The issues with the old task manager was that it was difficulty to compare the cells in the cpu usage history with each other. Microsoft has identified three core limitations with regards to the cpu charts in the Windows 7 task manager.

First the already mentioned lack of effective real-time cpu usage comparisons. Then that the graphs were reduced in size the more cpu processors were displayed in the performance chart, and finally that it was almost impossible to identify a corresponding processor ID.

Microsoft has made significant modifications to the Task Manager performance tab under Windows 8. The new features have been implemented in a development version of the operating system that has been produced after the release of the Windows 8 Developer Preview.

When users open the performance tab in the Windows 8 Task Manager, they will notice that Microsoft has integrated a heatmap into the display.

Microsoft has done away with the graphs and replaced the information with percentage values showing the cpu load.

In addition, hovering over any processor ID on the map displays the logical processor ID in a tooltip right in the task manager. The Task Manager scales well even to large data sets or small windows. A scrollbar is displayed in the latter case to make enough room for displaying up to 640 logical processors.

The heat map is an interesting idea for large scale systems. It in combination with the direct display of processor loads and individual process identifications a great upcoming enhancements for server administrators.

It is however not clear why Microsoft in the same news post mentioned that users could set the cpu affinity of each process in Windows individually, as it is a feature that is has been available for a while. Unless of course the settings are saved over sessions.

You can read the new post over at the Building Windows 8 blog.

Simple Performance Boost is such a tweaking software for Windows. It comes from the same developers that have created the Windows Repair software. The program itself is offered as a portable version and installer.

When you start it for the first time you will notice that it creates a backup before it opens up in a tabbed interface that divide tweaks into groups. Impatient users can simply click on the Apply Tweaks button to apply pre-selected tweaks to the system.

It is however a good idea to take a closer look at each tab before doing so to make sure you do not change or remove features from the system that you use.

Each tab holds between 15 and 25 different tweaks per tab. If you have used tweak software before you will notice a lot of similarities with comparable applications. Most of the tweaks are part of other applications as well. What I personally like about Simple Performance Boost is that it not only describes what each tweak does but that it also lists the Registry keys that get changed when the tweak is applied.

I do not want to go over all tweaks in detail. The number of tweaks available is solid enough to download and run the application. If you have tweaked your system already, you probably won’t find any new tweaks that you do not know about. New users on the other hand can use the tool to apply many different tweaks in less than a minute.

Interested users can download both the installer or portable version of Simple Performance Boost from the developer website. The application is compatible with all versions of Windows from Windows XP on.

Click on your start menu and type the words “ease of use” into the search box, and then press return. You will find a section called Ease of Access Center. In this area scroll all the way down to the bottom and find a section called “Make it easier to focus on Tasks”. Click on this you’ll be taken a new screen. Go to the bottom of this screen and find the section called “Make it easier to manage windows”. Uncheck the box that prevents windows from being automatically arranged when moved to the edge. This will give you a small increase in performance.

Please note that you cannot move windows to the edge of the screen anymore to automatically arrange them afterwards.

Now go to your start menu again and type, “turn off features” into the search box. This will give you a search result called “Turn Windows features on or off”. Click on this and this will take you to an area that will enable or disable certain windows features. Disable anything you don’t need, such as games. It’s really up to you what you need and don’t need, so go down the list and decide what you use. If unsure, leave it enabled. Chances are you’ll find a few things to turn off, and that will free up resources in Windows.

Go back to your search from the start menu and type “uac”. This will enable you to change user account control settings. There will be a sliding bar that controls how often you are notified about changes to your computer. If you’re not worried about messages and are happy to let your computer manage itself, slide the bar all the way to “never notify”. This means you’ll get fewer messages, it will be less annoying, and you’ll boost your performance slightly.

Now go to your start menu and right-click on “Computer”. You’ll get a sub-menu where you can then click on “manage”. In here, click on “services and applications”, and then on “services”. In services you have a number of different things, which can be turned on and off automatically on startup. Most things in here should be left alone, but one feature called “windows search” can take up a lot of resources. This is the indexing feature of windows. You can double click on this and choose “disabled” from the drop down list. This will help improve your computer’s performance, because Windows won’t be indexing every file from now on. Of course, you can always turn it back on again if you wish later.

These are just a few things you can do to help boost your computer’s performance with very little effort.

Update:

In response to the comments regarding 4 ways to increase performance

The article above was written with enhancing performance in mind. It offers a few suggestions on how, by freeing up resources and turning off unwanted Windows 7 features, small gains in performance can be achieved.

