Free Speed Test. You can take a screenshot of your test results (to share) v3.4 2012.11.27 Application start-up time improvement Gauge is more fluid now v3.2 2012.10.30 Minor optimization v3.0 2012.10.23 You can choose test location from a map. V2.8 2012.10.09 Start-up time improvement (by locally caching locations) v2.6 2012.08.08 Big optimization. Aug 14, 2015  Windows 7 vs Windows 10 Benchmark(Performance and Boot Time) Helloworld. HD, etc) on both windows 10 and windows 7 platform. We will also test which is better in terms of boot time speed.

1. Internet Speed Test Windows 7
2. Computer Speed Test Windows Vista
3. Windows 7 Disk Speed Test

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Windows Vista never was particularly speedy in most people's eyes. Whether it deserved the reputation or not, the word on the street was that Vista was both slow and bloated.

Given that, it's no wonder that improving performance was one of Microsoft's design goals with Windows 7. Many reviewers have said that the new operating system feels faster than Vista. In our extensive PC World Test Center evaluations comparing the two, we found an increase in speed, though the overall improvement wasn't dramatic.

We installed Windows 7 on five computers (two desktop systems, two laptop PCs, and a netbook), and put the systems through our WorldBench 6 benchmark suite, which consists of a number of tests that assess a machine's performance in popular, real-world applications. We also ran timed tests to measure how the two OSs affected boot-up and shutdown times, laptop battery life, and launch times for several common apps. (For more information, see 'Windows 7: How We Test.')

The verdict? Windows 7 makes some performance strides over Vista, though in some cases we saw no clear-cut winner, and in one area Windows 7 lagged considerably behind its predecessor.

For more of PCW's Windows 7 coverage, read our in-depth Windows 7 reviewand check out our guide to Windows 7 upgrades.

WorldBench 6 Test Results

Overall, Windows 7's performance improvement over Windows Vista is slight--but the important thing is that there is an improvement at all. For a breakdown of some of the performance scores, see the chart below.

On our E&C Black Mamba desktop (with a 2.66GHz Intel Core i7 processor, overclocked to 3.8GHz), Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit earned a WorldBench 6 mark of 144, edging out Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit, which scored 139. Here Windows 7 was roughly 3.6 percent faster than Windows Vista.

When comparing the two versions of Windows on the HP Pavilion a6710t desktop (with a 2.6GHz Pentium Dual Core E5300 CPU), we tested both the 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows Vista Ultimate and Windows 7 Ultimate. Running the 32-bit versions of Vista and Windows 7, the a6710t saw its WorldBench 6 score increase only a little, from 104 on the former to 106 on the latter. But on our WorldBench 6 tests comparing the 64-bit versions, it enjoyed a somewhat larger boost with Windows 7, going from a score of 96 on Vista to a mark of 103.

We saw similar incremental performance improvements on our portable test PCs as well. With the 32-bit versions of Vista Home Premium and Windows 7 Home Premium, our Gateway T-6815 notebook went from a WorldBench 6 score of 58 on the older OS to a result of 64 on the newer one. Our Lenovo IdeaPad Y530 laptop's WorldBench 6 score improved by only one point with Windows 7 in our comparison of 32-bit Ultimate editions (going from 83 to 84); when we tested the 64-bit editions of the two OSs, we again saw a modest boost, with the Y530's score increasing from 79 to 83.

Windows 7 makes big gains in disk performance, however. For example, in our hard-disk-intensive WorldBench 6 Nero test--in which we create a series of images of an optical disc and then save them--every PC we tested showed an improvement. In our comparison of the 64-bit versions of Vista and Windows 7, the IdeaPad Y530 performed the test twice as quickly with the newer OS. Meanwhile, our Gateway T-6815 was almost two and a half times faster, going from a time of 1648 seconds to complete the test on Windows Vista to a time of 667 seconds on Windows 7. We had noticed a similar speedup on disk-intensive tests in our earlier evaluation of the Windows 7 release candidate; such gains may be due to updated hard-disk drivers under Windows 7.

