Can Windows 7 replace Vista bury XP

Windows Vista can't eliminate XP. Can Windows 7 do it?

In the past two years or so, Microsoft has been controversial. This has been the case since the company launched Vista. First and foremost, the bad news about the loopholes and backward compatibility issues continues to spread. Subsequently, users asked Microsoft to extend XP's life cycle indefinitely is undoubtedly a major obstacle for the company to promote Vista.

It seems that Microsoft’s desktop hegemony era is gone forever. Vista seems to be pulling Microsoft down, and users are about to usher in a new era of platform-independent applications running on Linux or Mac OS X.

Of course, Microsoft has other plans. Due to the poor performance of Vista in the market, the Windows development team, led by the new leader Steven Sinofsky, enthusiastically engaged in development. Sinofsky is a pragmatist who led the team in the ills of Vista – not adding more new features.

Is Microsoft successful? From the feedback from users who have used the new operating system, most of the sideways said that the performance of Windows 7 is due to Vista. Is Windows 7 capable of turning around? What's more important is that new features in the product can eliminate XP from the market? This article will discuss Windows 7, from several perspectives, including security, reliability, and performance. We will also compare the performance between Windows 7, Vista and XP.

Availability

One of the things that Vista is causing is the improved user interface. From the comprehensive search function to the reconfigured dialog box, users think that Vista's user interface is very different from XP, which makes people feel strange. Worse, there is no easy way to restore the old interface.

Of course, some improvements to the Vista user interface have been recognized. The comprehensive search area in each Explorer window is recognized as helping to find files and settings in the operating system. However, Microsoft has taken early criticism of the Vista user interface and tried to solve these problems in Windows 7. As for rescheduling components, Windows 7 was actually re-planned, including reorganizing some of the items in the Control Panel. The use of hardware devices and printers is a completely new process, while search functionality is replaced by more powerful keyword syntax, and users need to take the time to adapt.

However, if the latest adjustments mean that the Vista user interface goes backwards two steps, the new toolbar will make a leap in Windows usability. In short, the Windows 7 toolbar completely transforms the Windows user interface and accepts the concept of a stylish graphical environment such as object pointing.

Functions that pin the entire workspace to the taskbar—including applications, files, and utilities—and interact with them in a consistent and predictable way, so the Windows 7 user interface gives users a lot of inspiration . The Windows 7 user interface goes far beyond Vista and XP in terms of usability and general operability.

Performance

If a confusing interface is the first drawback noticed by users in Vista, its slow performance is the ultimate cause of user dislike. Vista's performance is very slow, especially on low-end hardware. In fact, many of the systems introduced for Vista are useless. They either lack CPU bandwidth, either no suitable video adapter, or both. These factors led to poor quality of early Vista drivers. Most Vista users are pre-installed with the Vista system when they buy a computer, and half of the enterprise users choose XP. Vista's performance is terrible.

Of course, the situation has improved over time. While the quality of the driver has improved, the overall versatility of Vista has also declined. Microsoft expects to address these deficiencies through a series of hot fix packs and service packs. We are still learning the use of Windows 7, there is no free lunch in the world, we can't seduce the temptation of DRM and background services. In the core architecture of Windows 7/Vista, such things are full of the entire system.

This is why Microsoft has made great improvements to Windows 7. Microsoft has worked hard to reduce the resource footprint of Windows 7 by simplifying the Vista architecture. Similar changes, such as adjusting animations, seem to make the operating system more agile. In addition, it is more obvious to change the priority of background processes and how the kernel locks threads in a multi-core environment.

Everyone is questioning: Will Windows 7 be faster than Vista? The answer is yes, but it won't be much faster. In the case of Office 2007, Windows 7 is only 4% faster than Vista with SP2. However, Windows 7 is still about 15% slower than XP.

OfficeBench Test and DMS Clarity Tracker Agent shows that when running a typical workload, the new Windows consumes 8 more points of RAM than Vista. But the Windows 7 team said it was 5 percentage points lower than the Vista thread in the test. These values ​​increase 175% of RAM consumption and 85% of threads compared to the same workflow running in XP. Therefore, Windows 7 is only a little faster than Vista, and it is still not comparable to XP.

Security

In the previous section we mentioned that Vista's security improvements are mainly based on third-party patches. UAC is just a standard account with built-in improvements. Other technologies, such as IE protection mode, ASLR and repaired firewalls, are not perfect.

Because Win 7's default UAC implementation is less than Vista, its security is even worse. Many trusted Windows components circumvent UAC by joining the Microsoft-authorized binary-improved whitelist. In this way, it opens the door for attack, and malicious code can use the automatic improvement mechanism as a portal for code injection.

Microsoft is aware of this deficiency and is beginning to tighten the parameters on the whitelist and eliminate some obvious development vulnerabilities. But there are still some vulnerabilities. Based on the promise of making UAC more convenient, Microsoft seems to be less willing to deal with these vulnerabilities.

Manageability

When we evaluated Vista's improvements in manageability, we noticed that this performance is related to Active Directory Group Policies. Extensions that break locked devices and let non-manager changes lose and install drivers are welcome improvements, although we have noticed that many of these have been resolved with customer tools or third-party plugins before.