Naturally, different people use their computers in different ways, and some users have varying levels of technical expertise. It’s always advised that if you are unsure about changing settings then you should leave well enough alone. This is no “one size fits all” when it comes to settings customization. You should enable or disable services and features dependent on what you feel is right for you. For example, turning off indexing will certainly increase performance – but if you need indexing, don’t turn it off.

Many experienced users don’t need some of the features mentioned above and can safely disable them, and that’s why they are specifically mentioned. Disabling services and turning off unused features will always increase performance, however little that performance gain may be. You may decide that some of these gains are undetectable on very fast computers.

In addition, many users have third-party security software that renders certain security features of Windows 7 redundant, so in those cases some of these tips will still be relevant

Update 2: Disabling UAC is something that only experienced users should do, as it can impact the system’s security.

In the Start menu search box, enter “task scheduler” or “schedule tasks”, whichever works, and press enter. This opens the task scheduler dialog box.

Click on Action and in the dropdown menu, choose Create Basic Task. This opens the Create Basic Task Wizard. Give the task a memorable name and a description, keep it direct and simple and easy to recall.

At this point, if you have not done so already, decide how often you want the Disk Cleanup utility to run. You can choose Daily, Monthly, or one time. For the following example, daily is selected because the PC being used in this example runs a heavy load of internet traffic and overall use. If the PC is being used for home business purposes, it might be wise to schedule daily Disk Cleanup in order to ensure that data is not stolen by rogue malware. Also, set a system restore point before applying these changes.

Press Next. Choose the start date. This is usually going to be “today” but you can set it to begin at a later date. Choose the start time. Keep in mind that you do not want this utility running while you are going to be using the computer for something that cannot be interrupted. Schedule it when you know there will be a break when the PC will not be in use.

Select Action and click “Start a program” then click Next.

Type cleanmgr.exe in the Program/script box, and /d driveletter in the add arguments box and click Next. Replace driveletter with the letter of the drive that you want to run the disk cleanup on.

This is the confirmation for the scheduled program, including name, description, and time interval settings for the trigger:

Any time interval can be selected, customized to the needs of the user. Windows 7 offers some versatile tools for customization and this is definitely one to take advantage of. Set the time for the scheduled Disk Cleanup for a time that you know the computer will be on an awake. The utility will not run when the PC is off.

Overall, since it is necessary to use the Disk Cleanup utility regularly, this gives the user the option to set it and forget about it. This is one for the geek in all of us.

Essentially it does what you could do manually, it finds the services and apps running that you don’t really need, and switches them all off with the push of a button. It switched off Launchy for me, the Aero theme for Vista, which apparently eats away at the CPU, some tablet services I didn’t even know I had running, etc., so it does quite a good job.

I actually didn’t notice a huge increase in performance, but the difference is there. I tested on GTA 4 which runs away on my system, but not very well. On minimum spec I can play pretty well, with only a few effects added. In very intense areas I noticed some performace issues were less prominent, like less lag and jittery camera, so it definitely did help. The best thing about this app is that it is so easy to use, no need to go through 20 services and shut them down, but even better, they can be restarted with the same one click action. This is also great for trips to prolong battery life!

Cnet used the SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark to test browser performance of the browsers. There are other factors that have an impact on JavaScript performance like the processing power of the computer system.

The results were that the latest Firefox 3.1 beta with the new JavaScript engine TraceMonkey was the fastest with a score of 2,257, followed by Chrome with 2,904, Firefox 3 beta 1 without TraceMonkey with 4,233, Safari 3.1.2 with 6,351 and Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 at the end with a score of 9,025.

Cnet failed to test any version of Opera and should probably have tested the latest nightly test of Safari instead. Here are the results that a Windows XP service pack 3 with a Intel 8400 Wolfdale processor and 4 Gigabytes of computer memory.

• Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 without TraceMonkey- 1800
• Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 with Tracemonkey 1817
• Firefox 3.03 – 2139
• Opera 9.6 – 2736

It’s a bit surprising that Firefox without TraceMonkey was faster than Firefox with it enabled. It could be due to the fact that the portable version of Firefox has been used to run the tests. But the interesting question is, how does your browser compare? You need to run at least two browsers to be able to tell how it compares to the other browser.

Keep in mind that JavaScript performance is not everything and that page loading time is dependent on additional factors.

