Study: PCs run faster on genuine Microsoft products

KUALA LUMPUR: Personal computers (PCs) running genuine software were on average 50 per cent faster to boot, print, open documents and surf the Internet while significantly extending the battery life, according to a study by the Harrison Group, a leading global market research agency. Specifically, PCs running genuine Windows and MS-Office products outperformed their pirated counterparts 75 per cent of the time by an average of 52 per cent when opening documents, said Microsoft in a statement.
Genuine machines were faster than their pirated counterparts in half (48 per cent) of the test configurations by an average of 56 per cent to print 1MB of Word documents, it said.

It said 67 per cent of the time the genuine Microsoft products were an average of 100 per cent faster.
PCs running genuine Windows were 46 per cent faster 59 per cent of the time when loading popular Internet web pages heavy with text and graphics, it added.

Genuine Windows machines outperformed pirated operating systems 60 per cent of the time by an average of 20 per cent in terms of power conservation when running processor-intensive programs for an hour, it said.

It said the Harrison Group today announced the results of the global study that compared the effects of using genuine and pirated Microsoft products covering the different versions of Windows XP, Windows 7, Office 2003 and Office 2007 obtained through the most popular channels of pirated software distribution, such as peer-to-peer file sharing, independent hardware dealers and street market stalls.

The study clearly demonstrated that PCs running genuine software were on average 50 per cent faster to boot, print, open documents and surf the Internet while significantly extending the battery life, it said.

As a result, the genuine Microsoft product users truly get a superior performance and the time saved from the reduction in wait time for all of these common tasks adds up to a more dynamic, productive and satisfying experience, it added.

The conclusions of the Harrison Group's study are that counterfeit users pay a high cost for the low price of counterfeit software, by opening themselves to catastrophic security breaches and significant losses in productivity and performance, regardless of the platform they use, and regardless of whether the counterfeit software's source is the web, a street market stall, or an unprincipled hardware retailer, it said.

"To protect the users we would like to remind everyone that Genuine Microsoft software requires activation and validation at installation.

If you are not required to enter a genuine Microsoft product key at installation, chances are, you are installing counterfeit software, so insist on Genuine," said Sunny Ooi, Consumer Channels Group Director, Microsoft Malaysia.

Many users may believe that the risks associated with using counterfeit software are isolated to programs acquired from the web, but the study demonstrates that users obtain problematic counterfeit software through a number of channels, including from hardware retailers that pre-install it on the machines that they sell, or from purchases made at unauthorised retailers, street markets or through online auctions or suppliers, it said. - BERNAMA