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Study: Vista Startup Time is Faster Than Win 7

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1:31 PM - October 9, 2009 by Devin Connors

O RLY?

Even if Windows 7 isn't proven by benchmarks to be the fastest, bestest version of Microsoft's operating system yet, it certainly feels a lot better. We'd use it over Windows Vista any day of the week, but new findings show that it's not the performance king – at least not yet.

Sure, there have been many tweaks under the hood to make it better than Windows Vista, but it seems that boot time is actually longer in Windows 7 – at least according to a certain standard.

LA-based iolo technologies, makers of System Mechanic PC tune-up software, sent Tom's Hardware some of its findings after spending time with Windows 7.

Windows 7 starts up slower than Vista (1:34 vs 1:06 on a brand new machine), when the actual time to usability is considered. While Windows 7 shows its desktop relatively quickly (time to desktop hovers around 40 seconds for fresh installations), its time to usability, defined as the length of time it takes for the computer to become fully usable, with CPU cycles no longer significantly high and a true idle state achieved, is significantly longer.

Windows 7 boot times slow down dramatically with the addition of common-used software and for a 0-3 month-old machine measure 2:34 (that’s a minute longer than out of the box).

The newer OS seems to keep its composure better after some real-world use, perhaps signalling a design that's better suited to perform for most computer owners.

Windows 7 only beats Vista start-up times on 3-month-old and 6-month-old machines, otherwise trailing the older version significantly.

Stay tuned early next week when iolo technologies will reveal more of its Windows 7 performance findings. We'll have the coverage first hand.

Source : Tom's Hardware US

Talkback
Add your comment
kyeana 10/09/2009 7:51 PM
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-2+

isn't the selling point that it is designed to start up faster from sleep mode, not a cold boot?

Scotteq 10/09/2009 7:51 PM
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-20+

Makes perfect sense.....



...that a company who makes it's living selling crapware that's supposed to speed your startup times says the newest version of windows is slow and needs their stuff.

duckmanx88 10/09/2009 7:58 PM
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-9+

my win 7 astartup and vista starup actually switched. it takes longer to get to the desktop using win7 but being able to use my desktop once its shown is almost instant whereas vista I always had to wait an extra 2 minutes before I could even use a browser.

fooldog01 10/09/2009 7:58 PM
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I may be in the minority but I just don't care about the speed it takes my computer to boot up (within reason obviously). My concern is will it run smoothly once booted. I dont have an issue in either regard after running the Win7 RC for a couple of months. Much better than Vista.

nicklasd87 10/09/2009 8:00 PM
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that's a good point. Startup time is also extremely important to me...Considering I restart my win 7 pc about once ever two or 3 days.... I also like the lack of details regarding what processes were running, or how many. my current win 7 box has 58 processes after startup, including pidgin, outlook, media monkey, steam, and avg. I remember making a note that after a clean install I had 35 processes running. I have never done a side by side comparison, but after using Vista x64 ultimate since it was released, I find win 7 to startup significantly faster, especially the startup programs. It is usable for me as soon as the desktop appears. Usable is a relitive and subjective term though.

tomasf 10/09/2009 8:03 PM
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not true, have use win 7 since beta and I can say that it have never toke more than a minute to fully load y my old c2d 6550 4gb ram an 750gb hd and 2x gt9600. who knows how much crapware have the installed

Belardo 10/09/2009 8:05 PM
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Don't know what these "experts" are talking about.

Even with Win7RC, my notebook boots faster than any Vista I've ever seen. Hell, even a P3-512mb boots faster than vista with a dualcore/3GB RAM. Freash install, months later.

In terms of benchmarking computations... Win7 is still slower than XP (still has much of the vista bloat), but doing rendering, etc - is not so much a big deal. But transferring data, opening programs, windows, accessing data *IS* important as its something we can see.

Most people wouldn't notice the difference between a dual core and a quad core.

rooket 10/09/2009 8:08 PM
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It starts up faster for me on my core2duo and especially on my Pentium 4. it also runs a lot more efficient on my P4 than vista ultimate did on that one. I notice a big difference.

Renegade_Warrior 10/09/2009 8:09 PM
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nicklasd87 :
I find win 7 to startup significantly faster, especially the startup programs. It is usable for me as soon as the desktop appears. Usable is a relitive and subjective term though.


