We already know that Windows 7 increases the speed of Solid State Drives in comparison to Windows Vista and Windows XP thanks to optimized code in the upcoming operating system. Our colleagues over at Betanews have now published a web browser comparison that is coming to a similar result. Almost every web browser that they tested was faster in Windows 7 than it was in Windows Vista.
They have tested 14 different web browsers, both latest releases but also alpha and beta builds and came to the conclusion that web browsers in Windows 7 were faster than those running in Windows Vista. The average speed increase is 11.9%.
- Microsoft Internet Explorer 8: 15%
- Firefox 3.0.10: 11.6%
- Firefox 3.5 Beta 4: 12%
- Firefox Nightly Builds: 28-30%
- Google Chrome 2: 12%
- Google Chrome 3: 16%
- Opera 9.64: 2%
- Opera 10: 15%
- Safari 3.2.3: 18%
- Safari 4 Beta: -22%
It would have been interesting if the test would have included Windows XP Service Pack 3 as well. It is likely that other software programs might also run faster under Windows 7.
