Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Windows 8 Release Candidate Coming In May or June?

The Windows 8 Consumer Preview was released nearly exactly a month ago to the day and was greeted by over 1 million downloads on the first day alone. Windows 8 has received mixed reviews from people but the reality of it is this – The Windows 8 Consumer Preview is very close to what Microsoft’s next operating system will be.

We’ve seen significant improvements in the Consumer Preview of Windows 8 when compared to the Developer Preview which Microsoft showed off at Build late last year. There was over 100,000 code changes in the Consumer Preview as well as a large number of new features. The next milestone for Microsoft now will be the first release candidate (RC 1).

There’s been rumours floating around the web recently which would suggest that the Windows 8 Release Candidate could arrive as early as late May or early June. Now these dates weren’t just picked at random, there’s actually a little bit of maths involved here, as well as random guessing.

windows 8 consumer preview1 580x326 1 Windows 8 Release Candidate Coming In May or June?

If we look at the Developer Preview, it was build number 8102. The Consumer Preview was compiled at build number 8250. This gives us roughly 150 builds in between the two releases (148 to be exact).

So could Microsoft possibly follow this release pattern?

Going on this, the Release Candidate will be compiled at build 8400, 150 builds after the Consumer Preview. The most recent build produced by Microsoft has been build 8307, it took them just under a month to compile 57 more builds of Windows 8.

If we take it as 1 month = 5o builds

February build 8250 (Consumer Preview)

March 8250 + 50 builds = 8300 (Roughly where we are now)

April 8300 + 50 builds = 8350

May 8350 + 50 builds = 8400 (Thought to be the Release Candidate).

This would mean that at the end of May or early June, Microsoft will have reached build number 8400, which rumours are suggesting could be the first Release Candidate.

Of course this maths of mine could be absolute and complete rubbish, but I think it’s a pretty good rough estimate. Microsoft don’t strictly have to follow any build pattern, and they can skip builds as well just as easily.

But hey, maybe just over 2 months from now I’ll be able to say I was right!

What do you guys think?

Let us know in the comments.


This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Windows 8 Beats Windows 7 In Performance Tests

Windows 8 has been greeted with mixed reviews, some users just aren’t happy with the new Metro Start Menu, but one things for sure, they won’t be complaining about the performance increases. PCWorld have been carrying out some benchmark testing of their own and in all but one test, Windows 8 was quicker.

PCWorld Labs loaded up their test machine with the Windows 8 Consumer Preview and put it through a wide range of tests against Windows 7. Windows 8 beat Windows 7 in every test except for an office productivity test. What’s even more impressive is the fact that Windows 8 is still only at the Consumer Preview stage and in theory should become more refined and quicker when it’s released. We’ll also see drivers coming online that are tweaked and optimised for Windows 8 and Windows 7 which will add more performance.

The test machine used by PCWorld was by no means a slow fella. It packs a 3.3GHz Intel Core i5-2500K processor, 8GB of DDR3 RAM clocked at 1333MHz, a 1TB 7200-rpm hard drive, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti graphics card.

When pitted against Windows 7 in the WorldBench 7 tests, Windows 8 was 14 percent faster than Windows 8. They say a difference of more than 5 percent is noticeable in real world situations

1187158 worldbench7 11338877 Windows 8 Beats Windows 7 In Performance Tests

Windows 8 was also much quicker when it came to start up times. This is one of the biggest factors for people as it’s something which drives most of us nuts on a daily basis. In PCWorlds tests, Windows 8 started up 35 percent faster than Windows 7.

1187158 startup20time 11338859 Windows 8 Beats Windows 7 In Performance Tests

The  average startup time for Windows 7 was 56.2 seconds, running Windows 8 this dropped to 36.8 seconds. I’d certainly agree with this as I have noticed a massive difference in my startup times since I’ve installed Windows 8. Also, in this test Windows 8 was at a slight disadvantage. For the test, PCWorld require that Windows boots up and opens a text file. With Windows 8, it boots directly into the Metro Start Menu, so it has to then switch to the desktop mode before it can open the text file. Still it managed to do it quicker than Windows 7.

Why?

Well Windows 8 is quite clever in that it used hybrid boot technology. When you should down your PC, everything in the RAM is actually saved to that hard disk. This is then simply loaded back into the RAM when you restart your computer so all the applications, tabs etc.. you had open are back when your restart your computer.

Windows 8 also outmatched Windows 7 when it came to web performance.  Using the WebVizBench benchmark which measures how well the system renders dynamic Web content, including JavaScript and HTML 5, Windows 8 out performed Windows 7 yet again.

1187158 web20performance 11338876 Windows 8 Beats Windows 7 In Performance Tests

It was the office productivity test where Windows 7 won decisively. This test uses the Productivity section of Futuremark’s PCMark benchmark tool, and includes usual office tasks like editing text, launching applications, and scanning for viruses. This time Windows 8 was roughly 8 percent slower than Windows 7.

However it’s important to note that Futuremark is currently in the process of updating it’s benchmarks suits for Windows 8 so these figures will likely change once that’s done.

Regardless, Windows 8 is certainly outperforming Windows 7, and it’s only in its consumer preview stage. I’d imagine once Microsoft have tweaked it some more and we see software and hardware become optimised for it, the performance gap will increase.

Source:

PCWorld


This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.