What the hell is "general use" of an operating system? Staring at the desktop?
Don't be naff, Mikkel. General use obviously involves the use of the average's user's computer on a daily basis. Solitaire, surfing the net, mail etc and your occassional Office app.
For me, it's anything -but- playing a game (a proper game, none of that solitare crap).
How can you measure the efficiency of an OS based on the applications you run on it?
Uhh, by making the same measurements with the same programs in both OS's? I'd have thought that obvious.
And how do you measure how quickly Vista does that?
I didn't need to. After reinstalling XP the results were obvious. I have Outlook 2007 in my Startup folder. In Vista, Outlook would pop up and be usable within 30 seconds of the desktop appearing (probably much less) - with XP, it's at least 1 minute, perhaps 2 if Avast! is updating itself. This pertains to everything I do in XP, although the times apps take to start after the system is fully booted is harder to time, but it's still noticeable.