(OT) Would you pay $99.99 for a USED 1gb Flash Drive

Having never used anything newer than XP, I was wondering if Win7 boots as fast as XP, or is it slower?

I've never had any problems with the boot time of XP. Only once did I get a computer that booted so damn slow I reinstalled XP. I had bought a used laptop on ebay and they seller sold it with a fresh install of XP, but then he put so much anti-virus software on it, that it literally took near 5 min to boot. Once booted the thing ran so slow I could not even use it. I finally wiped the HDD and just reinstalled XP. Problem solved!

I've been told that Win 7 is somewhat faster. As I previously mentioned, such comparisons turn into apples and oranges comparisons due to differences in hardware, differences in 32bit vs 64bit, etc. The only comparisons I find valid is when I take a single machine, and swap out two identical hard disk drives, one with XP and the other with Win 7. Also, both machines should have XP and Win 7 updated to the latest, with typical resident programs installed (virus scanner, acrobat, skype, fancy video drivers, etc). Only then will I get a valid comparison. Also, there's the question of when does one consider the boot timing to end? I usually use when task manager shows near zero CPU and disk usage. Or, maybe when the HD light almost stops flashing. That's fine, but if the machine decides to download or finish installing updates just after boot, the benchmarks get mangled.

I've also seen benchmarks claiming that XP is faster than Win 7. When I dug deeper, I found that the Win 7 machine was a fully loaded production machine, while the XP machine had only the basic installation to SP3 (service pack 3) without any further updates. That's not very fair since the subsequent updates, and typical installed resident programs, really slow down XP. On a fresh install, on an Intel E8500 dual core machine, XP can easily boot in 45 seconds. However, install the mass of updates and junkware, it will slow down to about 6 minutes. Win 7 has even more updates, but the slowdown is less.

For entertainment value, I just timed my HP Pavilion Elite m9077c desktop, running Win 7, quad core Q6600, 8GB RAM, Seagate 1TB drive. Well, that was a monumental waste of time. I'm at 10 minutes and the HD is furiously bashing away. I haven't had it on for about a week, so it's catching up with updates, virus scans, disk maintenance (defrag), backup to NAS, etc. All that usually takes about an hour. Maybe I'll try again later. Remind me if I forget.

I bought both my home and office XP machines in about 2006. I loaded XP once, and have never had to reinstall XP. When I needed a larger disk drive, I would clone the old drive to the new driver, and continue merrily on my way. If you have to reinstall XP (and you're not cleaning up the mess left by a virus), then you're doing something wrong.

Sure, but did you install a virus program, any virus program? Even MSE (microsoft security essentials) takes its toll on performance. Comparing performance with and without an anti-virus program isn't fair.

Incidentally, I don't care much about speed when the differences are minor. Initially, most of my customers want speed and features. After the smoke clears and reality sets in, they change their mind and demand reliability at whatever speed and features will produce a reliable machine. My days of overclocking, registry tweaking, and alleged performance boosting software are long over.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

My slowest machine ever was a 486 that hung around long past its best befor e date. It never skipped a beat in its entire life, and was occasionally us eful (partly to punish users that screwed machines up). I once virus scanne d it - it started scanning the first file after 16 minutes! With carefully chosen apps it ran ok, though the 256 colour graphics were grim.

NT

I couldn't resist, so I ran a quick boot speed test. For timing, I used:

The XP box is a Dell Optiplex 960. Core 2 Duo E8500 at 3.16Hz with a

1333MHz FSB (Passmark = 2,293), with 4GBytes RAM, and a Seagate ST31000340AS 1TB drive. XP is 32 bit.

The Win 7 box is an HP Pavilion Elite m9077c. Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 at 2.4GHz with a 1066MHz FSB (Passmark = 2,972), with 8GBytes RAM, and a Seagate ST31000524S 1TB drive. Win 7 is 64 bit.

