Anyone who has actually used the piece of shit that is the Win9x line and Win2k/XP can tell you that.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Win 3.1 -> Win95 -> Win98 -> Win ME saw progressive declines in performance.
Win NT 3 -> Win NT 4 -> Win 2000 -> Win XP has seen progressive declines in performance (especially telling from 2K -> XP, since there's not really that much difference between them).
Also, Windows performance (especially in the first series, but also in the "NT" series) degrades precipitously over time, so anyone going from a year-old WinME install to a fresh XP install is in for a pleasant surprise.
Since MS makes the bulk of their money on OEM sales, and to that end Gates has stated outright that he wants people to replace their PCs annually, I expect that Windows performance will continue to degrade, both systemwide over the course of releases and per install over time.
Yes...this is why MS reccomends you have a 700MHz or so PIII or greater to run Xp...sure it makes the older ones snappy for a while but use it for a few months...my friends comp is way worse than my original iMac on OS X now...
When Operating Systems get more advanced and contain more features, they tend to appear slower - but only on dated equipment. The difference is, on the Wintel side, there is updated and extremely fast hardware that meets and exceeds the OS requirements and at very affordable prices. Windows XP absolutely screams on relatively current systems and improves performance and stability on older machines with WinME. It's all relative. Just like how other programs of today are huge in size and need more memory than before. They are made for today's Oses and computers.
My PII 400MHz Notebook had Windows ME installed. It was already a little slow so I was leery about upgrading to XP. Well, I popped the XP Pro disc in and the automated install completed successfully and my aging notebook never ran so good. Yes, it was FASTER than WinME. My cousin has a P3 running at 800MHz. She did a clean install of WindowsXP and her system has never run faster or more stable since she's had it.
That's not getting slower. Windows performance, stability and speed are at it's best with the release of XP. I don't see how that's not considering progress (unless their is bias involved).
<strong>That's not getting slower. Windows performance, stability and speed are at it's best with the release of XP. I don't see how that's not considering progress (unless their is bias involved).</strong><hr></blockquote>
I had already allowed that moving from WinME to XP would bring a significant speed increase, and I had separated out the two Windows lines because I knew that the NT line was (after Win 98 or so) a better performer. No surprise there, really. It had better be, given what a pile of crap WinME was!
Notwithstanding that, MS still makes most of its money from OEM licensing, and so they're trying to push people to buy new computers more often. That will dictate their strategy to a considerable degree.
OS X rolled in much more advanced technology than even XP has, and it's a much newer codebase (Darwin is very heavily modified from its NeXT and BSD roots) and that's the main reason it's got a pretty steep hardware requirement. Quartz is expensive. And NT was sluggish on the hardware it first appeared on.
XP is far more powerful than OSX in real-world terms and it is much faster.
It may require a PIII-700 but a computer with something faster than that can be had easily for less than half of what Apple charges for its slowest machine. Price/performance-wise there is no comparison.
I have noticed XP being faster than 2k in a few things (boot-up, logging in/out of different users and file browsing to name just 3) and overall very similar performance-wise all while being prettier.
OSX has a lot of growing up to do and until that point the original poster is completely right. The fact that OSX.1 was viewed as lightning-fast by many is very very telling.
Comments
<strong>Hmm... Windows *hasn't* gotten slower.
Anyone who has actually used the piece of shit that is the Win9x line and Win2k/XP can tell you that.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Win 3.1 -> Win95 -> Win98 -> Win ME saw progressive declines in performance.
Win NT 3 -> Win NT 4 -> Win 2000 -> Win XP has seen progressive declines in performance (especially telling from 2K -> XP, since there's not really that much difference between them).
Also, Windows performance (especially in the first series, but also in the "NT" series) degrades precipitously over time, so anyone going from a year-old WinME install to a fresh XP install is in for a pleasant surprise.
Since MS makes the bulk of their money on OEM sales, and to that end Gates has stated outright that he wants people to replace their PCs annually, I expect that Windows performance will continue to degrade, both systemwide over the course of releases and per install over time.
[ 04-21-2002: Message edited by: Amorph ]</p>
My PII 400MHz Notebook had Windows ME installed. It was already a little slow so I was leery about upgrading to XP. Well, I popped the XP Pro disc in and the automated install completed successfully and my aging notebook never ran so good. Yes, it was FASTER than WinME. My cousin has a P3 running at 800MHz. She did a clean install of WindowsXP and her system has never run faster or more stable since she's had it.
That's not getting slower. Windows performance, stability and speed are at it's best with the release of XP. I don't see how that's not considering progress (unless their is bias involved).
<strong>That's not getting slower. Windows performance, stability and speed are at it's best with the release of XP. I don't see how that's not considering progress (unless their is bias involved).</strong><hr></blockquote>
I had already allowed that moving from WinME to XP would bring a significant speed increase, and I had separated out the two Windows lines because I knew that the NT line was (after Win 98 or so) a better performer. No surprise there, really. It had better be, given what a pile of crap WinME was!
Notwithstanding that, MS still makes most of its money from OEM licensing, and so they're trying to push people to buy new computers more often. That will dictate their strategy to a considerable degree.
OS X rolled in much more advanced technology than even XP has, and it's a much newer codebase (Darwin is very heavily modified from its NeXT and BSD roots) and that's the main reason it's got a pretty steep hardware requirement. Quartz is expensive. And NT was sluggish on the hardware it first appeared on.
It may require a PIII-700 but a computer with something faster than that can be had easily for less than half of what Apple charges for its slowest machine. Price/performance-wise there is no comparison.
I have noticed XP being faster than 2k in a few things (boot-up, logging in/out of different users and file browsing to name just 3) and overall very similar performance-wise all while being prettier.
OSX has a lot of growing up to do and until that point the original poster is completely right. The fact that OSX.1 was viewed as lightning-fast by many is very very telling.