Yes everything is faster, but don't get your hopes up that you'll notice the difference.
Windows 7 is predictably (and measurably) faster in a whole bunch of ways, but only by a few seconds, according to benchmark tests conducted by ZDnet. Given how much of a speed dog Vista was, will a few seconds faster even warrant a user’s notice?
For instance, the benchmarks found that for Windows 7 from startup to the appearance of Bing takes 14.5 seconds. Vista takes 18.5 seconds and XP 23.7 seconds (with the startup process predictably slower on lower-end netbooks.) As far as applications, the tests show that Windows 7 is 20% faster, which the testers dubbed “not trivial.” But I beg to differ. If you wait 10 seconds for an application to respond on Vista, and with Windows 7 you wait 8 seconds, will you be blinded by the lightening, or will you still be tapping your fingers, annoyed?
The one area where Windows 7 is greatly improved, according to this benchmark, was with audio files. Some audio files performed their tasks three-times faster. Now that’s more like it! But that gain was offset by other tests that showed virtually no improvement between Vista and Windows 7 at all. This includes, say the testers, other applications like Everest, 7-zip, 3DMark Vantage, Cinebench and Paint.Net.
While even a few seconds faster on the painful processes of booting up, powering down and application response is better than nothing, a need for speed may not be the top reason to ditch Vista for Windows 7.
Have you tested Windows 7? What kinds of applications are you finding to be noticeably faster?
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