Did MS trade beauty for speed?

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rafael1979

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Anyone here can probably see that Windows 7 is a lot better looking than Windows 8/8.1, at least when it comes to the desktop. Most of us Windows 8/8.1 users must have noticed that it is less resource hungry than Windows 7 not to mention faster.
Does this mean MS has made a trade-off? Has MS ditched the good looks of W7 for some extra speed/agility on W8/8.1?

What do you guys think?
 
I can speak about desktops mostly. That trade off maybe relevant only to marginal systems (performance wise), ones on the edge of minimum requirements. For any half decent system, all that "makeup" did not make a dent in performance. If you are referring to Aero, that I liked but is really unnecessary feature and even that did not make any difference that I could see.
In older Widows, you could always "kill" all the visual effects if needed but most of memory savings were by not using large picture or none at all for desktop anyway.
I think that most of performance improvements came with better use of memory and using more features that newer CPUs and GPUs have, looks have much less influence.
 
Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. So, beauty is a subjective term. But based on the way Windows 8 was received, I have to admit that the majority of the consumers felt that Windows 7 is better looking than Windows 8.

Has MS traded beauty for speed? In a way, yes. They wanted their new operating system to run on a wide range of systems including less powerful hardware with greater portability. So, it did make sense to make the operating less resource hungry.

Many users have extremely powerful hardware and in these kind of systems, the difference between Windows 8 and Windows 7 in resource usage is very little and can't be felt.

So, the answer to your question, "Did MS trade beauty for speed?" will be no. Those who have super powerful hardware can't feel the little gain in speed. So, if these users happen to think of Windows 7 as beautiful, they are missing out on beauty with no compensation of speed.

What I feel is that they could have implemented it in a better way. They could have made it possible to install Aero while installing Windows. This way, users with less powerful hardware as well as those with powerful hardware could have been served.
 
Arpan said:
Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. So, beauty is a subjective term. But based on the way Windows 8 was received, I have to admit that the majority of the consumers felt that Windows 7 is better looking than Windows 8.

Has MS traded beauty for speed? In a way, yes. They wanted their new operating system to run on a wide range of systems including less powerful hardware with greater portability. So, it did make sense to make the operating less resource hungry.

Many users have extremely powerful hardware and in these kind of systems, the difference between Windows 8 and Windows 7 in resource usage is very little and can't be felt.

So, the answer to your question, "Did MS trade beauty for speed?" will be no. Those who have super powerful hardware can't feel the little gain in speed. So, if these users happen to think of Windows 7 as beautiful, they are missing out on beauty with no compensation of speed.

What I feel is that they could have implemented it in a better way. They could have made it possible to install Aero while installing Windows. This way, users with less powerful hardware as well as those with powerful hardware could have been served.
Click to expand...

But aren't all Windows versions made for the majority of its demographic? If so, then they have made all Windows thinking of lower end PCs, which are what most PC owners and Windows users will have. Of course, you were right in the sense that if someone is wealthy enough to dispense with 200+ dollars for an OS then they will probably have a conducive machine to go with the money spent on one single software (the OS). In this case this person is more likely to have a powerful machine than an old PC which has the bare minimum for that OS.
If MS were thinking of the buying users, the minority of Windows users, then they could've thrown in Aero and all the rest of the eye candy from Windows 7. If not, if they were thinking of the vast majority who download or buy pirated versions of Windows then
making a faster, less of an eye candy filled OS makes more sense.
But who should Microsoft target in this scenario? The buying minority, or the pirating vast majority? By the looks and less usage of resources of Windows 8/8.1 it seems they took the majority into account...
 
But who should Microsoft target in this scenario? The buying minority, or the pirating vast majority? By the looks of Windows 8/8.1 it seems they took the majority into account...
Click to expand...

What I think is: Instead of targeting any particular set of users, why not give them the option? MS should have allowed the option to install Aero while installing Windows. This way, both groups of consumers could have been satisfied.
 
Arpan said:
But who should Microsoft target in this scenario? The buying minority, or the pirating vast majority? By the looks of Windows 8/8.1 it seems they took the majority into account...
Click to expand...

What I think is: Instead of targeting any particular set of users, why not give them the option? MS should have allowed the option to install Aero while installing Windows. This way, both groups of consumers could have been satisfied.
Click to expand...

I absolutely agree with you.
 
rafael1979 said:
Anyone here can probably see that Windows 7 is a lot better looking than Windows 8/8.1, at least when it comes to the desktop. Most of us Windows 8/8.1 users must have noticed that it is less resource hungry than Windows 7 not to mention faster.
Does this mean MS has made a trade-off? Has MS ditched the good looks of W7 for some extra speed/agility on W8/8.1?

What do you guys think?
Click to expand...

For the most part no.

The lower memory footprint in Windows 8 come from improvements in the memory management system, not cut backs in functionality. The better performance comes from improvements in the OS and the ability to take better advantage of modern hardware.

