My OS test bench is completely reconfigurable - I've tried it in many different hardware configurations. Regardless of hardware, Vista is an absolute pig.
In every case Vista has been much slower for most applications and benchmarks. A lot of it has to do with the way Vista handles mainboard and processor-level functions.
When MS first announced Vista, I was thrilled - it sounded like they were going to build a lean, efficient OS from scratch, abandoning a lot of the feature-creep and bloat of their earlier efforts. Sadly they delivered exactly the opposite - a massive resource hog that needs a very fast processor and a ton of ram
just to run the OS.
I'd be overjoyed if they would come out with something
lean so my computers' power goes to the apps, not the OS.
There's a
reason I use a combination of Ubuntu and XP on all my personal boxen...and it's not "convenience". LOL!