Re: Responsiveness of computers

Thanks Ben,

Your post makes a lot of sense to me. I agree that I should now completely
disregard the report as not only are its stated 'Key Findings' incorrect,
but the whole testing method is suspect and no reasons are given because
that would affect the Microsoft/Intel/DELL commercial alliance.

As far as the green issues go; having spent the whole afternoon trying to
clean an 3.2Ghz Pentium 4 system (not a DELL) that was giving out waves of
heated air when you sat next to it and the top of the case was almost too
hot to touch; I can see that you also make an awful lot of sense. We have
to make new computers fit for purpose, where the software takes as much
advantage as possible of the hardware which then consumes as little energy
as possible. And as affordable as possible.

I agree that Vista has not been a success. It has got a lot of (justified)
bad press, which Microsoft has done little to refute. They listened to
Marketing and went for the glitz rather than the substance. Let's hope that
they have learnt their lesson and produce more 'fit for purpose' software in
the future.

However I bought my daughter a mid-range DELL Inspiron desktop a month ago
with Vista Basic for internet, email, chat, and The Sims games, etc. and it
has not missed a beat. No errors, no problems, integrates into my Windows
Home Server environment with multiple shared printers. Responsive and
reliable, easy to install, cool and quiet and a joy to use. Reliability
Monitor shows at constant 10 out of 10.

A glimpse of the future perhaps?

Jonathan

"Ben Myers" <ben_myers_spam_me_not@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:vduvs3pup685ssrcam0r93ip5uuh80ud6k@xxxxxxxxxx
Okay, let's put Vista aside here for a moment.

First, Catchings and Van Name are the only ones who can explain anomalous
test
results because their company did the tests at the behest of Micro$oft.
The
absence of an explanation tells much:

1 Very, very obviously, the tests are not objective.
2. Catchings and Van Name have prostituted themselves and their one-time
collective good name to Micro$oft bucks, possibly pretty big bucks. What
a
nice gig!
3. Micro$oft either did not ask for an explation of the results which make
no
sense at all, or they specifically ruled out any rational investigation
and
explanation.

Next, it is 1000% foolish for anyone to attempt to explain the results.
Better
to simply discount the test report as yet another piece of propaganda by
the
Micro$oft politburo. I choose these words carefully.

Finally, looking at the very big picture, the computer industry reached a
plateau in performance of computers doing routine tasks just before the
time
that the Dimension 4550 and similar systems were shipped, right around the
2GHz
Pentium 4 timeframe. Since then, despite advances in dual-core and
quad-core
systems, people do not need that much performance, AND the architecture of
Windows (or Linux or OS X) combined with seriously limiting memory
bandwidth
bottlenecks limits the performance anyway. I've built and sold a few quad
core
systems to people who have legitimate computer use that takes advantage of
these
systems, but these kinds of people are few and far between. The major
advances
in computer architecture and design have recently made systems greener,
not all
that much faster. But just like automobiles, refrigerators, washers and
dryers
that are much greener and consume less power, green computing comes at a
pretty
hefty sticker price. I read commentary by all the pundits saying that
every
American should go on his or her individual crusade to save energy. That
is
easy for a wealthy pundit to say, but do you think I can rationalize
buying a
$25,000 hybrid car when I paid one-tenth as much for the used vehicle I am
driving? Green is expensive in computing, too, else I would not be
refurbing
and reselling a number of used Dell boxes just about as fast and a little
newer
than a 5-year old Dimension 4550.

The big picture explains why the smash flop of Vista (WOW!) was an even
more
serious disappointment to the major name brand companies (and every major
producer of OEM parts from Intel to Seagate to Liteon) than it is to
Microsoft,
if that is possible. Had Vista been a success, the name brand companies
could
more easily sell new computers with bigger price tags, more memory, and
bigger
hard drives. Had Vista REALLY succeeded, just think of all the old
computers
that would have been removed from service, replaced by the newer Vista
boxes.
After all, from the standpoint of expense and time, upgrading from XP to
Vista
makes no sense at all.

FWIW... Ben Myers

On Thu, 06 Mar 2008 09:06:30 GMT, "Jonathan Eales" <Jon.Eales@xxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

I guess that I should not have put the V word into my request. Does
anyone
know why a 3.2GHz dual core Pentium D desktop with a lot more capacity of
faster memory and hard disk drive can be comprehensively beaten by a
laptop
with ANY operating system?

Why are some systems so much more responsive if more raw performance and
resources have nothing to do with it?

Jonathan

"Ben Myers" <ben_myers_spam_me_not@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:338rs31aedir347sdqtps2faicfp0ng9kd@xxxxxxxxxx
Several reasons:

1. Microsoft commissioned the "impartial" study done by UNprincipled
Technologies. Microsoft paid Bill Catchings andr Mark Van Name (one
time
Byte
Labs gurus and co-Directors of Ziff-Davis Labs down there in the
mid-90s).
Microsoft paid for results, and influenced the outcome. They may even
have
designed the tests run by the impartial lab.
2. Vista sucks.
3. Vista sucks.
4. The Dell XPS 600 (a recycled name for the modern supposedly hot
gamers
box,
not the old beige P3) probably does not get the full power of its dual
core CPU
under XP. Not sure why, but if I were running the study, I would be
asking
that sort of question.
5. Vista sucks.
6. Did I say Vista sucks?

... Ben Myers

On Tue, 04 Mar 2008 15:51:10 GMT, "Jonathan Eales"
<Jon.Eales@xxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

I was interested in trying to measure the responsiveness of computer
systems. This was because I'm amazed at the apparent quickness of my
old
DELL Dimension 4550 (2.53GHz Pentium 4, 1Gb DDR memory with Windows XP
SP2)
which I use for email, web browsing, Word, Excel, Sage bookkeeping, web
designing and other administrative tasks. Yes, I know it is over five
years
old and needs replacing but it still works well and seems really
responsive
often with many windows open and applications running.

I install quite a few new DELL systems with various configurations and
you
have to beef them up a bit with the faster Core 2 Duo processors and at
least 2Gb of memory before they appear to be just as responsive as my
old
DELL. So I started to research how to measure responsiveness and
discovered
this report sponsored by Microsoft originally to compare XP with Vista
which
has recently been updated to cover Vista SP1.

http://www.principledtechnologies.com/Clients/Reports/Microsoft/VistaSP1XPVistaHomeResp0208.pdf

The Key Findings were perhaps to be expected as Microsoft has
commissioned
the report.

However I noted that when I analysed the actual results in Excel the
higher
specification DELL XPS 600 performed poorly compared to the laptops and
other desktop. For example the total time for the DELL was 95 secs for
XP,
96 sec for Vista and 90 secs Vista SP1 compared to 66, 62, 57 secs
respectively for a laptop with half the memory, slower processor and
hard
disk drive.

You can see the system specifications in the report. Can someone please
explain why the DELL XPS 600 did so poorly in these tests or a better
way
to
benchmark responsiveness. I can post the spreadsheet if requested.

Jonathan




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