The Windows 7 Engineering team has posted to their blog some additional details concerning Windows 7′s Windows Experience Index (WEI) and the changes that have been made since Vista.  Personally I am still not on-board with the WEI as I see it as too much of a guide for manufactures to sell more hardware but here are some quick details.

Vista Levels: 1.0-5.9
7′s Levels: 1.0-7.9

Semi-Official Levels according to usage type
Gaming Computer Level: 6.0-6.9
CAD, Video Design etc.: 7.0-7.9

Netbook levels from various forums
Netbooks: 2.0-3.0

The interesting thing I found when looking for netbook data regarding Windows Vista and Windows 7 on different forums was that everyone is raving about Windows 7′s performance over that of Vista (obviously), XP and Linux.  There were very few people that prefered XP or Linux over Windows 7.

Reasoning behind level increases

The levels have been increased in Windows 7 to allow for the increases in technical advances and lessons learned with hardware since implementing the WEI in Vista.  One of the biggest changes is in the area of Solid State Drives (SSD).  Originally the drives were advertised as being revolutionary and that they would drastically increase the performance of new computers.  After they were released and data started to come in the performance gains were not as impressive as previously thought.  The Windows engineering team has been analyzing the data and has learned the reason to many of the drives poor performance.

The data they gathered indicated that there could be severe delays on even the smallest files with some of these drives. After additional research they found out that it was the way that those particular drives handled file transfers. The slower drives would wait for a file to finish transferring before moving on to the next file. The faster drives would postpone transferring that specific file and continue transferring the remainder of the files.

They have taken this situation into account not only with SSD drives but also standard hard drives and have modified the testing procedure to search for these problems and adjust the WEI score accordingly.

Something is still missing

Overall WEI has not changed that much and will continue to find its way onto software packaging.  One thing I would like to see is the OEM manufactures actually putting a WEI sticker on the front of a machine.  This should indicate a machines expected WEI from the factory.  This would allow a consumer to quickly see which machine has a higher score and not rely entirely on a sales pitch to get all of their information.

I would also like to see an additional component to WEI that can test a machines actual performance.  WEI currently only tests the hardware and while that is a decent start it is not the whole picture.  Software is far more responsible for slowing down a computer and consuming resources than a slight decrease in cass latency from one RAM module to another.

If it was more of a true benchmark test that tested the performance of the machine OEM’s would not be so eager to load garbage on to a machine. OEM’s (Dell, HP, Gateway etc.) are paid by different software manufactures to load programs on to the machines they sell.  They are then able to sell the machine for less money and still make a profit.  The idea sounds good if you just look at price but in reality it slows down the machine and delivers a poor customer experience.  If the machines performance was more transparent to the customer it would motivate the OEM’s to keep the garbage off of it.

Check It Out> Windows 7 Engineering