Something very strange...

[seaman 177]

I have two laptops, one old and another very old.  When I do a speedtest on the very old laptop (running Windows XP), internet speed is much faster than when I do the same test on my laptop running Windows Vista.  The difference is almost double.  Any idea why this might be?

 

seaman

[shadow 18,483]

I have two laptops, one old and another very old.  When I do a speedtest on the very old laptop (running Windows XP), internet speed is much faster than when I do the same test on my laptop running Windows Vista.  The difference is almost double.  Any idea why this might be?

 

seaman

Probably you have something on the newer one sucking your resources (virus, trojan, etc.). Furthermore, Vista is a memory hog and requires much more RAM than does XP.

[philuk 3,656]

Not strange. its vista.

vista likes to run things in the background first before running it for real. worst os microsft ever came up with. dump it and put xp on and it will fly.

[Kim_ 957]

There are many reasons for this. As you say one could assume that the newer laptop with better prestanda (better processor , more RAM etc etc) should perform better...

But it's not simple as that.....

- Other members above have already pointed out that Vista isn't the best OS from Microsoft.... That's one reason as it runs up so many resources in the background that you are probably not using. Google for finetuning Vista and you will get a lot of suggestions what to switch off.

- Another could be that you have installed/uninstalled a lot of SW on the Vista laptop leaving lots of crap in registry. There are programs to remove not used parameters in the registry.

- Another could be you are using different antivirus and the one on the Vista is simply slower.

 

You could update the Vista to a better OS, such as Win7, Win8 or any Linux (if you are not used to Linux you have a learning period). In case you go for the Linux (which is free) you need to keep the XP laptop for any Windows based application you can not be without.

 

There are much more but these are something to start looking into.

[seaman 177]

Thanks for your comments.

 

Just to be clear the speedtest I am doing is internet speed test using www.speedtest.net.  Does a machine's OS or how efficient things are being run on a machine actually affect the test result for internet?  Maybe I am missing something but I thought speedtest showed how fast internet is irrespective of the machine that is doing the test.  Am I wrong?

 

seaman

[Kodiak570 525]

There are many reasons for this. As you say one could assume that the newer laptop with better prestanda (better processor , more RAM etc etc) should perform better...

But it's not simple as that.....

- Other members above have already pointed out that Vista isn't the best OS from Microsoft.... That's one reason as it runs up so many resources in the background that you are probably not using. Google for finetuning Vista and you will get a lot of suggestions what to switch off.

- Another could be that you have installed/uninstalled a lot of SW on the Vista laptop leaving lots of crap in registry. There are programs to remove not used parameters in the registry.

- Another could be you are using different antivirus and the one on the Vista is simply slower.

 

You could update the Vista to a better OS, such as Win7, Win8 or any Linux (if you are not used to Linux you have a learning period). In case you go for the Linux (which is free) you need to keep the XP laptop for any Windows based application you can not be without.

 

There are much more but these are something to start looking into.

 

There is also PlayonLinux  or Wine/Winetricks for those can't live without .exe(s).