Under the hood
Similarities in the interface – and the fact that Windows 7 is built on code from Vista – makes it easy to think of Windows 7 as nothing more than Vista done right.
While it certainly fixes problems from the Vista RTM, Vista SP1 and SP2 also solve many of the most obvious issues in Vista.
Windows 7 is a much more ambitious undertaking that not only addresses the performance issues in Vista but does a lot to deal with the historical complexity of the Windows platform (and speed up many-core systems when they become common).
Kernel
The much-misunderstood MinWin may not contribute much to system performance; it's more about uncoupling the interfaces that programs use to work with Windows from the actual code in the lowest level of system files, to make it easier to replace code in the future.
Much more significant are the many places that Windows code has been rewritten to use fewer resources and work more quickly, the reduction in the size of the page file and the amount of memory used for window management, Direct2D acceleration, and the way that services aren't loaded until they're needed (and are unloaded from memory as soon as they're finished with, so if you turn on Bluetooth, use it for five minutes and turn it off, the Bluetooth service is only running for those five minutes).
Reduced disk activity
The Windows 7 code also reduces the amount of disk activity needed for reading from the registry and aligns low-level system timers to stop the system switching inefficiently from one process to another, improving both performance and battery life on laptops and netbooks.
Other improvements target power management, turning off CPU cores that aren't needed – when you're not actively using your PC, the aim is to get the CPU doing as close to nothing as possible instead of catching up on system maintenance – and powering down USB ports, SATA drives and Wi-Fi cards.
The software and hardware that you use will have an impact on both power management and performance; if badly-written AV software is thrashing the CPU or loading lots of services, that will slow you down and chew up battery life.
Microsoft is considering releasing tools to help users stay on top of any problems hardware and software may cause for performance, but it's a controversial issue.
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prospero
Saturday at 21:53 GMT
1. I've got my Windows 7 Ultimate version from my work as an upgrade. According to the given information, this software could be installed from Windows XP 64 bit. So I entered the cd in the drive. First impression during installation was wow! But then after clicking install, I got the message that I couldn't perform an upgrade from XP64. So I selected the custom install. All went well. The software installed itself on my machine after I created a new partition and formatted it. You have to create a new partition cause Windows wants to add a small partition of 100mb for own purposes. Everything installed well and the machine restarted. Completing install... ... ... ... .. and then everything becomes quite silent. No messages, no activity. That's strange I thought. I performed the Microsoft compatability test and my machine should be 100% compatible with the software so what went wrong. Tried to install several times. Looked on the internet for a solution to find that many people experienced the same problem. I tried and tried again for more than 15 times to install during which everything not essentially necessary for the computer to run was taken out (cards) or turned of in the BIOS. Then I decided that I would get a new graphics card just to try if that was the problem the installation faulted. Well... it was not. I heared that some people restarted the computer and at the installation message that all went wrong and I had to reinstall from the beginning, they pressed shift and F-10 and typed explorer.exe from the commandline. With me the computer then started to do something but halted anyway somewhere during installation. Again, no error message what so ever to work with. Then I got an idea. I reinstalled (we're talking about the 32nd installation try-out now!) and waited patiently for the 'completing installation' to appear. Immediately at the beginning of this phase, I hit the shift and F10 buttons and typed 'explorer.exe' at the commandline. Two processes were now running. This helped. Don't ask me why, but the installation now went on up until I could create a user and the installation could finish as expected. Pfffffff. What a work. Two full days of trying to install a system on a relative young computer.
Then, next phase. Activating the software was not possible because... I had an upgrade but performed a clean install (as the software told me to do in earlier stages). I found a workaround on the www I could edit in the registry to get passed the registration issues. I did buy a legal version of the software and followed the correct steps during installation so I'm not doing anything wrong. Then I noticed my external harddrive on the IEEE 1394 port was not recognized. On the www I found this to be an old problem from the Vista times. Obviously Microsoft has not taken any steps to get rid of this issue while programming the Win 7 version.
Now at last playing a bit with a working installation I've found one of the first issues why the software installation jammed. My computer is able to work around a memory hole (you can turn this on or off in the BIOS) to make the best use of the memory available. Never before a problem on any of the 32bit or 64bit windows versions, or with linux installations. I've found that Windows 7 can't handle this and jams when this option is turned on in the BIOS of the computer. The new graphics card was not necessary.
All in all, compared to for instance the up to date Linux Ubunty 64 bit software installation which performes on excellent level and can be installed by a completely non computer guy, Microsoft Windows looks great, but is delivered with an installation a big guy like Microsoft should be very very ashamed off.
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