Windows XP Slow?

[Alan L.]

I just read an article in Infoworld showing XP (in their tests) to be much slower than Windows 2000. They did all kinds of tests on 2 different configurations - a Pentium 3 with 700 Mhz and a Pentium 4 at 1.4 Ghz. In EVERY test, Windows 2000 was faster and in many cases as much as TWICE as fast. The article said the more applications the bigger the difference. They basically say XP is not for heavy "industrial" use, and if you absolutely need its features get a dual processor machine to run it on.

Any comments?

Alan L., TX

 

[TonyC]

I don't have anything to add except that I would not be surprised. Every release has been a bigger ""pig" than the last. The worst part is that even going back to Windows 3.1 I am hard pressed to come up with more than a few conveniences added that have been useful. I used to run an IT department with over 300 PC's and users. I would venture to say that 98% of them needed only basic word processing and spread sheet functonality. Of course, thanks to Mr. Gates they are all running 500 Mhz Pentium III's with 5 Gb hard drives and at least 256K of RAM. I'm not sure those outside of the buisiness realize how much this costs our companies. Every year I had to devote over a third of my budget keeping up with upgrades that gave me no return on investment. Tens of thousands of dollars I could have put to better use, or that could have been used to improve the company in general. I don't know of any company that will spend a nickel on anything without ten pounds of paper proving they will get a dime back. Yet they are forced by comaptibility issues to spend thousands for no good reason.

The thump you are about to hear is me jumping down off my soap box!

 

[MossRoad]

I've only been playing with it for the last few days and it seems fine to me. Kids games, office applications. It ran for several days without crashing, which is a microsoft miracle to me.

<font color=green> MossRoad </font color=green>

 

[TerryinMD]

I agree with MossRoad.

I have one PC with XP Professional and another with XP Home. Prior to that the machines were running ME.

They load fast and the applications seem to run just fine.

Terry

 

[cowboydoc]

I just got a new laptop and haven't noticed anything that different. But then again I'm not loading it down with applications and big programs either. Movies play fine on it and it installed my programs rather fast and without much problem. I'm no expert though so I probably wouldn't notice much of a difference between them anyway.

 

[Alan L.]

I typically run 5 or 6 business applications at a time, and speed is critical. We are about to purchase about 6 or so machines, but I am now inclined to go with Windows 2000, as I couldn't care less for games or the other resource hungry capabilities that XP brings. Thats fine, but I don't want to give back a good portion of the power that Intel gives me with a new machine to get it.

Alan L., TX

 

[TerryinMD]

Alan,

My wife has been getting info on XP for a few months now. She's a mechandiser for Microsoft and a couple of months ago during a telephone conference call, one of the MS participants indicated that a PC should have 1.4/1.5 mhz processor and at least 256MB of memory for best performance (whatever that means!!/w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif).

If your W2k machines are PIII vintage and older motherboard and memory technology, you may experience some differences in performance. Now, I basically agree with you that the OS's should perform the same. But, as we all know, the programmers who write this stuff could care less about system performance. They just put out the code based upon the current technology. And, of course, they always have the newer technologies because they whine that they can't do their job without it.

Case in point. I work in a software development shop. Our developers just HAD to have PCs with dual processors. So, they ordered a few for the key programmers. Well, the other programmers had to have dual processors too. So, they got one of the PC support guys to pirate processors and memory from other PCs. Guess what? They had dual processor machines but the OS kernal didn't have the right patch to support the dual processors. Here's the funny part. They thought that their machines were running much faster! /w3tcompact/icons/shocked.gif They were SOOOO impressed with their dual processors that they did not realize that they were running at the same speeds prior to the upgrade.

But I digress. /w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif/w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif/w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif

Coming from a large mainframe/supercomputer background, operating system upgrades with new features usually caused some performance problems within the OS. So, as a system analyst, we would have to monitor the system and tune it. We could usually get back some of the cycles we lost. With the PC/Unix processors, some tuning can be done. But how much?? So, the mindset is to just buy bigger, better hardware. The problem with that is that you have to buy many more multiples because of the system base. x number of servers and x number of client workstations can add up to big bucks!! Not to mention the support personnel with certifications and training. Ack!! What a mess! /w3tcompact/icons/crazy.gif

Just my .02

Terry

 

[Anonymous Poster]

The System Folder on a Macintosh used to be a model of simplicity with nothing to slow the train down. I'm two steps behind the times system wise and my system folder has dozens of things I am totally ignornant of.

Apple Computer is just as ridiculous as MS is I'm appalled to say in this system jumping business. Buy the system and the old software and or machine can't handle it. Or may your old software will work until you are forced to buy their latest greatest machine because the old ones aren't supported anymore. Forget about upgrading software as companies come and go. To me this is like having to buy old cars to keep your treasured old car running because there are no more parts at the dealer. I'll probably have a junkyard of computers in my garage to keep mine running soon.

I have an old word processing program that is ancient, it is simple, fast, never crashes, super small files. People who don't even use computers adapt to it almost immediately. I've looked at Word a number of times, just can't see any reason to use it and it sits like a cottonwood log on my harddirve, heavy and useless.

del

 

[MossRoad]

Good luck trying to get 2000. They've pulled it from the shelves.

<font color=green> MossRoad </font color=green>

 

[MossRoad]

I'm running it on a PIII 866 with 512 RAM. Runs fine so far.

<font color=green> MossRoad </font color=green>

 

[gws]

The average desktop user is not going to see the slowness pointed out by the infoworld article.
The slowness is very apparent when using XP for a server with large application and multi users on a system.

Gary.

 

[Alan L.]

XP is outa here. After 3 months of struggling with it we are wiping it clean and replacing with Windows 2000. These 7 computers would not cooperate with the Windows 2000 server in our small network - were VERY slow on the network, wouldn't stay connected, and were just overall extremely disapponting.

For operations on the network which includes installing software, file transfers, etc. the w2K client is 3 to 5 times faster. Plus it is rock solid stable and stays connected. And I can think of ONE THING I'm giving up by not having XP.

Maybe there will be another version of Windows Microsoft comes out with thats better than Windows 2000, but XP ain't it.

 

[GlueGuy]

I've used both, and they are pretty equal. XP has a lot of extra animations and stuff that are totally worthless. When those are turned off, there is basically no difference in speed (which is the way I use it). Stability-wise they are pretty equal as well. I work in a software development environment, and typically have 45-50 processes running at any given time. Both of these OS's (XP and 2000) operate about the same for this.

 

[looch]

I'm doing what I can to get out of this MS fiasco. I have my trusty PII 400 at home with a recent (and very cheap) 256 Mb RAM upgrade. It is happily running Mandrake Linux 8.1 with Sun's StarOffice suite - all free. Also, I just purchased a slightly used Sun Ultra 5 workstation with a 360 Mhz Sparc processor which will be running the Solaris operating system. The cool thing about this machine is the Sun PCi card that is coming with it. It's a card with an AMD processor and its own memory bank that will allow me to run Windows applications simultaneously with UNIX - just so that I can be compatible with those that haven't made the change (I'd like to add "yet" to the end of that sentence but I'm doubtful).

At work I administer 5 NT servers (yes, I said NT) locally and 2 remotely. I also take care of an HP 9000 D270 running HP-UX 11.0. The difference is night and day. I recall rebooting the UNIX server over the Christmas holidays because of electrical work being done in the building. The NT servers are rebooted every 2 weeks as part of a maintenance plan.

Most of the PC's at work are still running NT 4.0. We have about 15 machines running 2000. The only real benefit of 2000 I see is for laptop users who don't have to log in to 2 different domains depending on whether they are connected to the LAN or not.