Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Trim, taut and terrific
Many, many years ago, Ford had an advertisement that referred to their latest model in the manner of this blog's heading. I'm too young to have ever seen the ad, but my Father often referred to it when I was a lad.
I have been curious as to how Windows 7 has obtained such speed improvements over Vista. It does indeed behave in a trim and taut manner. It requires far less CPU grunt and memory space and it's response seems "fleet-footed".
So today, I think I stumbled on the reason, or part of it. Anyone who uses Windows will have come across Services. These "little" background processes that provide a discrete service. (By discrete, I mean specific, not politely behaved.) The problem in the past has been that there are so many running, and often it seemed they were not required at the time. Jump into Task Manager and take a look at the list of processes and you will notice that the list has been steadily growing through the various versions of the O/S.
Well, Windows 7 changes all that. Microsoft has delivered trigger capabilities for the services. This means that, rather than loading up the system with a heap of unnecessary services, Windows 7 only starts a service if it is required; keeps it running only as long as it is needed, and then stops the service. This improves system performance, reduces memory overhead, and generally gives the O/S a more responsive feel.
Now, I'm not sure my dear old dad would call this trim, taut or terrific, but I reckon it is.
I have been curious as to how Windows 7 has obtained such speed improvements over Vista. It does indeed behave in a trim and taut manner. It requires far less CPU grunt and memory space and it's response seems "fleet-footed".
So today, I think I stumbled on the reason, or part of it. Anyone who uses Windows will have come across Services. These "little" background processes that provide a discrete service. (By discrete, I mean specific, not politely behaved.) The problem in the past has been that there are so many running, and often it seemed they were not required at the time. Jump into Task Manager and take a look at the list of processes and you will notice that the list has been steadily growing through the various versions of the O/S.
Well, Windows 7 changes all that. Microsoft has delivered trigger capabilities for the services. This means that, rather than loading up the system with a heap of unnecessary services, Windows 7 only starts a service if it is required; keeps it running only as long as it is needed, and then stops the service. This improves system performance, reduces memory overhead, and generally gives the O/S a more responsive feel.
Now, I'm not sure my dear old dad would call this trim, taut or terrific, but I reckon it is.
Labels: Technology, Windows 7
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