It’s Official: Windows XP is Faster Than Vista

Although it’s been common knowledge among computer professionals for some time, there is now official research that proves that Windows new Vista operating system is slower and less responsive than Windows XP. The Florida-based development and research company, Devil Mountain Software, compared performance benchmarks between the two operating systems. The end result? Windows XP outperformed Vista in every single test.

The unbiased tests showed that XP loaded quicker and showed an increased level of responsiveness, regardless of the computer system and memory allocation available. The company tested on a wide range of commercially unavailable desktop and laptop computers, and each time the results were the same: XP is simply faster than Vista.


Researchers tested the two operating systems using Microsoft Office running on a dual core dell notebook. A benchmark analysis disclosed the time taken to complete standard tasks such as creating a compound document, or saving multiple documents. The test also utilized computers with both 1 GB and 2 GB’s of memory, to ensure fairness to the larger, more memory intensive Vista.

But in all tests, Windows XP was shown to outperform Vista, sometimes proving to be nearly twice as fast at basic “housekeeping” tasks such as document creation and auto-saving.

For example, on a laptop computer running Windows Vista SP1, it took longer than 80 seconds to complete a series of Microsoft office tasks, while the same notebook running Windows XP SP2 completed the tasks in approximately 40 seconds.

The tests also showed that Vista “locked up” most additional memory added to a computer. This means that by upgrading a laptop from 1 GB to 2 GB of RAM, researchers were only able to improve Vista’s performance by 4%!

The latest “Mac versus PC” commercials show a bumbling “PC” indicating that he had just recently switched back from Vista to Windows XP. While the commercials are designed to be humorous, the latest research shows that serious computer users may want to follow suit and switch from the over-bloated Vista back to the more stable Windows XP.

But Vista’s troubles don’t stop there, large PC manufacturers, such as Dell and Hewlett-Packard have begun reintroducing Windows XP as an option on many of their top-selling desktop and notebook computers. Additionally, a recent survey by InformationWeek disclosed that approximately 30% of all businesses indicate they will not upgrade their office computers to Vista under any circumstances.

This latest study, combined with the widespread perception that Vista does not support many existing peripherals, such as printers or scanners that are older than one year, is bound to seriously put a dent in Microsoft’s bottom line over the coming months.

Meanwhile, Apple is the great beneficiary in all this. Sales of Apple computers have been steadily rising over the past two years and are likely to continue to do so as Windows Vista comes under increased scrutiny.