15 Apr 2004 | Steven Garrity said...

Same deal on Linux (Fedora Core 1, at least).

15 Apr 2004 | Daniel Drucker said...

While I agree with the premise, in practice, I don't notice this at all. Maybe you have a far, far slower computer than I do, but my machine's pretty standard (XP Pro, 1.5 ghz P4, 512MB), and I have a pretty ridiculous number of third-party things getting loaded (unhidden, there's something like 20 items in my systray)... and yet, I notice absolutely no slowness or unreadiness at ALL on startup.

There's also the question of ... why are you starting up so often that this matters? I probably reboot no more than once a month, perhaps even less. The last time I rebooted was February 20.

15 Apr 2004 | Florian said...

I think one of the critical issues are: how should the os know when all the apps/libs/etc which are starting up are finished? check cpu load of the apps? well, some might take only a few percent but still manage to make the whole os appear sluggish.. well, and vice versa.

i completely agree with you though that its very annoying and should be solved. then again though i also barely restart my computer, mostly only put it to sleep.

15 Apr 2004 | Darrel said...

I hate it on my windows box at work.

I don't notice it on my OSX laptop, though. Of course, I never have to reboot that thing, either.

15 Apr 2004 | JF said...

Yeah, I barely have to reboot my Laptop either (OS X, 1.25 MHz), but I've noticed that friends who aren't very computer savvy often shut down their machine when they aren't using them (instead of putting them to sleep), so it's a pretty big issue for them. And they are the least understanding when it comes to weird behavior (such as this start-up lag) b/c they don't quite understand what's going on.

15 Apr 2004 | Mark Fusco said...

My win2000 workstation here at the office seemingly takes FOREVER to either boot up or reboot. When I worked w/Macs some years ago, I would agree it takes a while for those to get cranking as well.

My old Windows 98 machine that I only use to check email now, but still has a fair share of big apps on it that I never managed to take off, is much quicker in terms of getting started.

I'm taking delivery next week on a new laptop w/XP, it'll be interesting to see how that compares.

It's ironic that as we move toward making things faster, more streamlined and generally more convienant, the devices and software we use becomes slower and more bloated with features and functional redundancies.

15 Apr 2004 | Mike said...

I think the thing that bothers me most about the Windows UI is the combination "hourglass + arrow" mouse pointer. Basically, you can double-click things and try to accomplish something, but it takes 5 times as long for the computer to respond because it's busy doing something else. Does this bother anyone else?

15 Apr 2004 | pb said...

I have to reboot my XP notebook and XP desktop frequently due to hangs and the lag is annoying. Haven't rebooted my PowerBook in awhile but if I can recall the lag is OK.

What I don't understand is why the start-up process takes so long in the first place. Why does it take more than 2 seconds?

Also, I have so many problems with my Windows XP notebook sleeping. With my PowerBook, I can pretty much close the lid no matter what I'm doing and open it back up and everything is exactly where I left it, network connections re-establish, etc. With my XP notebook, I never know what's going to happen and half the time I have to reboot. There doesn't seem to be a "sleep" concept similar to MacOS.

15 Apr 2004 | kev said...

Those truly interested in how OSX boots should check this out. A complete rundown of everything that happens when you power the machine on or restart it. Quite a lot going on and I'm actually impressed that my little iBook doesn't take an awful lot longer to boot. JF, maybe you're running too many MacOSXHints... ;)

15 Apr 2004 | Mark Fusco said...

PB -

Do you think the sleeping is an XP quirk, or the box? I know a couple of people w/Toshiba notebooks running XP with similiar problems as you're describing. I'm gettin' a Dell, and the folks I know who also own one don't have the sleep issue.

15 Apr 2004 | Don Schenck said...

The slow boot/sleep problems are either the johnson rod or the muffler bearings.

:-)

I hate waiting for ANYTHING on a computer. A computer's purpose is to do something NOW; ANY wait is a waste of my precious (and decliningly-available) time. I'm not getting any younger, ya know?

