to "...makers of System Mechanic PC tune-up software" I despise "news" like this because it's entirely biased, totally subjective and it enables a crappy company like iolo to get "free air time". Like someone already stated, how about just doing a defrag, system clean and don't install all the crappy toolbars that come with freeware. Common sense! Windows 7 is spectacular, and stories like these are misleading, and just really, really beneath Tom's.

Yep... first you tell PC owners that they are poor bastards... now you use this colorful headline of "Windows rots." What's next?

I'm beginning to think each headline should just read 'Please switch to OSX."

why the heck is this posted as news? this is just advertisement for iolo

I routinely perform pc maintenance every Sunday morning so I've never experienced those kinds of problems.

Mr. Yam is known for his Mac is better than windows propeganda. It amazes me that Toms allows him to write for them still. Obviosly this whole article is biased and the information he used was skewed for the sole purpose of selling software for iolo corp. This whole article is a big thumbs down. Mr. Yam..you dont fool anyone. Mac is Crap and you can take that to the bank.

Wait what? Only once Ive only had this problem once with XP on a 5 year install. Btw I probably got lucky.

lol? Is this an advert.

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On a serious note, Windows file system will "rot" over time as long as we have NTFS around. It's just the way it works. On the other hand...take a look at the ext2,etc on Linux which doesn't need defraging due to the way it's designed. I do hope Microsoft will have a new file system on Windows 8. NTFS is getting old.
For an more detailed explanation/example see: http://geekblog.oneandoneis2.org/i [...] ragmenting

iolo technologies again? Didn't they already claim win vista is faster than win 7?

If you are smart, you put your OS in a separate hard drive partition or separate hard drive altogether... then just reinstall every x months. Make it a habit and you won't need to pay anyone to "clean" or "speed up" your windows.

Two advercolumns on the same day from the same company? Yuck Tom's.

I like how they predict how it will run after three years considering the RTM final has only been out since like what june? july? maybe later. I can see how this test goes.
Researcher 1: Okay, we're going to see if it slows down after installing a lot of malware and other completley unescessary stuff.
::Installs everything you can find on the internet::
Researcher 1: Well does it run faster or slower then when we first turned it on
Researcher 2: It runs slower
Researcher 1: AH HA! Breakthrough! Hey Mike! Get Tom's Hardware on the phone, we got some breaking news!

This is like one of those multi-page ads in a magazine made to look like an article but has, "Special advertisement section" printed in small type at the top of each page.

Why the f**k does everyone think that Windows 7 is the f**kin' messiah? Like seriously, it's really just a Windows Vista service pack (WinXP SP2 style service pack) with a new UI. Nothing really interesting about Windows 7, let's just get on w/ our lives except for tweaks here and there. People who are running Vista don't need Windows 7 and those who are on Windows XP still, well of course I recommend Windows 7 ... but to treat Windows 7 like a messiah is just dumb imo.

Windows like most operating system will slow down if you don't tune it. However, unlike Windows, Linux you can really fine tune your system so it doesn't degrade that often.

"windows rot" I like that phrase. I see it every day, constantly with parents, relatives, co-workers who constantly tell me their stories of "My computer doesn't run fast anymore" Yet every time i told them to just re-format and the thing runs good as new. I tend to fail at understanding cleaning the OS up and keeping up with the monthly chores of running a fast machine, as well as scrutinizing and researching every process in my taskmanager and setting up restore points before i install software. Yet that nice fast 6GB machine with only 32 processes running on day one does get junked up into less than a gig of ram left with 175 processes running just from PC users who just let it accumulate over the years.

They just did a damn boot test and they say its the same thing? Im sorry but you cant be telling me that Windows 7 that made my PC work better than ever without looking same old damn XP is anything like Vista. Not only I rarely even restart my PC butI also know for a fact that Windows 7 outperform and multitask way much better than any other windows did so far for me first hand. No matter what they say Ive seen for mysellf and Im enjoying it. Then the least Id expect from any of them included in the research are using XP if not Vista and not windows 7. I hate hypocrits. No tolerance there.

lol 330%.
I've got maybe a 1 second variable when I installed all of my programs. Use Glary Utilities and CCleaner, both free for clearing out unusable material, Auslogics Disk Defrag for the defrag, but IMO it's pretty pointless.

I second on that as I am a Vista person and will stick to Vista until the end. If I ever get a 3rd PC, it will be Win7 however. I will still keep my Vista and XP netbook. I posted a fourm on Toms Vista site and found that there are a few Vista faithfuls. Its basically the same but was released a bit too early for the newby XP users. So the marketing dept. at MS failed Vista more than anything coz Im sure simple patches could have fixd those prompts instead of how we do it now. There was an article that even stated that 7's loading time was longer than Vistas.... theres a thought...

I'm guessing you mean a full defrag in addition to the automatic weekly defrag that Vista does by default?

So, lets see now. If you install tons of stuff on startup and it slows you down this is rot? My MCE machine still boots the same speed as when it was first built 2 years ago.

And it has lots of crap on it too.

Why wouldn't Windows 7 'rot' just like any other OS? The user that installs all kinds of crapware on the PC deserves more blame than the OS.

How can an OS take more time to start over the time...? Seriously, it's one of the main reason I format so often.

Not only does Windows take more time to start, but a lot of functions are corrupted because of all the big programs installed.

It's one of the main reason I mostly use freeware now. Nero, Norton, Microsoft Office and many others are now taking more than a gigabyte of disc space while slowing your system due to the amounts of drivers.

The same for all these "Opening on startup programs" and these "would you want that this program allocate these type of files". I got my lesson now.

I use Open Office, Gimp, Combined Communauty Codec Pack, AVG, Ashampoo Burning Studio, Izarc, File SHredder and CCleaner... these programs are all free and they prevent Windows for getting big and clumsy with their counterpart you can buy on the market.