I started the clock at first light (when the bios screen appeared after power is turned on) and stopped when the Performance Monitor showed very little CPU or HD activity.

Both machines have identical resident programs to slow things down. In this case Avast anti-virus, Skype, Google Drive, MS OneDrive, Nvidia GeForce Experience, Everything, and Teamviewer.

For results, I got: Win 7: 5min 10sec. Win XP: 3min 39sec.

The machines are not identical, but using what I have, XP boots 29% faster than Win 7. My guess(tm) is that I tried it again with identical CPU's, the boot times would be closer.

Now for a something a little different. Let's see how fast my shiny new Chromebook boots. It doesn't run Windoze, so there's no sense in trying to load it down with things to slow it down. It's an Acer CB3-431-C5EX. Refurbished from the eBay Acer Store at:

1.4GHz Intel N3160 quad core, 4GB RAM, 32GB SSD. I'm running the IPS screen at 1536x864, but it will go up to 2400x1350.

For cold boot time, I got 24 seconds, starting with power on, and ending when the Chrome browser reloaded the mess of web pages I was looking at when I turned it off. That also includes hitting D on startup to get past the developers mode warning, and logging in with my Google password. Add another 8 seconds to start the Android on ChromeOS script, and 3 seconds to login again.

So, if you really want boot speed (like I do when going to a coffee shop, meeting, event, or need a quick Google search, get a Chromebook.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

I have to guess the dates, but I think between 1987 and 2014, I ran a Xenix mail server in my palatial office on a 486DX2-66 system with

4MBytes (that's MegaBytes, not GigaBytes) RAM, 1GB Conner CFP-1060S SCSI hard disk, and an assortment of tape drives and SCSI peripherals. At various points during its 27 year life, I replaced the motherboard once, power supply twice, and video card thrice, but never reloaded the Xenix operating system. If you don't mind character based computing from the command line, the machine ran just fine and was very fast for most things. I kept waiting for the machine to die so would have an excuse to replace it with something more modern, but it just wouldn't die. So, I killed it and gave it a proper funeral at the local recycler.

Also, I used to maintain some CNC controllers, that ran commodity 486 motherboards behind the fancy exterior. Until recently, I had a fairly good stock of replacement 486 motherboards, EISA, ISA, VESA, and VL bus cards for fixing these.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

Anything can run command line & single app, even an Apple II. Add multitask ing & GUI and it's another story.

I had an impressive 24M RAM, but ISTR the HDD was just 100s of M. So many t imes I hoped it would die. So did people that used it. But it never did. Ma ny more modern PCs came & died, but not that 486. I guess you got a better

NT

SILLY you! You could have sold them for $75 each on eBay. How could anyone know they DIDN'T come out of a Les Paul amp? The leakage is probably the cause of that "Les Paul" sound.

Jon

Reminds me of a funny story from way back. Microsoft released Windoze

2.0 with a new feature, cooperative multitasking. Included was a rotating wire frame graphic intended to show that it was possible to run multiple copies of the program in separate windows. The problem was that each additional copy of the program required more overhead than it saved. As I vaguely recall, it took 150% more time to run time to run a 2nd copy of a program. It was faster to run one program at a time than to use the cooperative multitasking. Run enough copies and the machine would grind to a halt. MS solved the problem by removing the demo program.

ISTR that I paid almost $1000 for that 1GB hard disk.

However, you don't have to worry any more about keeping a machine or operating system alive for 20+ years. The new and improved paradigm is that nothing is expected to last more than 5.0 years. MS does it a little better, but not much: Maybe Windoze 10 will have a "Best used before Oct 13, 2020" sticker on the box?

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

If you're letting all those updates occur, that is no comparison at all. Shut off Updates, then check the timing. I never allow anything to automatically update. That's just plain risky, not6 to mention those updates always occur at the worst possible time. If I feel the need for upgrades, I do it manually, when I want to.

I CONTROL MY COMPUTER, IT DONT CONTROL ME!