#2 - Most of these sites and tests are questionable at best, as #3 expressed properly.
In addtion to what #3 said, also note they are using "OfficeBench" and a test script. Why didn't they post faster FPS, faster Adobe performance, faster Vista Aero FPS, anything substantial? Because this is the only test they could get some difference... And the reason that there might be a slight difference is that Windows 2008 is optimized for scripting, as this is what is at the backbone of administration tasks and IIS7 is all scripting responsive.
So Windows 2008 maybe be optimized to cache scripting a little better or prioritize it, but that doesn't mean there is difference in the code base, nor would this have any impact on 99.9% of the applications a user would run. Also Windows 2008's server role optimizations have a greater chance of lowering the performance of single applications or gaming, etc.
As for the code base, has anyone actually ripped the DLLs and EXEs apart? From what my techs and developers can tell me, the files are identical between Vista SP1 and Windows 2008.
#4 Could this 'responsiveness' be your 'expected' results, the fact the system didn't have anything loaded, etc? Our labs cannot find a performance difference between Vista and Windows 2008 with Aero On/Off, at least not something that would be noticeable as the benchmarks flex less than 1-2% on each side.
#5 PS If you turn off Aero and expect 'better' performance in Vista you are mislead by the foolish media. Aero enables the low level GPU optimizations for processing GDI+/WPF drawing at low level, as well as enabling the shared texture composer that Vista uses. The Shared texture method that Vista's Aero/Composer uses, can even speed up games running in a Window with Aero on, as it writes the desktop and application to the GPU transparently (not double buffered like Linux or OS X's composers do).
Aero may be billed as eye candy by the press, but it also enables the best parts of the Vista drawing optimizations, as you will notice even displaying a bitmap will use 3D GPU functions to process the bitmap to be displayed faster, as well as faster text rendering, and even some GDI+ line drawing functions are optimized with the 3D engine.
So if you want the BEST performance, even on a Geforce FX 5200 video card with 64mb of RAM, is to turn on Aero and turn off transparency. However on most newer cards, the Border transparency (Glass) has little to NO performance impact, this is why Powermizer on NVidia and the ATI power saving features can turn down even the 2004 Video cards like a Geforce 6600 or 6800 to 100/200mhz or 200/300 with Aero on from a clock rate that is 650/800 as the card normally runs for games. (This is how 'light' Aero is in terms of GPU usage, as most Video cards kick down to 2D clock speeds and still do Aero effortlessly.)
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