* DISCLAIMER – Windows 7 is beta software which means that any benchmarking results regarding networking performance are not necessarily representative of the results expected by the final product, NOR are they intended to indicate the performance of the final product.

That being said, as I sit here and type this entry, I am happily uploading a ghost backup of my latest Windows 7 installation from my Lenovo S10 to my server for archiving.  Although that doesnt sound that interesting, I am monitoring the networking tab in task manager, and what is interesting is that for the first time in a long time, I am seeing 98% network utilization.

The 10GB file that I am sending to my server over a 100 megabit connection is averaging around 9.64 MB per second – respectable since this same machine, after all patches to Vista were applied, struggled to get 2MB when performing the same task.  As a true test, I installed Windows7 on my Mac Pro this evening.  With a gigabit network connection, I was hoping to see at least 20-30 MB per second speed for successful proof that Windows7 has licked the Vista networking woes.  On the Mac Pro, I struggle to sustain a 10-15MB per second transfer despite a gigabit connection with Vista 64 Ultimate.

I’m happy to report that in my 2GB file test, on the Mac Pro with Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit beta 7000, I was able to average over 60MB/s on a gigabit upload.  Averaging 80-90% utilization!   Hooray Microsoft!!  In my preliminary testing of this beta at least, the default configuration seems to bypass all of the networking woes that Vista was plagued with.