The Instant On Holy Grail

[Geo]

http://www.realtechnews.com/posts/1868

Yeah, well, how many times have we heard some variation of this over the years?

Not that it wouldn't be nice --but I'll believe it when I see it.

 

[digitalwanderer]

It takes 20 minutes for that guys XP set-up to boot up? And he writes about PCs?

I think mine is sort of slow and it's under 2 minutes now from cold start to totally up and ready.

 

[Moloch]

http://www.realtechnews.com/posts/1868

Yeah, well, how many times have we heard some variation of this over the years?

Not that it wouldn't be nice --but I'll believe it when I see it.

I find this quote disturbing:

Windows XP takes over 20 minutes for me by the time ever little spy sweeping, instant messaging app loads and sets up for the day’s work. It’s a living nightmare to restart and sometimes even standby mode takes fro ever to get kicking. For ultimate stability, try “hibernate mode. (FN+ F12 on most Laptops)

As for vista 4 second boot time... we'll see.
It's about time they do something about boot time, hardware doesn't seem to have as big as inpact as I'd like- I' had a 900 mhz machine with a 800JB boot just as fast as my 2500+ with a WD1600JB.
You could place the blame easily on the lack of HDD innovation- they just keep slapping more cache on them

 

[Karma Police]

Well, it's not instant, but 4 seconds is a whole lot better than 30+ seconds for mine (A-XP 3200, 1GB RAM, 7200RPM SATA HD).

 

[epicstruggle]

http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112743680328349448,00.html?mod=todays_us_page_one

 

[Pete]

Didn't Intel tout a new fast on/off feature in their upcoming CPUs, and didn't it consist of just turning the monitor off?

Seriously, I'm all for a three second boot, but it's not gonna happen. Three seconds to show the desktop will be an improvement on my current situation, but does that include preloading A/V, spyware, and firewall apps?

 

[Sxotty]

I agree she/he is a moron if it takes 30 minutes to load.
Mine takes less than 1 min though I doin't know precisely how long.

 

[Geo]

Didn't Intel tout a new fast on/off feature in their upcoming CPUs, and didn't it consist of just turning the monitor off?

Seriously, I'm all for a three second boot, but it's not gonna happen. Three seconds to show the desktop will be an improvement on my current situation, but does that include preloading A/V, spyware, and firewall apps?

More like 3 seconds to the desktop. . and another minute before you can actually do anything! Dual-core might help here a bit. . .

And who are these people who turn off their PCs anyway? Curious. . .

 

[Rys]

Until HDDs get better this is just smoke and mirrors of the worst kind.

 

[digitalwanderer]

And who are these people who turn off their PCs anyway? Curious. . .

THANK YOU!!!

I thought I was the only one, I only reboot when I have to and only shut down for upgrades/maintenance on all my rigs...otherwise they're on 24/7.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Until HDDs get better this is just smoke and mirrors of the worst kind.

I like the idea of them memory based HDD for instant on, I always thought those had a chance of catching on once they came in about 3-5Gb for under $100.

 

[MatiasZ]

What are the issues with STR? I've used it a lot and seems to work flawlessly, and you get a boot time of about 5 seconds with the same 'availability' as hibernation.

 

[Slides]

STR is not always 100% stable, at least with my system, most likely due to overclocking.

 

[3dcgi]

Until HDDs get better this is just smoke and mirrors of the worst kind.

Well, remember that Microsoft was promoting hybrid hard drives a while back so this 3 second boot time is probably relying on the flash memory.

 

[wireframe]

Well, remember that Microsoft was promoting hybrid hard drives a while back so this 3 second boot time is probably relying on the flash memory.

Highly doubtful that this is the key to the fast resume. STR (S3) takes about 3 seconds to fully resume. This is with really fast memory and not some slow flash device. I am highly doubtful about this claim of 3 seconds unless the system is in ROM, but even then it would have to be qualified with a very specific definition of "boot the system" as I am sure the system could be online but then you still need to read all the soft data (user preferences etc) and current state (including simple things like icons, etc).

That said, any advancement to real boot speed is always appreciated. However, this will probably be mostly done by smart deferral of service activation. Even then, some users will undoubtedly still be unhappy as they want to fire up their web browser or email client as soon as the desktop is visible, only to find that networking is not fully started yet, etc.

 

[DOGMA1138]

the POST takes longer then 4 seconds
how in the hell would vista bootup under in 4 seconds?
unless they are using some form of "sleep shutdown" or using RAM that doenst wipes clean when you shut the power off like mRAM i dont realy see it happening.

 

[Pete]

Um, S3 keeps everything in memory, so why would even more memory on the HD matter?

Anyway, I'd use it all the time but for some apps not taking it well (for instance, my Asus Probe temp monitor stops recording temps with S3, but not with Hibernation).

Those of us with high-idle-power Athlon XPs, 9800Ps, big CRTs, and/or noisy fans are the ones who prefer standby to always on. The beauty is that S3 resumes quicker than my CRT, so there's really no downside, unless you have a server running in the background. Resuming from Hibernate, though, takes a bit of forever with my XP/PC2100/nF1 system, and only 5-10secs with this Cel-M/PC2700/Intel laptop.

 

[FX5900]

I think HDs have the most impact when booting.. a slow HD takes forever...

 

[arjan de lumens]

Anandtech had a review of a battery-backed DRAM-based solid-state disk called 'i-RAM' some time ago; they booted WinXP from it, and apparently it cut Windows boot time by only about 35% compared to a good hard disk, suggesting that the remaining 65% of the boot time were non-disk-related ...

 

[Skrying]

THANK YOU!!!

I thought I was the only one, I only reboot when I have to and only shut down for upgrades/maintenance on all my rigs...otherwise they're on 24/7.

I turn my computers off every night. Could you please explain why I should keep them on 24/7 when they only get use for about 15 hours of the day? I've never understood the "well my computer stays on 24/7" thing, my computer can go 3 weeks without a reboot if I wanted but what's the point of wasting power and running my components when they dont need to be running?

As for the bootup, I think the longest system that takes to bootup is slightly over a minutes, and that's with a 5400RPM HD. My personal computer takes 37 seconds.