subject: Windows 7 Installation May Take Half An Hour [print this page] As par the recent test scenarios show that for many users, the Windows 7 upgrade process will be fairly complex, taking as little as 30 minutes. However, for some percentage of users it may take as long as 21 hours.
One of the Microsoft's official disclosed the results of tests his team ran on various PC and user configurations that simulated different levels of users migrating from Vista to Windows 7.
The goal was to find out whether an upgrade from Vista SP1 to Windows 7 was within a five percent threshold faster than an upgrade from Vista SP1 to Vista SP1. The Vista SP1 to Vista SP1 process was chosen because that's the most common installation option used by Microsoft Product Support Services a repair scenario where re-installation of the current operating system is the preferred procedure.
The team tested specific system configurations, ranging from low end, mid range, and high end hardware, against typical user scenarios that were based on questions such as how large a data set the user needs and how many applications are installed. Microsoft referred to them as medium, heavy, and super users. In their hierarchy of users, medium" was the lowest level.
For example, a high end system was defined as a 32-bit operating system on an Intel Core 2 Quad CPU running at 2.4GHz, with 4GB of RAM, and a 1Tera byte hard disk.
Meanwhile, a so called heavy user would typically have 125 GB of data tied up in documents, music, and pictures, and a total of 40 applications installed.
Performing a Vista SP1 upgrade to Windows 7 on high-end hardware with the heavy user's software, programs and data configuration took 160 minutes, or 2.7 hours. In comparison, a repair upgrade from Vista SP1 to Vista SP1 with the same hardware and user-level took 176 minutes, or 2.9 hours.
The most worst case scenario examined a mid-range hardware configuration with a 32-bit CPU, and a super user software and data configuration. It took 1220 minutes, or 20.3 hours. The mid-range hardware used 2 GB of Memory, an Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor running at 2.60GHz and a 1TB hard disk.
The super user profile, meantime, was significantly heavier in terms of usage and data than a typical real-world heavy user. For instance, the test team defined the super user as having 650GB of data and 40 installed programs.
On the lower end, a medium user, with 70GB of data and 20 applications, with a low-end machine comprised of 1 GB of memory, a 2.2 GHz AMD Athlon 64-bit processor, and a slower 320 GB hard disk, would be able to do the upgrade in 175 minutes. More powerful hardware yielded generally shorter installation times.
There were also tests against 64-bit CPUs and the 64-bit editions of the two operating systems.
In one example, a clean installation of Windows 7 on mid-range hardware took 30 minutes while a clean installation of Vista SP1 took 31 minutes. However, none of the Windows 7 installation times were slower than the Vista times.
The question still remains whether or not a majority of IT shops will listen to Microsoft's pitch and decide to move to Windows 7 earlier rather than later. Traditionally, most IT shops would wait for the first service pack before deploying a new version of Windows.
Microsoft is well underway trying to convince users to upgrade without waiting for Windows 7's first service pack.
