Wiley Windows Vista Timesaving Techniques For Dummies 978-0-470-05368-3 ユーザーズマニュアル

Experiencing
the Windows
Experience Index

A

performance index by any other name would smell as sweet.
Microsoft refrains from calling the Windows Experience Index
(WEI) a “performance index,” but that’s precisely the function it

performs. You get one number, backed up by a small handful of ancillary
numbers, that together are supposed to tell you how well Vista performs
on a specific piece of hardware. Since the dawn of computer-dumb, peo-
ple have been trying to measure how fast a particular computer works
and report on the speed as a single, easy-to-understand number or index.
To date, nobody has succeeded. Vista’s no exception.

A small handful of developers inside Microsoft know precisely how Vista
calculates the Windows Experience Index.

None of them are talking.

A legion of hardware and software manufacturers are trying at this very
moment to hack, crack, reverse engineer, out-psych, and out-bamboozle
the Windows Experience Index.

Why?

Money.

For the first time in Windows’ long history, Microsoft has put its impri-
matur on a performance benchmark. Everybody and his brother wants to
beat the Windows Experience Index. Stakes are high. A chip manufacturer
that can eke out, say, a 5.7 rating instead of a paltry 5.4 can “prove” that
its hardware works faster, thus potentially selling zillions of additional
chips. Powerful incentive to jigger the results any way they can.

You can save yourself a heap of time and money if you understand the
inner workings of the Windows Experience Index — both its strengths
and its limitations. This Technique shows you the mechanics and the
dirty underbelly of the beast. At the end of this Technique, I reveal the
most important benchmark of all — one that Vista doesn’t even touch.

 Understanding what the

Windows Experience
Index says — and
doesn’t say

 Upgrading your PC in

ways that really help

 Not sweating the small

stuff

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