I get the same results on both my desktop (64-bit) and my laptop (32-bit). Both my systems botup very quickly and are usable as soon as the desktop appears.

invlem 10/09/2009 8:21 PM
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duckmanx88 :
my win 7 astartup and vista starup actually switched. it takes longer to get to the desktop using win7 but being able to use my desktop once its shown is almost instant whereas vista I always had to wait an extra 2 minutes before I could even use a browser.



Hit the nail on the head there, Vista may present you with a desktop quickly but it's sure as heck not done 'starting up' yet.

Also, I'll happily suffer through a longer start up time if it means that when the system is running, running and loading programs will be faster.

Honestly, I start/restart the system once or twice a day max, that startup time is the least of my problems.

kingnoobe 10/09/2009 8:24 PM
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How long will you have a brand new computer? That boots fasters on vista then win7 *assuming this article is correct*.. Now how long will you have 3-6 mounth old computer that boots up faster then vista..

IMO Win7 wins this race.

jerreece 10/09/2009 8:25 PM
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I smell cattle and manure. My Win 7 64bit Release Candidate boots relatively quickly still, even after installing anti-virus, games, and other garbage on it. It still is more responsive, and smoother running than my Vista 64bit install, with the same hardware.

Besides, I'd say iola has a bias and a profit to make off the results. I'd rather read something along these lines from a 3rd party, non-profit making organization that does several tests on several different machines, with Vista and Win 7 (Release version). And I'm talking old machines, new machines, Intel, AMD, etc. Let's talk real world tests.

mlauzon76 10/09/2009 8:28 PM
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As someone said on the Maximum PC post of this story, and I agree with them:

"I would take these study results with a grain of salt, as the company in question makes system optimizer software among others."

myriad46 10/09/2009 8:30 PM
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Unless I am missing something, what is th ebig deal with startup time. I shut my computer down about 4 times last year. Do that many people still start up their computers, daily?

Miharu 10/09/2009 8:30 PM
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This article seem empty.
There is so many variables... hardware used: cpu(s)... video card(s).. ram... ram clocking... os 32-64bits... harddrive.. hd controler(s)...

So some machine COULD load slower... but some other WOULD load extremely faster!

So they found machine(s) where Win7 run slower than Vista.. so what ?!?

Anonymous 10/09/2009 8:31 PM
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hmm....Vistas time to a blue screen is also faster compared to Win 7

ben850 10/09/2009 8:35 PM
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who cares? if you turn your computer off and on every day, then you have more important things to worry about.. like your HDD.

Anonymous 10/09/2009 8:35 PM
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I have a Dell XPS m1530 Core 2Duo T9300 with 128G Samsung SSD and Vista 64 boots up to logon in 20 seconds and another 10 and I'm in IE for a total of 30 seconds. With the Windows 7 RC, it's 15 seconds to logon and another 5 to IE for a total of 20 seconds. That makes Windows 7 33% faster bootup on my box.

steiner666 10/09/2009 8:43 PM
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same here, sometimes the loading screen takes longer, sometimes its just a few seconds, but once i type in my password on the login screen my sidebar and all the gadgets pop right up and my AV and other startup programs are all loaded. My CPU usage graph spikes up for a second or two and then it's done loading everything and idles. Performance on my desktop is noticeably better than vista, and my netbook runs it better than XP sometimes.

someone must not know how to use msconfig is all i can figure.

liquidsnake718 10/09/2009 8:49 PM
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--1+

I dont know why but I kind of like Vista, and I have the regular 32bit version. I dont have any problems with it, I still use XP with my netbook and frankly I like Vistas interface better. I have delt with all the warning prompts, and besides that Vista is handy and i have 4Gigs of RAM and a 2.8GH C2D to make sure my PC wont slow down. This will be good until I get a true next gen PC which will be in a year or 1.5yrs.

I hate how the marketing of Microsoft just ditched Vista and held on to XP until its dying breath(still going strong on the netbook and older pc front) and waited for WIN7. They made it seem like Vista was the one that was shunned and was being replaced. In truth its not and we will see alot more Vista machines now.

schizofrog 10/09/2009 8:50 PM
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I guess the public who have been using Win7 disagree with these inhouse tests... LMAO.... FAIL!

Come on, admit it... Microsoft actually did good!.... hehe

nostress 10/09/2009 9:19 PM
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I don't know whose ass they pulled that data from, but it's just rubbish.

