It looks like Vista SP1 may not provide much of a performance increases: http://exo-blog.blogspot.com/2007/11/vista-sp1-performance-dud.html
If this is true, then it really is a shame, because my experience with Vista has definitely left me wanting for more performance. With light use of the OS (i.e. web browsing and email) I don’t feel Vista has that much lower performance than XP. But, when I use more system intensive application such as Developer tools (Visual Studio) or even basic Shell usage (copying, renaming and deleting files in Windows Explorer), Vista seems really slow. Actually, painfully slow.
My personal opinion is: Microsoft tried to push too many unproven technologies into Vista too quickly (which is ironic considering how late the OS was). And performance was never properly baked in. This unmanaged complexity resulted in an OS that is overly slow, unreliable, and immature. When I say immature I mean: it’s going to take a while for Vista to mature to the point where it’s generally considered the accepted Microsoft OS. This really isn’t any different from XP, where I’d argue that SP2 delivered maturation to XP. The big difference in my mind is: XP was never a bloated, wallowing, performance lackey.
Microsoft openly considers security critical (as they should), but when it comes to performance, it seems like they couldn’t care less… and I don’t really like that, because for me: Performance Is A Significant Part Of Usability. And, it’s not just the Vista team that is delivering a product with poor performance. I find the performance of Microsoft Office 2007 and Visual Studio 2005 also lacking. Especially Visual Studio 2005, which I consider was designed by and for executives (and not for the actual enduser).
It is generally accepted as conventional wisdom that new versions of software get bigger and slower, but I observe major Microsoft products getting slower faster than hardware is getting faster. To restate more clearly: Major Microsoft products get more sluggish than hardware gets faster.
So, I’m probably staying with XP a while longer until Microsoft addresses Vista performance. Maybe I’ll transition my main computer to Vista if I get an insanely powerful workstation…. But maybe I’ll just wait for Microsoft to fix Vista.
[...] to my performance and usability bias, I more often use XP. As I’ve said in earlier posts, I find performance a critical piece of usability. If an application, or OS, offers significantly sub-par performance, I’ll quickly ditch it (when [...]