You Can't Coach That

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

I love a good conspiracy theory. It is not that I necessarily believe them I just find them interesting to think about. The interwebs is of course an excellent source of said theories. I recently heard a good one concerning Windows (the source slips my mind otherwise I would quote it here).

The story goes that Microsoft are intentionally slowing down Windows XP through the patches delivered through live update. The conspiracy theorists would have us believe that this is being done to encourage the switch to Vista.

There are two issues in this particular morsel of anti-Microsoft propaganda. Firstly, are patches and updates slowing XP down, and secondly would Microsoft be doing this intentionally.

In response to this second issue, my thinking is that the potential downside to Microsoft of such action would be so serious that it just couldn’t be true. It does make for a good story though and stranger things have happened.

As for the idea that XP is being slowed down by patches and updates, I offer my own anecdotal “evidence”. I have recently reformatted two of my Windows machines, my everyday PC and my music jukebox PC. They both have received a fresh install of Windows XP. While one is a laptop and the other a desktop they have similar configurations. They are both Pentium 4 machines while the laptop processor is faster, they both have 512 meg of RAM and they both have 7200 rpm hard drives. One key difference in the two setups is the fact that the laptop has been updated for all Microsoft patches and updates while the desktop has not. The desktop is a bare install of Windows XP with service pack 2 installed. This machine does not connect to the internet so I see no need to patch it.

Theoretically, these machines should show similar performance. And drum roll please - they don’t. The laptop computer with XP fully updated and patched is noticeably slower in performing basic tasks. For example it takes longer to open a “my computer” window and the right click context menu takes longer to appear. Now you might be thinking that I am making claims without proof or evidence to back them up, and you would be right. I don’t plan on going as far as timing various operations for comparison purposes, I have better things to do.

This is just another small nail in the coffin that will bury my loyalty to Windows. As for moving to Vista I am left cold by the thought of the system specifications that are needed just to run the operating system. I am 90% decided on a move to an Apple Mac Pro. Go ahead, talk me out of it.

“You can’t coach that”