Microsoft has found the perfect cure for the now traditional Windows Vista vs. Windows XP smackdowns. And no, it's not a new marketing strategy applauding the Wow's second coming, but a rather unsubtle tactic to rebuff any face-offs between the two operating systems. In order to discourage Vista vs. XP scenarios, Microsoft is claiming that the products are not even in the same league together and that a comparison is impossible. And at the root of the Redmond company's new Vista vs. XP revelation are nothing more and nothing less than claims of poor performance for the latest operating system in comparison (sic) to its predecessor.

Essentially, Microsoft is deaf to user complaints that generated a flood of feedback pointing out that Vista is slower than XP. Well, the company can hear users, but believing them is a different matter altogether. "We've heard some of you say that Windows Vista runs slower than Windows XP on a given PC", Microsoft said, disputing such a possibility. "So what's really happening here?"

As far as Microsoft is concerned, Vista vs. XP is an impossibility. In this manner the Redmond company effectively throws out the window two performance studies that it has commissioned to Principled Technologies, one of Vista RTM vs. XP SP2 and the other of Vista SP1 vs. XP SP2 and Vista RTM.

"First, we need to avoid comparing apples to oranges-Windows Vista is doing a lot more than Windows XP, and it requires resources to conduct these tasks. That said, it is important to make sure a PC running Windows Vista has enough horsepower to function properly, especially for older PCs running a minimal amount of RAM, since the Windows Vista footprint is larger, bottlenecks will occur", Microsoft argued.

But in fact there is a very good reason why Vista and XP are different fruits, which makes eventual comparisons useless. Especially when it comes down to assessing the performance that the two operating systems deliver and specifically in situations when Vista comes in short. The conclusion belongs to Microsoft and it was extracted from the benchmarks run by Principled Technologies, namely that there is no difference in speed between the two products.

"On machines configured with the appropriate specifications for their operating system, the speed of most operations and tasks between Windows Vista and Windows XP is virtually on parity. Which is pretty remarkable when you consider one key thing Windows Vista is doing that Windows XP isn't: indexing for near instantaneous search results for desktop files, even embedded in email messages. The result is users can find information significantly faster (measured in minutes), increasing productivity far in excess of the loss in speed of operations (measured in milliseconds)", the company added.