The Joel on Software Discussion Group (CLOSED)

With regard to the recent swarm of conversation over the overly complicated Vista Stop/Logoff/Sleep menu system. How about about fixing the real problem: my circa 2004 computer is more than 5 times as slow as my 1994 computer. In 1994 I pressed the power button and within 30 seconds I could get to work typing a letter, playing a game or whatever. Today I press the power button, go to the bathroom, get a fresh cup of coffee and THEN sit down to work. (150s to login prompt, plus 55s to point of being able to open the start menu). If I was in to computing in 1987 and had a Canon Cat, I could have the computer ready to accept input before my synapses finished warming up (boot time: 7 seconds).

These days, you'll never acheive boot times on that order. Reading the BIOS from flash in to RAM takes upwards of 8 seconds. This is a symptom of the BIOS having to do more these days. Supporting USB and Bluetooth HID, booting off a variety of media, etc, etc.

So, before you're even thinking about a boot loader and the operating system, you're perhaps 10 seconds from power on.

I don't understand what all the fuss is about.  I hardly ever need to shut down or start up the computer.

It's certainly time for a complete re-design of the ways we begin and end interaction with our computers (e.g. restart is *not* about beginning or ending interaction, it's refreshing the state of the operating system when we want to *continue* interacting. Yet, by current convention, it's part of the shutdown interface.) However, I suspect that's unlikely to happen any time soon...

rks: you must be blessed with a stable and cheap supply of electricity. Not everybody is. I shutdown my computer to conserve power. There's no reason to be consuming electricity when I'm actively using my computer, and a great number of reasons *not* to be using it (e.g. reduce coal, diesel and nuclear power generation).

Chris Davies: yes it is possible to have 8s boot time, in fact it can be done in 3: http://linuxbios.org/index.php/Main_Page Albeit in text console mode. It's not a question of can't be done, but will to make it so.

I can start doing actual work on both my MacBook Pro and my PowerPC based Mac Mini within 10 seconds or so of pressing the power button.

Furthermore, in a Parallels based virtual machine on my MacBook Pro, Windows 98 is ready and waiting for me within 6 seconds or so. The same Windows 98 set-up takes about 30 seconds natively on a 750mHz PIII. I haven't tried XP yet.

So part of it is hardware related, and part of it is just simply the way Microsoft allows programs to load part way and then "wait" until the user is ready. This is a significant factor in the Office "launch" time verses the OpenOffice startup time.

My new iMac boots very quickly indeed. However, if you want the ultimate in speed then run Windows 3.1 in a Parallels virtual machine. Holy cow is that thing fast! It boots in less than a second and that's only with 16 MB of RAM allocated to the VM.