15 Apr 2004 | Brad Hurley said...

Maybe I'm just imagining it, or maybe it's jet lag (I just returned to Canada from two weeks in Brittany), but I'm sure I remember reading somewhere that the next version of OSX and/or Windows will have a sort of "saved state" function so that when you turn the power on you're taken instantly to where you were when you turned the power off, no waiting. Almost like what happens now when you put your computer to sleep.

I agree that it would be better if we weren't teased by the visible-but-not-quite-functional desktop at startup. I'd rather watch a blank screen with one of those horizontal thermometer bars that shows how close I am to being able to use my machine than to have the desktop appear before it's ready to use.

15 Apr 2004 | Allan W. said...

My WinXP box is _so_ slow when it shows the screen. The other boot stuff happens very fast - it's not a boot delay so much as a post-login delay.

Sometimes I'll get the OS active, but MS Outlook won't launch - for two or three minutes sometimes. This on a 2.4 Ghz box. Sheesh. I hear the upcoming Service Pack addresses some of these issues, we'll see.

15 Apr 2004 | greg said...

i think 'lost frontier' may be even more appropriate!

15 Apr 2004 | jake said...

Everyone keeps talking about restarting and shutting down. What about logging out? I have to log out every night when I go home from work, as does everyone else, and when I come back and log in, it goes through exactly what Jason said.

I'm used to it and it doesn't usually bother me. But I'd love to see something where the machine doesn't give me control till it's ready for me. I'm waiting anyway, just show me a loading screen or something like the old Macs did with icons popping up to show what's loading at that time.

15 Apr 2004 | barry said...

Usually when users complain to me about slowness on startup, (or in general) on their windows machine, 9 out of 10 times it is because of unnecessary programs running silently in the background. Open up Regedit and go to the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

Eliminate any useless keys.

15 Apr 2004 | Darrel said...

There doesn't seem to be a "sleep" concept similar to MacOS.

That was the biggest shocker to me when looking for Windows laptops for my wife. I had become so accustomed to my PB...reboot once a month or so and 'instant on/sleep' just by closing it.

We finally got a sony and you can't just put it to sleep the same way. You have to do this hibernate think which is OK, but not nearly as slick as OSX.

but I'm sure I remember reading somewhere that the next version of OSX and/or Windows will have a sort of "saved state"

OSX pretty much has that now. You don't have to shut of a Mac. It can go into deep sleep where pretty much everything is off except a bit of power to keep data in RAM. If you unplug it, yea, you'll have to boot, but otherwise, the machine sleeps perfectly quite and content.

15 Apr 2004 | MrAnonymous said...

I agree, it would be nice to have it load the desktop only when it is ready to be used. I just upgraded from an 800 to a 1.7 Ghz, which makes a big difference. I used to really notice the lag, but it's much less than what it was. But it is still there.

15 Apr 2004 | tomas said...

JF said... I've noticed that friends who aren't very computer savvy often shut down their machine when they aren't using them (instead of putting them to sleep)

Just out of curiosity, doesn't shutting down a computer instead of letting it sleep when you're not using it save energy and extend the life of the computer? I am computer savvy but I shut down every night.

16 Apr 2004 | beto said...

Reason #1 why I prefer not to restart my Mac. Let alone with dumb Suitcase taking the better part of 5 minutes to get its act together.

Bleh.

16 Apr 2004 | Todd Warfel said...

I think the point Jason's getting at is that it's about time we have "instant on" environments in computing. When you push the power button on your car radio, it's on and usable in under two seconds. Same for your TV, VCR. My Toshiba DVD player responds instantly to power and eject, but the menus on DVDs take a few seconds to load. And before you argue that computers have to load a lot more stuff than those electronics, remember that they've added a lot of technology over the years to those electronics, which have stayed pretty consistent, or even improved on response time.

Of course, my new cell phone is an exception - camera phone takes forever to "boot" up - it's a phone for heaven's sake. I've even had to reboot it twice. Yeah, reboot my phone!