After checking out all the online tech websites I followed all the tweaking tips such as disabling background services, turning of animations and visual effects, using the Vista Power Saver application and various ‘speed-up-windows’ programs.

Since then I have reinstalled a couple of times and discovered that all these tips are essentially useless on a decent, fairly new computer.

I could notice no performance improvement at all with all visual themes enabled then with them disabled and I got near identical battery life with aero on as I did off. I’m going to call this as complete bollocks:

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This tiny program will save up to 70% of your battery by disabling those nice, but greedy Vista features. Running in task bar with private workset of 5.5M and 0% CPU it will do all work for you, by enabling and disabling customizable features when power source changed or battery power fall under certain percent.

All you need is the advanced Vista Power Options and you can save a lot more battery power. As far as disabling background services go I will simply echo Ed Bott’s advice:

That is breathtakingly bad advice. It is as if the automotive columnist in your local newspaper told you to open the hood of your car and start disconnecting wires and hoses one at a time to see which ones made your car run faster or quieter or smoother. It might be hours or days or even weeks before you run a program that requires the service you disabled, at which point you might have no clue that the disabled service is the cause of the nonfunctional program.

Here’s the reality: On an otherwise healthy PC running Windows Vista, disabling most built-in Windows services is extremely unlikely to have any noticeable effect on memory usage, startup or shutdown time, or system performance. On the contrary, you are more likely to create problems by disabling services. Not to mention the amount of time you will surely waste and the productivity you will lose with all that starting and stopping and rebooting and web searching.

Any services which are causing significant slow downs on your computer are likely to originate from a third-party source such as Nero’s background indexing. Windows Defender may also cause some slowdown with it’s daily scan.

And lastly the system tweaks, many of these will make some small improvements, but they largely apply to specific actions and are not connected to overall performance itself.

What is your opinion on this? Am I wrong? Did these things make a difference to the performance of Vista on your computer?

3D Mark06

3D Mark06 comes in a limited free version and $20 upgradable version. The program does a number of tests to your PC then brings up the results in your browser compared to other slower or faster systems.

Fraps

This tool will give you a quick indication of what your graphical frame rate is by sitting in the corner of the screen and providing automatic updates. Additionally it also does screenshots and screencasts via the shortcut key.

Sandra

This program provides complete system diagnosis and documentation. It’s completely free and provides a series of tools which will benchmark your PC, show hardware and software details and configuration and a whole number of other tests. This program will take a while when running tests but it provides the most comprehensive results of the three.

CPU-Z

This program runs off a USB drive and is designed for those who are interested in overclocking their systems. By running it you can get all the hardware details of the system, useful maybe for checking the specs of someone else’s computer or for making sure you buy the correct item to upgrade.

So, open the Device Manger by either typing device in the search box of Windows Vista or typing devmgmt.msc from the command line. Go to the disk Drives tab and right-click the SATA drive and select Properties from the menu. Now select the Policies tab and check the box Enable Advanced Performance. You have to repeat the process if you have more than one SATA drive installed on your system

You have to perform almost the same steps to speed up usb drivers under Windows Vista. Open again the policies tab of the USB drive and select Optimize for Performance from the options there. This method has one little drawback, you need to Safely Remove the Hardware if you want to unplug the device from your system.

Both tips have been found at the How to Geek.

This tips might also be useful to those users who use an old computer with Windows Vista. My Vista installation is using about 430 megabytes of Ram in default state with only one instance of Internet Explorer 7 running as well. The following paragraphs contain a list of changes that I made and their effect on the system.

• Disabling the Sidebar
• Changing the Design to Windows Classic
• Changing the Background image to one color
• Disabling the Windows Firewall and Bitdefender

Those changes alone dropped the ram usage by 60 megabytes to 370 with one Internet Explorer window open. There are many settings that can still be tweaked to gain even more performance, for instance removing unnecessary services and indexing. I will take a look at those in the coming days.

The question of course remains why you would like to change to Vista if you disable everything “new” that Vista offers. I personally think that it introduces lots of gimmicks that freeware on XP offered for years. And if it is security that you want you should take a look at Linux instead.

Some of the features that I disabled yesterday are also mentioned in the pcstats.com beginners guide. I do not advice you to use each of the 99 tips, for example I would not recommend to overclock your pc. Categories worth taking a look at are “Windows XP Software and Registry Performance Tweaks” and “Improving Windows XP boot speed” which can have a great effect on overall speed of the system.