In 92% of all usage cases, the Start Menu in Windows 7 Build 7033 opens between 50ms and 100ms, this in real-life scenarios, Microsoft emphasized, as it made public telemetry data gathered via PerfTrack. Moving onward with the development process of Windows 7, Microsoft is currently focused on the Release Candidate branch, with the promise that the evolution from Beta to RC will be marked by a wide range of improvements, including performance boosts. A comparison between the Start Menu open times in Windows 7 Beta Build 7000 and Windows 7 Build 7033 from the RC-branch is in this regard an illustrative example of how Microsoft's work reverberates throughout the operating system. In this specific scenario, Microsoft used the feedback data provided by the PerfTrack tool in order to improve the speed at which the Start Menu in Windows 7 opens.

“A trace capturing tool running on each machine lets us investigate and fix what may be impacting performance. The charts show in Beta 85% of interactions were within the acceptable range (i.e. green or yellow, but not red). After examining the traces and making some optimizations, we find 92% of interactions are this range for a more recent build,” revealed Chaitanya Sareen, a senior program manager on the Core User Experience team.

The two charts on the left, courtesy of Microsoft, are designed to offer a perspective over the Start Menu open times in the 7000 and 7033 builds of Windows 7. Sareen indicated that the performance gains related to the opening speed of the Start Menu were consistent. However, at the same time, the company emphasized that the data should not be generalized to all copies of Windows 7.

“The sample sizes are different (after all Beta did go to a far wider audience) and these numbers shouldn’t be taken too literally since they really do just represent a snapshot. The different colors denote performance against the “interaction class”—the acceptable experience range defined by each feature team. In this case we want the Start Menu to appear within 50ms to 100ms,” Sareen added.