It's about time that we have computers that are instant on. While I think we'll all agree that technical limitations are reasons why we don't have this yet, that's simply an excuse. And I think Jason will agree that we're not looking for excuses, we want solutions and a more usable, useful, and desirable system - which should be instant on.

Make it happen (I know it's a lot of work, but it's time for the next major advancment). It's going to be hard. But it's not impossible.

16 Apr 2004 | Todd Warfel said...

Why don't they just have a saved state or work more like quick user switch does? That would satisfy the goal of instant access.

16 Apr 2004 | Bill Westerman said...

As a heavy user of both WinXP and MacOS, I tend to think that Windows XP has the best sleep state. With MacOS, if you close the lid it goes into a light sleep, and wakes right back up when you open it. However, if you leave a Mac laptop unplugged and sleeping for long enough, it runs out of battery power and dies, and you lose your work. With WinXP, every time I am done with my laptop, I put it in Hibernate mode, where it writes everything from memory to disk and then completely shuts down. You can even take the battery out of the machine after that (to swap batteries, for example). When you turn it back on, it takes about 5-6 seconds to wake up and you're right back where you were. I do this with about 3 or 4 machines frequently.

16 Apr 2004 | Ben said...

I generally sleep my iBook so its not a problem but it means I notice it even more when I reboot, which is generally from a hanging machine so it takes twice as long as the OS checks every thing.

The more annoying thing at the moment is my Nokia 6600 which takes a LONG time to bring up the user interface once its turned on....a sign of things to come maybe....especially when I find myself saying "My phone crashed!!!!"

16 Apr 2004 | Jon Smythe said...

There doesn't seem to be a "sleep" concept similar to MacOS.

I beg to differ. Before my current Albook/G5 combo I had a dell laptop (1.6ghz P4) which, when one closed the lid, went to sleep exactly like my current Albook. Opening the lid brought it back to life ("instant on") before the lid was all the way open.

The fact that it offered the sleep mode plus hibernation was great. IIRC the laptop even self-hibernated to save ram state if the batteries dropped too low in sleep state.

Anyway, I agree, computers need to be "instant on."

16 Apr 2004 | cyberhill said...

Windows XP takes Windows 2000, but since it's a home users version it tries to get you to a desktop as soon as it can - but unlike windows 2000 it waits til it gets to the desktop to load alot of the services and things that run in the background.

I find that it only gets worse over time, of course I'm someone who tries new programs and stuff alot. But I keep a ghost image of an almost blank install waiting so that when the time comes when everything comes to a halt I can have a nice clean system in 5 minutes :)

16 Apr 2004 | Al Abut said...

I have to second what a couple of people have said - the sleep/hibernate/suspend/whatever functionality of OS X has rock-solid stability and incredibile responsiveness, so I've been shutting down the computer drastically less than when I used Wintel boxes primarily. It's been one of the lifestyle changes I've noticed during these last few months since I've switched; instead of fussing about saving what websites I'm at, saving and closing documents I'm working on, etc, because I don't trust the hibernate mode in Windows (burned too many times) even when it does work (I get weird popups about 'hardware conflict' these days), I just shut the lid on my laptop and get back to the stuff on-screen when I feel like it.

Just so I don't sound like a Mac zealot, a little bit of background: I'm a newbie to using a Mac as my primary machine both at work (2 months at my new job, old Powerbook) and at home (6 months, G3 iBook) and had been using Windows boxes 99.9% of the time up until then during my 5 year web design career. I didn't intend to switch, I just wanted a laptop and the price point of the iBooks was very attractive. I still have my Windows box at home and use it mostly for browser testing now.

16 Apr 2004 | Martin said...

When Microsoft released Windows 98, the associated press release blabbed on about creating an operating system that was closer to the experience of switching on a television or VCR - instantaneous.

To be fair, my Windows XP boot-up time is about 30-40 seconds, not including login. If I remove any items from the start-up folder, I'm pretty much ready to get going on 40 seconds.

