Windows Vista users have expressed their disappointment that the operating system delivers an inferior experience in performance and maintenance in comparison to Windows XP. One aspect that users have focused on is the start-up and shutdown times. Microsoft applauded the fact that Windows Vista would deliver a superior performance to that of Windows XP.

The Redmond Company even commissioned a study to Principled Technologies back in December 2006. That XP - Vista benchmarking came up with three conclusions:

1. Windows Vista was noticeably more responsive after rebooting than Windows XP was on several common business operations.
2. Overall, Windows Vista and Windows XP were roughly equally responsive on most test operations. Windows Vista was more responsive on some operations, and on those operations on which it was more responsive, Windows XP typically responded only a half a second or so faster.
3. Windows Vista Aero had little effect on the responsiveness of Windows Vista. Over 95 percent of the response-time differences between tests we ran with and without Vista Aero were under a tenth of a second, and all of the differences were under one second.

But the Windows Vista end-users have come to contradict Microsoft in this respect. "XP is undoubtedly quicker than Vista. I don't think there will be a way around that. You'll never get extra functionality, without some performance cost (assuming the same hardware)," revealed Jon, a member of the Windows Vista Community.

While Windows Vista boot-times are at the forefront of user complaints, application loading times are not far behind. However, Microsoft seems to have a solution only for one of the two problems. In Vista, the Redmond Company has set up the operating system to move into Sleep mode by default and not to completely shut down. Sleep and Hibernate modes offer the great advantage that the operating system can be accessed within seconds, unlike a full boot.