Windows XP SP3 Twice as Fast as Windows Vista – Leaves Vista SP1 in the Dust

Forget about Windows Vista. And forget about Windows Vista SP1. Microsoft's latest Windows client has been quite sluggish to begin with. This in both consumer adoption and in terms of the performance it delivers.

As the operating system was crawling along, while performing the most common of tasks, even "speed bumps" seemed an integer part of the road's landscape. Right, that was uncalled for... But still, even on its best day, Vista is slow, and the first service pack for the operating system will change nothing in this aspect. Windows XP SP3 simply flies in comparison to Vista, SP1 or no SP1.


Benchmark testing delivered by the researchers at Devil Mountain Software, a software-developmentcompany based in Florida, revealed that Windows XP SP3 is twice as fast as Windows Vista, with or without SP1 installed. The company threw the two operating systems one against the other on the following configuration: Dell XPS M1710, 2GHz Core 2 Duo CPU, 1GB of RAM and nVidia GeForce Go 7900GS video. While Vista SP1 delivered minor and disappointing growth in performance, XP SP3 faired quite well. "Windows XP Service Pack 3 (v.3244) delivers a measurable performance boost to this aging desktop OS. Testing with OfficeBench showed an ~10% performance boost vs. the same configuration running under Windows XP w/Service Pack 2. XP SP3 is shaping-up to be a "must have" update for the majority of users who are still running Redmond's not-so-latest and greatest desktop OS. Of course, none of this bodes well for Vista, which is now more than 2x slower than the most current builds of its older sibling", revealed a member of Devil Mountain Sofware.

Windows XP SP3 finished the OfficeBench test in approximately 35 seconds, XP SP2 went over 40 seconds with Vista RTM and Vista SP1 both exceeding 80 seconds. The company then added another GB of RAM. Moreover, they also tested Vista in tandem with Office 2007 instead of Office 2003. But while Vista dropped under the 80 seconds milestone it still doesn't even come close to the performance of XP. Commenting the benchmarking Microsoft explained that both Vista SP1 and XP SP3 are still under development and as such, not delivering a complete experience. Vista SP1 is currently planned for the first quarter of next year, while XP has been announced by mid 2008.

"By providing Vista (SP1) with an additional 1GB of RAM (that's a total of 2GB for those of you keeping score) we managed to achieve a "whopping" 4% improvement in OfficeBench throughput. Moving from Office 2007 to Office 2003 definitely improved Vista's showing. Instead of being over 2x slower than XP on the same OfficeBench workload, Vista is now "only" 1.8x slower", the Devil Mountain Software added.

source: news.softpedia.com


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Five-Year-Old Windows Design Flaw Comes Back to Haunt Vista

Windows Vista, Microsoft’s latest operating system, has been continually applauded as an apex of security and an epitome of user protection when it comes down to the Windows platforms available on the market.

Yet Vista is far from being bulletproof despite the additional security mitigations built into the product from User Account Control to Address Space Layout Randomization. And although Vista is the first product to come out of the Security Development Lifecycle, as a new software building methodology and process designed to tone down the severity and reduce the volume of vulnerabilities, Microsoft still managed to miss some issues.

Case in point, a five-year-old design flaw, already discovered and patched by the Redmond company, has come back to haunt Vista, according to New Zealand hacker Beau Butler who presented the vulnerability at the Kiwicon hacker conference in Wellington. Although the security hole has been reported not to affect the U.S. version of Vista, users around the world running the operating system are vulnerable to severe attacks. Butler also revealed that Vista is by no means the sole operating system vulnerable, with the flaw impacting all versions of Windows.

The vulnerability is related to the Microsoft WPAD functionality, and involves problems with Windows Proxy Autodiscovery. Butler stated that because of the vulnerability, Windows proxy auto-configuration requests are frequently sent out on the Internet. The flaw essentially allows an attacker to serve false proxy information to vulnerable machines, and in this manner to take over thousands if not million of computers simultaneously.

