Performance testing Vista and XP
Microsoft Corp. and a performance testing researcher are trading barbs over recent benchmarks that claim the unreleased upgrade for Windows XP runs Office faster than the upgrade slated to ship early next year for Vista.

According to tests run by Devil Mountain Software Inc., Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) blows through the company's OfficeBench test suite about twice as fast as Vista SP1 does.

Nick White, a program manager for Microsoft's Vista team, bashed the benchmarking in a post to a Microsoft blog last week, and called Devil Mountain to task for testing before either operating system reached its "Release to Manufacturing" (RTM) stage, the so-called gold code that is actually duplicated on disc. "Publishing benchmarks of the performance of Windows Vista SP1 now wouldn't be a worthwhile exercise for our customers, as the code is still in development and, to the degree that benchmarking tests are involved, remains a moving target," White argued.

"It isn't representative of real-world user behavior and hence isn't an accurate gauge of the actual end-user experience," White said. "Tests like these only measure a very small set of Windows capabilities and so aren't representative of the user's overall day-to-day experience of working with Windows and running applications." 

For the full article visit Computerworld

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