The idea that the visual effects in Windows 7 has a significant cost in performance is a misconception, at least with reasonably modern hardware. The dialog in Windows 7 that controls these options is at best misleading. In some cases turning off options will impair performance.

See this blog by Raymond Chen, a developer with Microsoft since 1992:
"Adjust visual effects for best performance" should really be called "Adjust visual effects for crappiest appearance" - The Old New Thing - Site Home - MSDN Blogs
 
my2cents said:
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder my friend.
Click to expand...

Hi there

Agreed - and if you look at some of the Stunning backgrounds on various Linux distros available you can have BOTH BEAUTY AND SPEED.

Some like Linux Mint are light years ahead of W7 in terms of speed - while W8.1 is no slouch I do feel it could be "De-uglified" a bit -- the Plasma glass effects on the various Linuxes are good and I quite liked the old VISTA AERO.

However some people prefer a simple plain background --so Ms has to keep a balancing act. With Linux there's choices galore for window managers - poor old Windows has to stick with one so it's a difficult call.

As a compromise W8.1 doesn't do too badly though IMO.

Cheers
jimbo
 
jimbo45 said:
my2cents said:
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder my friend.
Click to expand...

Agreed - and if you look at some of the Stunning backgrounds on various Linux distros available you can have BOTH BEAUTY AND SPEED.

-- the Plasma glass effects on the various Linuxes are good and I quite liked the old VISTA AERO.
Click to expand...

I agree with you on this. I love the KDE desktop (which has the plasma glass effect) the most. Just saw a few screenshots of the new Gnome 3.12 desktop a while ago, and it looks extremely beautiful to me! Will try it soon.
 
I have, as you can see, a limited machine, it has just above what's required to run Windows 7/8.1 well. And yet I'm pretty positive that if MS had made Windows 8/8.1 with all the eye candy from Windows 7 I would still be able to run it pretty well on this laptop. That's what gets me, why haven't they at least made available an option during installation for us to choose the way Windows 8/8.1 looked?
I know beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I am aware of that, but I am also aware that many of the users who refuse to swap Windows 7 for 8.1 do so because of the bland looks of it. It is definitely a step back from MS, and there's no reasonable explanation why...
 
don't get it myself, I never used any OS because of the way the desktop looked ,I'am sure mine still looks like win98,lol


as for older computers not running win8.1 very well at least Microsoft gives one the chance to do so, I have a older Mac laptop running os10.6.8 ,and I cant update it to os 10.7 ,will not let me ,and im told even if I buy os10.7 it will run like crap ,so I left with 6.8, and also told that 3rd party apps and browser will like stop updates and support for 6.8
so I guess I should learn to use and like Linux
 
They did, because Aero was in fact a resource hog. In 7, it wasn't AS BAD as vista, but still. I'd rather have those resources being used for audio file converting over being wowed by a very margin slice of the Desktop UI.

As they always say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

The way they did the Desktop of just flattening down the Taskbar and window borders and removing the transparency; basically just flattening down pieces here and there of the whole Desktop UI is just tacky. Aero from vista is mixed together with pieces of a new design philosophy. Instead, they should have done what the former Windows Mobile division did with Windows Phone; scrap all the old UI and rebuild clean from the ground up. But what we got was a cool new modern Start Screen with apps in the WinRT form being clean and modern; but hit Start and D, you're faced with what the Windows UI had to offer back in 2006.

Going forward, I think it would be best in the whole grand scheme of things to just rebuild the whole window management system of Windows into something else.
 
If only they had used the resources they saved with aero/glass with implementing more options on the apps, especially the Video one, then it would've been justified. People wouldn't be using 3rd party software for better functionality instead of the apps. I make an effort and try and only use the apps instead of other programs. The eye candy loss is not justified on Windows 8/8.1 by any means.
 
rafael1979 said:
If only they had used the resources they saved with aero/glass with implementing more options on the apps, especially the Video one, then it would've been justified. People wouldn't be using 3rd party software for better functionality instead of the apps. I make an effort and try and only use the apps instead of other programs. The eye candy loss is not justified on Windows 8/8.1 by any means.
Click to expand...

I really wish they could have done that but with Xbox Music. The Zune player before it GOBBLED, I mean slammed resources just to run the player because it was basically rendering a video at all times for the Now Playing view. In Xbox Music, they've developed it for the lowest common denominator of PCs and therefore, it's visually unexciting and rather bland. They could have optimized that part of it and TRULY allowed for GPU rendering (I doubt it was thoroughly rendered by the GPU in Zune as CPU usage couldn't have been that high) so it wouldn't task the system so much. It's such a shame because almost every single review for Xbox Music all say Zune was better in that respect out of MANY.
 
I agree that Windows 7 looks a little better but I can not dislike Windows 8.1 because it works beautifully :D
 
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