Microsoft questions results of Vista SP1 benchmarking
By Jonathan Schlaffer
Most users of Vista won’t deny that it is slower than running XP, even on a comparable system. Microsoft was supposed to fix those problems with service pack 1 but benchmarks have shown that Vista SP1 isn’t any faster than a vanilla install of Vista and might be slightly slower.
Devil Mountain Software, a testing firm, showed that Windows XP was considerably faster than Vista SP1 (release candidate) and as much as 50% faster, Microsoft could not take that sitting down and fired back at Devil Mountain.
Nick White, a Vista product manager attacked the testing methods used by Devil Mountain saying that OfficeBench which was used to benchmark performance on the Vista and XP systems and said it creates a result that would never be noticed in everyday usage.
Digital Trends reports that Devil Mountain then did a post to counter his argument and shortly after that, White posted a video of the benchmark to demonstrate his argument but the video may have been accelerated by him just to “prove” his point.
He then argued that OfficeBench simply open and closes windows but the software does much more than that, creating PowerPoint files, Excel charts and other automated routines that make use of the various products that ship with Office.
The truth is, it’s hard to test real world performance with any benchmarking software but it is just to give an idea of what performance will be like. Vista is slower but it is also prettier and does more than XP and if those features matter to you then go for it if you can set aside all the other issues it has or work around them.
Nevertheless a public beta of Vista SP1 is due this week, keep an eye out.
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