Microsoft confirmed both the vulnerability and its severity, and added that a patch is in the works. However, Microsoft’s general manager of product security, George Stathakopoulos, informed that not all Windows machines are vulnerable, and that the configuration of the operating system has a great deal to do with putting its user at risk.

source: news.softpedia.com


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Windows XP outshines Vista in benchmarking tes

New tests have revealed that Windows XP with the beta Service Pack 3 has twice the performance of Vista, even with its long-awaited Service Pack 1.

Vista's first service pack, to be released early next year, is intended to boost the operating system's performance. However, when Vista with the Service Pack 1 (SP1) beta was put through benchmark testing by researchers at Florida-based software development company Devil Mountain Software, the improvement was not overwhelming, leaving the latest Windows iteration outshined by its predecessor.

Vista, both with and without SP1, performed notably slower than XP with SP3 in the test, taking over 80 seconds to complete the test, compared to the beta SP3-enhanced XP's 35 seconds.

Vista's performance with the service pack increased less than 2 percent compared to performance without SP1--much lower than XP's SP3 improvement of 10 percent. The tests, run on a Dell XPS M1710 test bed with a 2GHz Core 2 Duo CPU and 1GB of RAM, put Microsoft Office 2007 through a set of productivity tasks, including creating a compound document and supporting workbooks and presentation materials.

In response to the test, a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement that although the company understood the interest in the service packs, they are "still in development" and will continue to evolve before their release. "It has always been our goal to deliver service packs that meet the full spectrum of customer needs," the spokesperson said.

If SP1 does not evolve sufficiently, it could be another setback for Vista, with many businesses waiting to adopt the operating system until the service pack is released.

A year after its launch, only 13 percent of businesses have adopted Vista, according to a survey of IT professionals.

Microsoft admits that the launch has not gone as well as the company would have liked. "Frankly, the world wasn't 100 percent ready for Windows Vista," corporate vice president Mike Sievert said in a recent interview at Microsoft's partner conference in Denver.

Microsoft has not done enough to make users aware of the benefits of Vista, NPD analyst Chris Swenson said at the conference. "The problem is that there are a lot of complex new features in Vista, and you need to educate consumers about them...much like Apple educating the masses about the possibilities of the iPhone or focusing on a single feature or benefit of the Mac OS in the Mac-versus-PC commercials. Microsoft should be educating the masses about the various new features in a heavy rotation of Vista in TV, radio, and print ads. But the volume of ads (for Vista) has paled in comparison to the ads run for XP."

XP has proved to be more popular than its younger sibling, with the first six months of U.S. retail sales of box copies of Vista 59.7 percent below those of XP's in the equivalent period after its release.

Microsoft has had to allow PC manufacturers to continue to sell XP on new PCs, setting a deadline for the last sale at January 31. However, the pressure from manufacturers and consumers has been so great that Microsoft has been forced to extend the deadline another five months, until June.

According to Microsoft, sales of Vista have been picking up, with the software giant reporting 88 million units sold.

source: news.zdnet.com


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C|Net shows no love for Vista yet

Oh dear! It seems that there are no allies at CNet when it comes to Windows Vista. I can only imagine that their IT department is still firmly attached to Windows XP on all their clients (except of course some very poor test machines).

Anyway, a bright spark at CNet HQ has clocked Vista in at Nr 10 on their article: Top ten terrible tech products, with the Sony Rootkit fiasco just ahead of Vista at Nr 9. The list even includes the Sinclair C5 as the worst tech product, will Sir Clive ever be forgiven for that?

Do our active members even know what a C5 is?

Heres what CNet have to say about Vista: Any operating system that provokes a campaign for its predecessor's reintroduction deserves to be classed as terrible technology. Any operating system that quietly has a downgrade-to-previous-edition option introduced for PC makers deserves to be classed as terrible technology. Any operating system that takes six years of development but is instantly hated by hordes of PC professionals and enthusiasts deserves to be classed as terrible technology.

Windows Vista conforms to all of the above. Its incompatibility with hardware, its obsessive requirement of human interaction to clear security dialogue box warnings and its abusive use of hated DRM, not to mention its general pointlessness as an upgrade, are just some examples of why this expensive operating system earns the final place in our terrible tech list.

source: neowin.net


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Raise your hand if you're tired of negative Vista articles

Neowin member ispamforfood (interesting nickname!) has posted an interesting question on our Back Page News forum asking "Raise your hand if you're tired of negative Vista articles".