Win 7 promotes the supply of incremental improvements in overall desktop management. New Direct Access and Branch Cache features have been added, but they all require you to run Windows Server 2008 R2 while running Windows 7. Disk Encryption BitLocker (BitLocker) has been improved in Windows 7, and it now supports mobile devices - but it is still only available to Volume Licensing customers or Ultimate Edition SKU users.

One part of witnessing its management performance improvement is IE. IE8 now integrates the AD Group Policy mechanism very well, allowing us to make extensive use of new configuration parameters to enhance browsing security. However, IE stability is not competitive in many browsers, and the relevance of these extensions will be tested in time.

Reliability

Vista has many improved energy management features, new I/O priority levels, and lazy loading of services. However, although the test cycle is long, people still think that Vista lacks stability. The main problem may be related to its Vista compatible display and the poor state of audio drive. During the lengthy testing process, Vista has been lacking support from hardware vendors. Now that hardware vendors have been able to catch up with Vista, customers can have more confidence in the product. Windows 7 benefits from the Vista architecture and the less modified kernel.

Hardware Compatibility

As mentioned above, Vista's lack of proper device driver support is one of the reasons for its failure. Especially in terms of audio and video drivers, it is a nightmare. Now that the situation has changed, the hardware ecosystem has finally begun to work with Vista. Most new computers and devices offer Vista support thanks to the release of two service packs and a large number of hot fix packs.

The result is that Windows 7 can inherit a more complete ecosystem. Along with Vista, many XP drivers have not been modified in Windows 7.

Microsoft will also make better use of the Windows Update page. In fact, the new Windows introduces a smaller disk device driver library. It relies on Windows Update to provide a way to get unconventional drivers from third parties.

Microsoft Software Compatibility

When we checked Vista's Microsoft Software Compatibility, we found that there was no significant advantage in the original version. The Microsoft Office team may have anticipated this problem, so it is cleverly chosen to fully implement Office System 2007 in both XP and Vista. Therefore, when the Vista flagship version went wrong, the Office team could not stay out of the way. Is the close integration of Office 2007 and Vista causing problems with the operating system? Perhaps. But the lack of usability conventions in Vista limits the depth of this combination.

After a few more years, we will see a different situation. With Windows 7, Microsoft will offer a new user interface, including an improved taskbar. As seen in Office 2010, Microsoft seems to be taking advantage of new practices to deliver unique value to users.

Of course, Office 2010 will continue to run on XP and Vista. The Office team won't be stupid enough to put all the bets on an unmarketed Windows.

Third-party application compatibility

The last reason for the exclusion of Vista is that it does not support third-party applications well. The combination of UAC and the updated kernel means that many legacy applications can't be used in Vista, but they can still be used in XP, so Microsoft has to do so alone.

In Windows 7, Microsoft's third-party application support has been greatly improved. Not only does Microsoft benefit from vendor software updates, but it also has a good chance to diagnose traditional XP applications. For truly problematic programs, Microsoft also holds the ace: Virtual Windows XP Mode (VXP), which provides a complete virtual Windows XP screen for programs running in the local environment.

Support for development tools

When Vista was introduced, Microsoft hoped that it could create a new era of managed code, and the company updated the corresponding development tools. For example, Visual Studio 2008 is launched, which includes a large number of tools and templates for .Net program development across operating systems. Of course, things didn't go as Microsoft expected. Although the company's development tools are still very popular, most professionals use these tools to get some ASP.Net programs or legacy code in the obsolete Visual C++ language.

Microsoft's elimination of the Win32 API has become a fantasy. However, .Net does not stop there, Windows 7 introduces the latest framework avatars - especially Version 3.5 with SP1. Unlike the 3.0 version in Vista, Microsoft has a low profile to deliver this performance, rather than highlighting the improved legacy compatibility in Windows 7.

If there is still a glimmer of hope, that is the two tools in the Windows 7 add-on. Both the Painter and WordPad programs have a Microsoft ribbon user interface that programmers can reuse as components. Therefore, depending on the extent to which Windows 7 replaces XP, we may see a boom in .Net development.

Foreground

We see that users support XP for a reason. First of all, consumers don't have much enthusiasm for Vista. Unless most people choose a new system, hardware vendors and software vendors will not give up XP easily. In fact, many of the new .Net framework technologies introduced by Microsoft support older versions of Windows.

Windows 7 is faster than Vista, but still slower than XP. The default configuration is less secure than Vista, but it remains to be seen. Reliability and compatibility have improved, but these trends are based on the industry's adaptation to Vista security and drive models, rather than the added performance for Windows 7.

Windows 7 is much like an upgraded version of Vista. If you want to compare the two, it is likely to be a draw, and finally we will choose Windows 7 because it represents a new technology trend, promote the existing technology base, but also new The hardware opens up a platform. Choosing to accept Windows 7 may not be disappointing. This product closely follows the development of the computer industry. To a large extent, the core technology of Windows 7 and the shadow of Vista, the interface adjustment can not change the fact. But Microsoft will eventually win its own market.