What Slows Windows Down?
Page 2: The Offending Software
The first of two studies carried out in September 2006 showing what types of software and more interestingly which versions of those types make Windows XP slow down.
The Offending Software
The list of software is broken into categories for comparison between brands:
System Security
Firewall, anti-virus and anti-spyware programs are where I expect to see the biggest delays from a system, so much so that I refuse to use any on my home computer. This belief comes from the fact that they are always running and start as soon as they can in order to catch what they need. I'm therefore comparing the three most popular security “suites” which cover all three subcategories.
- Norton Internet Security 2006
- McAfee SecurityCentre
- Kaspersky Internet Security 6.0.0.303
- BitDefender v10
Office Software
Office suites tend to be huge behemoths that can take up gigabytes of space. In order to make your life easier, they also install a lot of things around the system so they're easier to find. Here I shall be pitting Microsoft Office 2003 vs. OpenOffice. And because of OpenOffice, I shall not be installing Outlook in the Microsoft suite.
- Microsoft Office 2003 (v11)
- OpenOffice 2.0.3
Chat Software
Some may think this is a little silly, but chat applications– especially when they're stacked up – can add significant delay to the load times of a system. Here I will compare the most popular chat clients around. You should note that Trillian and Gaim are multiple-protocol messengers so that you can use one instead of several messaging clients. I also deviated from the initial mission statement and set each client to load with windows for a better comparison.
- Windows Live Messenger 8
- Yahoo Instant Messenger 8.0
- AOL Instant Messenger 1.5 Preview
- Trillian 3.1 Basic (with all plug-ins)
- Gaim 1.5.0 (again with all plug-ins)
Codecs and Fonts
It's not uncommon to hear people going on about you not installing too much of this or too much of that... Codecs and fonts are usually at the brunt of this argument as they are in areas that are checked by the system all the time.
- Apple QuickTime 7.1
- DivX 6.3
- K-Lite Codec Pack 2.76 FULL
- 100 Fonts
- 1000 Fonts
Peer-to-Peer Download Software
These are probably some of the least likely contenders for system-slowdown but they are popular on the internet, and therefore could be doing a lot more damage that some people think. Each application shall be setup to boot with windows (as most people have it setup).
- Kazaa 3 (+included crapware)
- Azureus 2.5.0.0 (+ Java Runtime)
- uTorrent 1.4
- BitComet 0.7
Compression Utilities
Very small and lightweight applications for compressing files... Most people wouldn't think of these as bad pieces of software but they sometimes do install explorer extensions and things that may leak through to affect the rest of the system.
- WinRAR
- WinZIP
- WinAce
- 7-Zip
Other Applications
Here are the other applications I want to test that don't fit into another category. You shouldn't compare any of these against each other as they all do different things. Some of them are necessary libraries and frameworks and some are things you wouldn't touch unless you really needed them.
- Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition
- Adobe Photoshop CS2
- Macromedia Studio MX 2004
- VMWare Workstation 5.5.1-19
- Java Runtime 1.5.0.06
- .NET Framework Runtime 2.0
- DirectX 9.0c
Pages
- Introduction
- The Offending Software
- Results and Conclusions
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