What Really Slows Windows Down?
Apparently, Nortons slows it way down, which most of us already know, but since I use Mcafee, I had no idea it was this bad. Oli from ThePCSpy did some real world testing to see what really does slow down your computer the most.
The aim of this article is to find out what types of application slow down a computer the most. I’m going to be measuring the speed as the time it takes to shutdown, restart and get back to desktop (with auto-login) and start an application in the computer’s start-up settings.
The results of the security software were quite shocking. I’ve always known that being most involved with the system, antivirus and firewall programs are going to make things slower, but I was just completely astounded by the Norton result when compared against the other software on show.
Fonts were as, if not more, amazing. I know people always say not to install too many fonts (which is really hard when you have a DVD full of them), but this is the first proof I’ve seen that shows fonts have a massive effect on the windows load time.
One conclusion that we can take from this is software that makes many, many changes to the system when it installs is going to have a larger effect to windows boot timings. Examples of this were shown by the .NET runtime (both standalone and part of Visual Studio) and the fonts which get scooped up by system services. VMWare Workstation installs a lot of system drivers to emulate hardware properly which also goes a long way to slow down a computer. Furthermore, if that software loads at boot, this is going to have an added knock on effect, shown best by the antivirus programs and the chat clients. Source: ThePCSpy
Some of the results:
Norton Internet Security 2006 added 43.33 seconds a systems delay of 57.78
1000 Fonts added 30.00 seconds a systems delay of 40.00
Kaspersky Internet Security 6.0.0.303 added 10.67 seconds a systems delay of 14.22
Yahoo Instant Messenger 8.0 added 10.67 seconds a systems delay of 14.22
AOL Instant Messenger 1.5 Preview added 10.33 seconds a systems delay of 13.78
McAfee SecurityCentre added 8.67 seconds a systems delay of 11.56
Kazaa 3 (+included crapware) added 8.67 seconds a systems delay of 11.56
This is huge, look at the difference from Nortons to Mcafee, Nortons adds 35 more seconds boot up time. Article is definitely an eye opener.
[...] Wonder what kind of strings you have to pull to get a post like that on News.com? Totally self serving, please don’t change the way we do business, don’t make us change the way our software works, etc. If they don’t change it now, they won’t be able to help the problem, and the main problem, as we all know is the OS. If Microsoft helps prevent some malware, viruses, rootkits, etc, who loses? The outside security companies like MacAfee lose. In a recent post here, I referenced an article that said the number one software program at slowing down Windows was Norton Internet Security 2006 and in the top five was McAfee SecurityCentre. His conclusion was, Well it’s clear to see what sort of application has most effect on Windows. Antivirus programs tether the performance of your computer alongside that of one three years its elder. If you really need an antivirus system, make sure you follow these benchmarks but also make sure you check how good the one you’re looking at really is. Nod32 gets good security reviews and seems to leave the system fairly nippy [...]