One particular result worth noting: In our testing, the 64-bit versions of Vista produced poorer disk performance than the 32-bit Vista editions did. With Windows 7, however, Microsoft brought the 64-bit versions' disk performance more in line with that of the 32-bit versions. That explains the larger WorldBench 6 score advantages over Vista that we saw from 64-bit Windows 7 compared with 32-bit Windows 7.

Boot-Up and Shutdown Times

Microsoft says that in Windows 7 it changed the way the operating system handles starting up processes when you boot your computer. For some processes and services, Microsoft employs a scheme called trigger-start services. These are system services and processes that under Vista would have started up when you booted your PC, but now kick in only as needed. One example Microsoft gives is Windows 7's handling of Bluetooth: Instead of launching at system boot, Bluetooth now starts up when you use a Bluetooth device with your PC. Reducing the number of services that start at boot is supposed to reduce boot-up time.

In our boot-up tests using one desktop and one laptop, though, we saw mixed results. On our Gateway T-6815 laptop, Windows Vista Home Premium (32-bit) had the advantage, booting up in 39.6 seconds on average. Windows 7 Home Premium (also the 32-bit edition) took slightly longer, averaging 43.6 seconds. On our HP Pavilion a6710t test desktop, the outcome was reversed. The 64-bit edition of Windows Vista Ultimate Edition booted in 55.2 seconds, whereas Windows 7 Ultimate Edition 64-bit came out slightly ahead, booting in 48.3 seconds.

At first, we couldn't explain why the 64-bit edition of Windows 7 improved the boot-up time over Vista (on the HP desktop) while the 32-bit edition of the new OS lagged behind its predecessor (on the Gateway laptop). In subsequent testing, however, we discovered that the 32-bit version of Windows 7 exhibited a similar speedup on our HP desktop, going from an average of 54.5 seconds on Vista 32-bit to 47.7 seconds on Windows 7 32-bit. The upshot: Whether Windows 7 will start faster than Vista for you will likely depend on your particular computer's setup.

As for shutdown times, in our tests we observed no significant difference between Windows 7 and Windows Vista. On our Gateway T-6815 laptop, the 32-bit version of Windows Vista Home Premium shut down in 11.72 seconds on average. The 32-bit Windows 7 Home Premium took 11.57 seconds to shut down--an improvement of a mere 0.15 second. The results were just as tight on our HP a6710t desktop. The 64-bit Vista Ultimate shut down in 9.1 seconds on average, while the 64-bit Windows 7 Ultimate took 9.0 seconds--a negligible difference of just 0.1 second.

To say that such results are too close to call would be an understatement: The difference between the two is so minor that you likely wouldn't notice it even if you had the OSs running side-by-side on identical hardware.

Granted, boot-up and shutdown times aren't as important today as they once were, now that many people use their computer's sleep or hibernate mode instead, but in either case you'll probably find only slight differences, if any.

Next: Battery Life Tests and Application-Launch Times

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Improving performance is one of Microsoft's design goals with Windows 7, and many early reviewers (including ours) have said that the new OS seems peppier than Vista. But tests of the Windows 7 Release Candidate in our PC World Test Center found that while Windows 7 was slightly faster on our WorldBench 6 suite, the differences may be barely noticeable to users.

We loaded the Windows 7 Release Candidate on three systems (two desktops and a laptop) and then ran our WorldBench 6 suite. Afterward we compared the results with the WorldBench 6 numbers from the same three systems running Windows Vista. Each PC was slightly faster when running Windows 7, but in no case was the overall improvement greater than 5 percent, our threshold for when a performance change is noticeable to the average user.

The largest difference was 4 points--102 for Vista versus 106 for Windows 7 on an HP Pavillion a6710t desktop. Our other two test machines showed similarly minor performance improvements: A Maingear M4A79T Deluxe desktop improved by 1 point (from 138 on Vista to 139 on Windows 7), and a Dell Studio XPS 16 laptop improved by 2 points, from 97 on Vista to 99 on Windows 7.

