Win7 vs. Vista; Boot Time Preformance Drag Race

Microsoft delivered a boot time drag race between Windows 7 pre-beta and Windows 7 on the opening day of the Windows Hardware Engeneering Conference in Los Angeles. The video features a real-time comparison between the startups of both Win 7 and Vista.

Windows 7 starts up several seconds faster than the Vista machine, and there are several things that have been done in Windows 7 to make sure that this comes true.

A few examples are: loading device drivers in parallel, and another important one is that MS created a mechanism to start services truly on demand, because by lowing the number of services that start during this scenario MS can lower the memory pressure, lower the I/O pressure and can deliver a superior experience.

Microsoft, through the voice of Michael Fortin, Microsoft distinguished engineer and lead of the Fundamentals feature team in the Core Operating System group, indicated in the past that it was committed to the evolution of Windows 7 past Vista in terms of the startup time. In the testing lab, the Redmond giant is looking for 15 second boot times for Windows 7, which is of course a mark that will not be achieved in real life booting scenarios.