• Microsoft makes another important concession in Windows 7

    Posted on March 13, 2009 at 15:36 CDT by • Comment in the Forums

    Last week, I blogged about an article I wrote for Windows Secrets Newsletter, which described how I put together a screaming Windows 7 machine for $295.

    The one weak link in the machine – as you’ll recall if you read my original article in WSN – is that the Windows Experience Index hard disk scores in Windows 7 don’t bear any semblance to my version of reality. Here’s what I said:

    The new Windows 7 disk-performance number may be a perfectly fine benchmark — in an abstract, mathematical sense. But it has precious little to do with the way I use a computer, day in and day out. As things stand with the Windows 7 benchmark, I wouldn’t spend a sou to get a hard drive that scores 5.6 over a hard drive that managed only a 2.9.

    I’m starting to see evidence that somebody at Microsoft has listened,  and scrapped the bad Windows Experience Index hard drive performance evaluation routine that we saw in the beta version of Windows 7. It looks like we’re back to something rational. Not perfect, mind you, but a whole lot better than the screwed-up test in the Windows 7 Beta.

    My first indication: in the Windows 7 32-bit beta version, I had a drive that scored 3.0 – unfairly, in my opinion, as detailed in that Windows Secrets Newsletter article. I installed Windows 7 Build 7048 64-bit and the same drive clocked in at 5.7. Same drive. Same PC. No changes. All that changed was the version of Windows 7.

    Now a friend has written to say that a hard drive he has that scored a 3.0 with Windows 7 Beta now scores 5.4 with Windows 7 Build 7057. Same drive. Same machine. (Historic trivia: My guess is that Microsoft changed – nay, fixed – the benchmark in the 64-bit version of build 7048, but kept it the same in the 32-bit version of build 7048, and then fixed both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions in build 7057.)

    It looks like Microsoft listened. Again. Absolutely stunning.

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