I've actually timed my start-up, from the moment I pressed the power button to the moment the cpu no longer spiked. 1:26 seconds on a medium-spec machine (C2Duo E4500, 4Gb RAM, 7200RPM WDC, GeForce 9800GT), on a two month-old Windows 7 installation.

I have no idea what systems they did their benchmarking on, but it seems that my Win7 installation, running Avira Antivir and other 'common-used software' on startup, has a faster time to desktop than a fresh install, and that's something I simply refuse to believe.

manos 10/09/2009 9:36 PM
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Ever since the beta of Win7 my boot and use of Windows has been faster than Vista. ( both x64 ) So this article makes me wonder.. And im a person that also formats often so I really am weirded out with this. Anyhow.. I rarely even ever restart my PC and I have to say that Windows 7 are just shitloads of times better and faster than Vista in any other bit from Vista eitherway so I really wouldnt care much personally.

vaskodogama 10/09/2009 9:54 PM
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-0+

come on, that's all nonsense iolo saying, 7 is GREAT.
really, almost everyone that tried it know it's faster even in boot time.
NEXT!

Clist 10/09/2009 10:00 PM
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--3+

I have to say that I've seen the same things as this report states.

I get fast time to desktop, and slow after that. Win7 takes a significant amount of time just to get a network connection established. I notice the same thing coming out of sleep mode where Win7 takes a while and, e.g. Firefox will be unusable for maybe 20 or 30 seconds after sleep, where as it was available almost instantly on Vista.

Once it's up and running it seems fine, though Call of Duty takes about 3 times longer from the time the splash screen comes up until the program actually starts.

Note that I'm also a person who reformats / reinstalls often - at least once every 8 months. And currently have a lot less running on my Win7 install than I had going on my last vista install...

I've also disabled firewall and have no anti-virus running, so I don't know why Win7 takes so damn long to establish a network connection after a reboot. Perhaps because my MB has two nics, and it's trying to setup nic 1 before nic 2 (which is where the cable is right now) - think I'll try switching the cable and see if it helps...

Cheers,
CList

bydesign 10/09/2009 10:03 PM
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--1+

I think I can see where they are coming from but in my case with a MSI GT627 both OS's are pretty funtional within seconds of reaching the desktop. I didn't check where the ativity was coming from after the second times and these aren't clean installs by any means at this stage. Both OS's has a number of updaters and such running.

Windows 7 36 seconds from boot options to desktop
Windows 7 1:43 until near idle activity

Vista 56 seconds from boot option to desktop
Vista 1:29 until near idle activity

DjEaZy 10/09/2009 10:04 PM
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-0+

... what a fruit? ... ok... maybe the start-up time better, but working with vista suck's so much! ... i got aspire 8530g... windows vista was on that machine just for 2 or 3 hours... installing, finding, copying stuff takes much longer... network setup is a pain in the a$$... with 7? It work's for me... ok, there is some stuff an comparability issues, but the benefits evens it out.. and i get the licensed copy, when it comes out...

warmon6 10/09/2009 10:14 PM
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-1+

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lY0_yIQM8Y&feature=fvw

Well this video and a lot of other people are saying different about windows 7. As other said we don't know where they go there data from but they need to redo and with out any of there programs.

Clist 10/09/2009 10:21 PM
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--1+

...just for the record I tried swapping my cable to NIC #1 and disabling NIC #2 in the BIOS. When I get my Win7 desktop my network connection is "unavailable", it just took 80 seconds (1:20) from the time the desktop came up until the network connection was available. That seems crazy to me. Never had that issue with Vista (using the same router obviously).

I have to say that I find the user experience in Win7 to be very similar to Vista. I can't understand why so many people who have these big gripes with Vista think Win7 is so much better... but then again, I didn't use Vista until SP1 was out...

Cheers,
CList

Clist 10/09/2009 10:23 PM
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--1+

...oh yeah, I should mention that I'm using an EVGA MB, and a Core i7 920 clocked to about 3.3GHz... anyone else notice Win7 taking this long to attach to a network?

winterblade 10/09/2009 10:57 PM
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-0+

I can also confirm that the load times for Win 7 are nowhere close to 2 min, both in mi Laptop (a middle end-machine) and my desktop (high-end) the boot time is about 45 sec to 1 min and the computer is ready to use almost as soon as the desktop is showed in the screen(s)... so in short, my opinion is that those "experts" don't know what they're talking about.


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