The XP Transition - Revisiting with RC1

Final Words

Although the percentages aren’t as high as our investigation with Beta 2 of Windows XP concluded, the performance picture doesn’t change much at all. 

Bottom Line: There indeed is some “pain” to be had from the XP transition. By far, the biggest hit will be felt by those who migrate to both the new Windows and the new Office. At best, they’ll lose over a quarter of their potential application throughput. It’s also worth noting that, if you strip-out all of the new UI features and turn-off extraneous background tasks (like System Restore Tracking), you can reduce your OS-related performance delta to less than 10%. But then you’ve eliminated much of the impetus for upgrading in the first place. So, in the end you can indeed have your cake with Windows XP/Office XP. Just don’t expect to be eating it anytime soon.