LifeHacker performed a speed test and found that Windows 8 is faster than just about everything. Windows 8 will not be releases until 2012, so these tests are subject to change, but the good news is that regardless of any changes or additions that are made, Windows 8 is much faster than Windows 7. The preliminary tests were used to get an idea of what the user experience will be, instead of performing a bunch of synthetic benchmarks. The user experience is much more important, as it will basically determine how well the new upgrade will do with any machine. In comparison to Windows 7, Windows 8 has a boot time of just ten seconds, where Windows 7 lags behind at 35 seconds. One might not think that this will not make a big difference, but in actuality – it does. This in itself is beneficial, but what is even more impressive is that Windows 8 won over Windows 7 in just about everything, including compression speed, decompression speeds and even movie encoding. Overall, the tasks for Windows 8 came out to 9 minutes and 56 seconds, whereas Windows 7’s results came out to 10 minutes and 29 seconds. It is great to know that Windows 8 came out on top [even though it was a close call], but the results might not even be noticed by someone who uses their computer on a day-to-day basis. Either way, however, it is great to know that there are not any speed decreases in Windows 8. Out of the speed tests, the one difference that users might notice is the boot time. The boot time for Windows 8 is significantly faster, which was one of Microsoft’s main goals, aside from optimizing this newest operating system for touch screen devices. The speed tests were performed on a 3.8 GhZ i7 machine, with 6GB of RAM, a 2TB hard drive and Nvidia GeForce 9800 GT. The machine was also connected to the Internet over Ethernet at a maximum speed of 20 mbps, which proves that no matter what machine you’re using, Windows 8 can definitely improve the way your current machine functions. The results are very impressive, but we have another year to wait until the final version is launched. Who knows, Windows 8 might be even faster than these results have recently shown or Microsoft might add even more features that will benefit users. ]]>
