Despite lots of innovation with SuperFetch and ReadyBoost, Windows Vista wasn’t popular. In fact, many users avoided upgrading from Windows XP to Vista altogether. Though the operating system was the first version of Windows with 3D animation, and it offered many new features, it didn’t deliver enough compelling reasons to replace XP, which can now be considered really mature (if not over the hill).
Indexing updates could be retrofitted to Windows XP, and Vista turned out to be more hungry for resources than previous Windows versions. Windows 7, however, has been out for a few weeks, and feedback has generally been great. We decided to revisit our first look at testing these two operating systems head-to-head and directly compare Windows Vista and Windows 7, to see if the reported benefits are really noticeable.