How long does your site take to load? [BT broadband office]

How long does your site take to load?

Posted 11 March 2008 at 4:16PM by Ian Betteridge in IT systems and support

If you're one of the lucky people who've upgraded to Windows Vista, the latest version of Microsoft's operating system, you might have noticed something rather annoying about it: file copying appears to take a lot longer than it did on Windows XP.

But, if you actually time it, in fact copies happen faster with Vista - Microsoft has improved the speed at which Windows copies files, so that in most cases it's actually quicker.

So why does it appear slower?

The answer lies in the way that the copying is being represented on screen, with the progress bar. With Windows XP, progress bars tended to move slowly at first, but speed up towards the end of the copying, while with Vista, the progress bar moves much more smoothly thanks to a better process of estimating the time it will take in the first place.

Because humans don't perceive the passage of time in a truly linear way, Windows XP's progress appears quicker, while the more smooth and accurate Vista copies appear slower.

There's a lesson to be learned here, especially if you're building a web site for your business: even if the actual time your site takes to load is small, make sure you test the site in front of real, live users before you go live. You might find that a loading time you think of as short will appear to others to be too long - so test before you deploy.

Tags: bt, bt broadbandoffice, microsoft, vista, windows vista, windows xp

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Comments

1. At March 11, 2008 8:54 PM, Dark Djinn wrote:

Goodness, it took me well over an hour to load this page up and then another three days just to read through.....must be something wrong with the time machine.

Slow is slow. If you say it isn't, prove it...show me your data analysis. Load the same pages on the same connection (preferably one running over a private circuit which is unaffected by contention) and then I'll believe you.

2. At March 12, 2008 10:21 AM, SIMON MEAH wrote:

I unluckily cahnged to Vista and dis agree it is so slow my coomodore amiga would have downloaded and copied files quiker i have reinstalled xp thanks for the £200 waste of time Mr Gates

3. At March 12, 2008 3:10 PM, Pat wrote:

With regard to what Dark Djinn was saying - most people don't connect on a private connection unaffected by contention, so why would you test your website in an environment your customers will never see!?

4. At March 17, 2008 7:09 PM, James wrote:

From a business point of view I will not be installing Windows Vista on any of my PC's. It is full of things that a business just does not need to carry out day to day business tasks. No wonder it is slower that XP.

I see that PC World and Dell are now offering XP as an option instead of Vista.

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