Windows 7 – iTunes Performance

Like millions of the rest of you I managed to get Windows 7 installed on my laptop over the weekend. And once you get past the initial experience and any particular quirks you arr really faced with the reality that this is just a Vista upgrade with a major tune up. Not bad. One that that is immediate is that W7 is faster in doing the small things – it boots faster, shuts down faster, programs start faster, etc. But what about the bigger things?

I have an older Dell 9300 with Pentium M at 1.73 GHZ. It shipped with XP Media Center edition and when I installed iTunes movies would play well, with just a few stutters, while downloading and then smooth after completion. Vista never gave the same performance. iTune on Vista RTM was unwatchable, and while improved on Vista after SP1 and subsequent iTunes releases, I never enjoyed the same playback quality that I had on XP Media Center. That all changes with Windows 7. iTunes playback is equal to if not better then XP Media Center edition, which is a welcome change. I know that’s not a ‘by the numbers’ benchmark – but when your viewing goes from almost unbearable to nearly flawless that is a real noticeable difference .

Looks like MS may be heading the right direction performance wise. I just hope that the performance enhancements make it to RTM.