It is true that there are many news outlets that are having quite a bit of a lark bashing Microsofts latest offering, hardly surprising based on the real-world problems that many people suffered after upgrading their Windows XP machines.

In defence of Microsoft, the recommended machine to use Vista with has increased quite a bit from Windows XP where 256MB of Ram was quite enough (or 512 for optimal performance) and now the recommended is 1gig or 2 depending on who you believe. Personally, I had 1GB in my machine when I upgraded (clean installed) but I only saw an improvement after I added an extra 1GB, bringing my RAM up to 2GB.

It's probably also fair to mention that Microsoft has since released Performance & Stability updates, which do fix a lot of annoyances such as slow copy/paste (calculation time) to other partitions. Anyway I have also done a poll, so voice your opinion by voting Yay or Nay to negativity on Vista by clicking the Member Poll link

source: neowin.net


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What’s on tap for Windows Live Messenger 9?

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, Microsoft sent out invitations to pre-selected testers for the next version of its consumer instant-messaging service, Windows Live Messenger (WLM) 9.

LiveSide.net grabbed, posted (and later, at Microsoft’s request, pulled) the feature list for WLM 9.0. On the feature list for the beta of WLM 9 (according to a cached version of LiveSide’s list):


* Multiple Points Of Presence Support - Now you can sign into Messenger v9 from several different locations and remain signed in, In v8.5 and under, signing in at a new PC will sign you out anywhere else
* Signature sounds - Make sound signatures instead of just graphical ones
* Per contact sounds - chose a sound to associate with each of your contacts’ actions
* Animated Display Pictures - now you can use animated .gif files as your display picture
* Links in Status Message - Links in the status message are now clickable
* SPIM reporting - report and block users who spam you via IM

So far no word on when Microsoft plans to make the WLM 9 beta available privately or publicly. And still no update on when the final release is due, though it sounds like late 2008/early 2009 is the working target. (And so far, no mention from the Softies of the alleged GTalk integration.)

Meanwhile, speaking of Microsoft and Live services, Microsoft’s Live Search engine lost query-share for the month of October, according to data from ComScore.

Microsoft’s loss of .6 percent was Google’s gain. Comscore reported that the Google sites increased their search ranking to 58.5 percent of U.S. searches, gaining 1.5 share points over September’s total. Yahoo sites ranked second with 22.9 percent, followed by Microsoft sites with 9.7 percent. Ask Network’s share was 4.7 percentand Time Warner Network’s 4.2 percent.

Microsoft’s goal of getting to 30 percent search share within three to five years is looking pretty elusive right now….

source: blogs.zdnet.com

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Windows Infection Deleting The Program Files Content

Security company Trend Micro today released an advisory concerning TROJ_AGENT.ADNA, a new Trojan horse which attempts to remove a file usually placed inside Program Files, a folder created by Windows which usually stores the content needed by the installed applications.

According to the advisory, the infection affects most versions of Microsoft's operating system including Windows 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP and Server 2003. In addition to the Program Files removal, the Trojan also attempts to modify some registry entries which could change the way your firewall works and make it useless in front of other web attacks.

"It also attempts to delete the file TORUN.EXE, if found in the Windows Program Files folder," Trend Micro added. Just like many other infections, the Trojan creates a new registry entry in order to start every time the operating system is loaded. In case you're wondering how you can get infected you should know that this Trojan is usually installed by another malware or it can be downloaded through infected websites without users' approval.

"This Trojan arrives as a file downloaded unknowingly by a user when visiting malicious Web sites," Trend Micro wrote in the security advisory. "It drops copies of itself. It attempts to delete a certain file from the Windows Program Files folder. Moreover, it attempts to disable certain firewall applications by deleting registry entries."

Having a look at the ratings mentioned by Trend Micro, you might believe the Trojan is not as dangerous as it sounds because it only has a damage potential and a distribution potential set too low.

Because the infection is pretty new, there's no report concerning the number of the affected computers yet but the consumers are still advised to keep their antiviruses up-to-date with the latest virus definitions and apply the latest patches as soon as they are released.

source: news.softpedia.com


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