Benchmarks fail to explain why Vista falters and Server 2008 succeeds

Microsoft would like us to believe that Windows Vista and Server 2008 are basically the same and use the same codebase but the two differ slightly in certain areas.  It appears that Server 2008 performs better in almost every sense of the term but benchmarks have failed to pin down the exact reason why.

We previously reported that Server 2008 performed almost 20% faster in some cases than what is supposed be its closely related cousin, Vista.

The Register reports that part of the reason that Server 2008 doesn’t get the same negative press that Vista does is because it delivers features that people actually want.

Backoffice systems administrator Christian Mohn said,

"Windows Server 2008 performs better, even with the Aero features enabled, than Vista ever did on the same hardware. To me, this a bit strange, even if a lot of services are still disabled, as the codebase is pretty much the same as Vista."

It may not be the case that Microsoft is being exactly truthful about the "same codebase" or it could be the case that there are other things in Vista slowing down performance which have not been revealed.  In any case, it’s clear that as much as the company would like us t believe it, Vista and Server 2008 are not nearly the same animal.

• Windows Server 2008 is 20% faster than Vista
• Windows Vista not likely to succeed in 2008
• Windows Server 2003 faces desktop search update error
• Microsoft to launch new Vista subscription trials in early 2008
• Microsoft might forget about Vista SP1 until 2008