It all comes down to memory and processing power - but maybe Microsoft and Apple should start thinking about getting essential, unchanging stuff written into the bios or chipset, that way you could power up and load the stuff you want later.

16 Apr 2004 | James said...

I have a Dell Axim X5 PDA. You hit the power button its on. You hit the button again (while on) and it turns off. No boot time, no "shutting down". Nice and simple.

If a PDA can do it, why can't a more powerful PC / Mac?

16 Apr 2004 | Brad Hurley said...

Just out of curiosity, doesn't shutting down a computer instead of letting it sleep when you're not using it save energy and extend the life of the computer? I am computer savvy but I shut down every night.

It does save energy, though nowhere near as much as it did before EnergyStar came along (almost all computers and monitors on the market now are EnergyStar compliant). Sleep mode reduces the computer's energy consumption significantly. Shutting down every night will reduce your energy use, but not by much unless you're using a really old computer.

I don't know if shutting down at night extends the life of the computer; in the old days (~15 years ago) people were told that shutting down the computer and rebooting would cause wear and tear that would actually reduce the machine's lifetime, but that's not true anymore, at least according to conversations I had with Apple engineers over a decade ago.

16 Apr 2004 | Arne G said...

OS vs. OS, mine vs. yours, Computer-savvy vs. ordinary I dont care what the device is, all I want is on and off (off being no IO and no deadline for plugging in if its portable). And dont go calling off and on something else (just a minute, I have to active the chrono-stasis modenormally Id use weekend-slumber mode but my battery is low).

Ideally the time between off and on should not be noticeable (in either direction), but Im patient, so I can tolerate waiting about as long as it takes to say why is this taking sooh good, its done. This has been voiced often and better by others, but the fact that things seem to be going in the wrong direction warrants my parroting.

But I love using these things, so I wait.

16 Apr 2004 | Darrel said...

doesn't shutting down a computer instead of letting it sleep when you're not using it save energy

Depends on the computer. I have an el-cheapo linux box that can put the monitor to sleep, but can't fully put itself to sleep. It can spin down the HD, but the fans stay on. Not a big deal since it's a server.

My two macs (laptop + desktop) can go into a complete sleep...shutting everything down and just leaving enough juice to keep memory in RAM. So, yea, shutting it off could save a few pennies over time I'd think.

16 Apr 2004 | Bob H. said...

My Commodore 64 has instant on. ;)

16 Apr 2004 | David B said...

Thank you for telling me about hibernate in XP. I'm going to use it from now on. Such a fast startup time for my Windows machine!!! Cheers!

16 Apr 2004 | kev said...

seems to me that if you want your computer to start up faster, spend a hundred bucks on more RAM, at least with OSX. I went from 256 to 640 and it boots way, way faster.

17 Apr 2004 | Johnson said...

I totally agree with this. Being stuck with a Pentium 200mHz computer from '97 doesn't help matters either.

17 Apr 2004 | Ian said...

It would be difficult for the computer to judge how long it would take for 3rd party programs to start up. With this in mind, I wouldn't like the possibility of looking at yet-another-loading-screen after having waited through multiple loading screens just to get to the login screen. At least when the 3rd party apps are still loading you can break up the bordom by moving the mouse and feeling like something is happening.

At least the trend is towards shorter loading times. Just compare todays load times to the time (measured in 5 minute blocks) it took to load a single program from floppy disks into memory in the 'good old days'.

Its interesting to note that load times are, for the most part, proportional to the flexibility you have to customise the system (both hardware and software). Mobile phones are instant on because the hardware/operating software are always the same. PCs have longer loading time due to the checks required for new hardware or problems with existing hardware plus any additional software that is run. Servers take even longer due to their stricter checks that are required for greater reliability.

21 Apr 2004 | Daniel Drucker said...

Am I really the only one not having these problems? Forty seconds to boot Windows? I just power-cycled my "play" (non-work-critical) machine, and power-on to desktop-quiescent was fifteen seconds.