Computer Speed Test Windows Vista

WorldBench 6 consists of a number of tests involving ten common applications, including Microsoft Office, Firefox, and Photoshop. On the individual tests, the benchmark results were generally within a few percentage points of each other. One notable exception, however, was Nero 7 Ultra Edition, where Windows 7 made significant improvements, ranging from a 12 percent speedup to a 26 percent speedup, depending on the PC we used in our tests. Although we have yet to confirm it, PC World Test Center Director Jeff Kuta notes that this difference may be due to updated hard-disk drivers in Windows 7. Any improvements to Windows 7's disk support will be more noticeable in an application like Nero, which uses the hard drive heavily. The test involving WinZip, another hard-drive-dependent task, also showed marked improvement under Windows 7.

We also measured a noteworthy 7 percent speed increase in our Autodesk 3ds max 8.0 SP3 (DirectX) test on the HP Pavillion desktop, which had an nVidia GeForce 9300GE graphics board. nVidia's drivers appear to be better optimized for Windows 7 than Windows Vista.

Windows Desktop Sidebar and Gadgets for Windows 10. Since Windows, 7 people became addicted to the desktop gadgets and the desktop sidebar. Unfortunately, these things fade away in the new Windows 8 and Windows 10, and we are the witness of its disappearance. Sep 03, 2009  These gadget samples are intended to demonstrate the functionality of the Windows Sidebar scripting elements. Most of the code snippets found throughout the Sidebar Reference documentation are extracted directly from the gadget code provided here. Here’s a rundown and brief description of each of the gadget samples: Hello World. Use gadgets in Windows 10 / 8.1 / 7 About 8GadgetPack. 8GadgetPack makes it possible to use gadgets on Windows 10 / 8.1 / 7. How-to FAQ Version history. First you need to download the installer (the link is on the top right of this page) and open it. Windows 8 sidebar gadgets. Windows Desktop Gadgets (called Windows Sidebar in Windows Vista) is a discontinued widget engine for Microsoft Gadgets.It was introduced with Windows Vista, in which it features a sidebar anchored to the side of the desktop.Its widgets can perform various tasks, such as displaying the time and date.

In contrast, however, each of the systems took slightly longer to perform the tests in Microsoft Office and Firefox when they were running the new operating system than when they were running Vista.

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Of course, it's important to remember that we performed these tests with the release candidate of Windows 7. Though the operating system's features likely won't change in the final version, Microsoft’s engineers may still find ways to tweak the code to improve performance.

If these test results remain consistent with those for the final version of Windows 7, the news will likely be disappointing to many Windows users. One of the major complaints about Windows Vista was the fact that it was consistently slower than Windows XP. If Windows 7 doesn’t significantly improve that situation, it may fail to convince people to move away from Windows XP.

That said, there may be other areas we didn't cover in our testing--such as startup times--where Windows 7 may outperform Windows Vista by a wider margin. The best way for you to get a feel for Windows 7's performance is to download the release candidate and take it for a test drive on your system.

How We Test

We used three PCs in our testing: a Maingear M4A79T Deluxe desktop, an HP Pavillion a6710t desktop, and a Dell Studio XPS 16 laptop. The powerful Maingear comes equipped with a 3.2GHz AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition CPU overclocked to 3.71GHz, 4GB of memory, and dual ATI Radeon HD 4890 graphics processors. The Pavilion, a mainstream desktop, features a 2.6GHz dual-core Pentium E5300 with 3GB of memory and an nVidia GeForce 930GE graphics chip. Lastly, the Dell Studio XPS 16 laptop packs a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 4GB of memory, and an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3670 graphics card. On all three systems, we ran our WorldBench 6 benchmark suite on a clean installation of the 32-bit edition of Windows Vista Ultimate with SP1 and repeated the process with the Windows 7 Ultimate release candidate (again, the 32-bit version). We made both operating systems current with Windows Update, and we installed the most current hardware drivers available.

Windows 7 Disk Speed Test