How's your Windows 8.1 machine performing?

[FAHMI BASSEM]

I own a Sony VAIO, which performs really bad since its first day (about 2 years).
It runs W8.1, avast antivirus -which I just uninstalled-.

I just want to know if it's normal for Windows 8 to be slow in some times, take very long time to boot poor wake up.
Thanks

 

[TLRtheory]

Got a couple 8.1 machines here:
- Dell Inspiron 531s that was intended to run Vista that I've upgraded with an SSD, BD-DVD, maxed RAM and a low-pro GT-740. Using this as a family room Steam Machine/HTPC
- Acer Veriton N281G which I maxed the ram on, upgraded Wi-Fi chip and popped an SSD into. Just for the wife and I's streaming since Roku/Chromecast are so limited.
- Surface Pro 3 (8GB/256GB/i5) which is my workhorse all day every day
- Gaming PC. RoG board, GTX760TI, yadayada (won't bore you with the full sheet)
- HP Pavilion 17. AMD A8, 6GB, 1TB. Pretty much left this with it's factory HW, used exclusively for my Adobe classes and barely anything else.
- Dell Venue 8 Pro, pretty much just my toy for when I'm doing leisurely stuff and wanna go smaller than the SP3

Not a single one of mine is slow to boot or operate... and for the ones that initially had Vista/7, they're actually much faster with W8. Might be time to check out your HDD for spin up issues/bad sectors and look at your startup processes :/

Of course if it's been bad since day one, I'd wager you've been working with a lemon.

 

[xandros9]

I use a Core 2 Duo laptop, model dates back to 2008.

I used to use an SSD in it, which made it fly (well, disregarding gaming performance that is)
but got rid of it a while back in favor of an old hard drive. (i needed the space)

Boot up performance was poor, but it could be a reflection of being a clone of the SSD. Once it gets going though its OK. Defragmenting it improved performance but it still isn't what it used to be. I'm expecting it to fail eventually since its history is unknown to me.

I had a friend who's laptop didn't outright fail, but Windows 8 installation took hours and didn't go very far. It was a symptom of a drive failure which diagnostics confirmed.

 

[mj0]

I'm running 8.1 Update on two machines, a privately owned Asus TransformerBoom T200TA (Intel Atom based) and a Thinkpad X220 I use for work. Both have SSDs and don't give me any performance headaches. Boot times are very fast, wake up from sleep is instantaneous, applications launch fast and general performance is very good.

That said I'd like to add that depending on how you're using your laptop performance can degrade significantly over time. Installing/uninstalling tons of applications will eventually turn any Windows system into a slouch. If your laptop still has a hard drive defragmentation might help a bit but it won't turn a Skateboard into a Porsche :wink: