In message <[log in to unmask]>, Craig Lalley 
<[log in to unmask]> writing at 01:05:55 in his/her local time opines:-
>Now I know Moore's Law really only addresses the number of transistors 
>on the chip will double every 18 months.
>
>We have come to expect that this means a doubling in CPU performance.
>
>A certain Mark R. from the list pointed this out to me from an HP add 
>that was e-mailed out and can be found halfway down the page here;
>
>http://www.hp.com/united-states/windows7/small-medium-business.html?jump
>id=ex_r602_go/ms7/smb
>
>Here's the statement...
>
>HP Advantage: Compared to a 4 year old laptop
>with Windows® XP, and new HP laptop with Windows® 7 can deliver: 68%
>increase in performance power(7), 38% faster start up and 7 times
>faster shut down times(8)
>
>4 years and 68% faster???  a very underwhelming,... wow.
>
>-Craig

Faster chips are not an opportunity for you to get your work done any 
quicker. They are an opportunity for Microsoft to release ever more 
complex and bloated versions of Windows to soak all that extra CPU power 
up.

The universal raspberry that was blown at Vista has meant that Intel and 
AMD have had to mark time while Microsoft gets its act back together; 
and for Microsoft, it means that 7 has to be what Vista should have 
been; and the plaudits it has gained for being 'smaller' than Vista have 
not masked a deafening silence about whether it is more efficient than 
XP or not.

It's worth looking at what (7) and (8) say:

(7) Source: PC Mark05 benchmark comparison of Intel T2400 (1.83 GHz) HP 
nc6400 Notebook to Intel Core™2 Duo T9600 HP EliteBook 6930p

(8) Start up and shut down times compare an HP EliteBook 6930p running 
Windows® 7 to the same HP EliteBook 6930p running Windows® XP

So (7) shows they were comparing a 1.83GHz chip then with a 2.80GHz chip 
today.

That's a 53% increase in raw CPU performance.

So they got a further 15% from somewhere - The dual cores? The improved 
bus support for the chip? More and faster memory? Bigger and faster HDD?

Plus enough, if any were needed to account for any difference in 
overhead between XP and 7.

Where, interestingly, the (8) comparison of start up and shutdown times 
was done on the same machine.

So obviously, they can run 7 on a machine they could run XP on.

But nowhere is there what you'd naturally expect following on from that; 
a (7)-type comparison of the relative performance of that same machine 
on the PC Mark05 benchmark with Windows 7 versus Windows XP.

Both to see what the XP versus 7 overhead difference was, and to see if 
the apparently compelling case to upgrade an existing machine from XP to 
7 extends beyond start up and shutdown times.

The absence of these figures from the advert lead me to believe that:
(1) there isn't
and
(2) HP, like Alan Clarke, have been a little economical (or at least 
very selective) with the actualité...


The bellwether for Windows 7 will be whether we see it appearing, and 
giving satisfactory performance, on current Intel Atom netbook 
platforms.
(And I mean *current*, not any enhanced Atom Intel might release so 
netbooks can run 7 no worse than they currently run XP).
-- 
Roy Brown        'Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be
Kelmscott Ltd     useful, or believe to be beautiful'  William Morris

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