4 ms·

"we want to start with boot time – no feature gets talked about and measured more." What? I've never understood why I should care since it's something I do on

"we want to start with boot time – no feature gets talked about and measured more." What? I've never understood why I should care since it's something I do once a week or less for a few seconds.

jackvalentine 15y ago
Agreed. Just discourage people from turning the PC off instead of putting it to sleep.
- slewis 15y ago
  You guys don't care but they're reporting that the majority of users do. They're not saying its rational.
  - Splines 15y ago
    It's not rational to turn my PC off? Why would I want my home PC turned on at 3AM, exactly?
    - neworbit 15y ago
      Probably because you're awake playing Starcraft or doing an all night coding session. Ok, maybe that's just me, but I suspect I can't be the only HN reader who uses his home PC at 3 AM more than he does at 3 PM.
    - justanotheratom 15y ago
      You shouldn't have to turn it off because atleast on Windows 7 - by default it will go to sleep after certain inactivity. And then wake up after a few hours and go to hibernate. Since hibernate is 0 power state, it is as good as turn off. Additionally, you don't lose any of your in-memory data.
- rhplus 15y ago
  No. The right response is to have two modes: on or off. A user shouldn't have to understand the difference between blank screen, sleep, hibernate and shut down. The iPad can do it, smartphones can do it. A user just wants to turn it 'off' when not in use and only very occasionally should have to turn it /off/ off.
  - wvenable 15y ago
    If you read the article, most users don't like sleep mode (which is what iPads and smartphones do). When they start up, they want a clean boot. I'm one of those people, I shut off my computer every night and have it auto-start on a timer in the morning.
    - rhplus 15y ago
      Sure, I read the article and I get that, but those are user expectations based on existing Windows PC behavior. In a 'post-PC' world, computer devices don't behave like that. Users will come to expect instant 'on' and only one possible 'off' state once they realize that their $300 Android tablet can get to their email instantly, yet their super fast expensive laptop can't.
      - sid0 15y ago
        But all that exists today with sleep mode, yet apparently a large number of people don't use it.
        johnyzee 15y ago
        That is his point. Most people don't want to know about "sleep", "hibernate", "standby" etc. The device should not need to bother the user with that choice.
        sid0 15y ago
        The device doesn't really bother the user with that choice. All the user needs to do is close the laptop's lid or hit the power button and the device would go to sleep (by default). Every time a shutdown happens it means the user's going out of the way to make that choice.
trafficlight 15y ago
Not so much for desktops, but for laptops it's nice. I coldboot my laptop a couple times a day. I'm running Ubuntu 11.04 with an SSD and it takes about 8 seconds after autologon.
jerf 15y ago
Your homework is to go to the office of a company of more than 10,000 employees at the start of the work day, turn on your computer along with everybody else, and sit there doing nothing until you manage to pull up a browser and hit a web site of your choice and can actually manipulate it. My father's laptop, larded with the corporate, err, "value add software", once took five minutes to pass that gauntlet, without even any local network activity. You do want to make sure you can pull open the browser and do a bit of real work, though; the desktop appeared in about a minute, but you couldn't actually do anything. With the Maverick release of Ubuntu, the same test could be passed in 45 seconds. (Still not what I'd call speedy, I just include that for reference. Yes, it's a laptop and the hard drive hurts, but the hardware wasn't that bad. Also, this was XP, which I know from experience on that hardware should have taken roughly 45 seconds too.) You might understand why it's a bit of a sore point with many people whose wallets Microsoft is listening to after that experience. (It appeared to me, based on the process list and the way the machine was performing, that the simultaneous presence of backup software trying to scan every file access and virus scanning software trying to scan every file access, and for all I know trying to each perform other real scans of the disk, was causing major disk thrash, which combined with the fact the virus scanner insisted on scanning various files before the OS could execute them caused major, major slowdown. I'd never put up with this on my machine, but somehow I suspect this is not an uncommon case in the corporate world...)
- drivebyacct2 15y ago
  Right, that start up time is not Windows starting, its the bullshit software. Meaning that even if Windows 8 boots a bit faster, that same bloatware is still going to make it slow...
  - ak217 15y ago
    That and the slow booting BIOS. In a legacy PC, there is very little need for most of what the BIOS does, and that firmware code is usually not well-optimized by the OEMs... I wonder what's taking EFI so long.
    - 15y ago
rhplus 15y ago
Boot/sleep/hibernate performance will be one of the features that makes or breaks Windows 8. It's all about the tablets and laptops. A laptop and - more importantly - a tablet needs instant on/off like an iPad or a smartphone. That means ultra low power consumption during sleep and fast task resumption when I turn it on.
- ak217 15y ago
  None of the current tablets and smartphones do boot, sleep, or hibernate. They go into a low-power state.
  - Osiris 15y ago
    My HTC phone actually does have a Hibernate option and a quick-boot, which is similar to this Windows 8 method of hibernating kernel and driver code causing cold boots to be extremely quick.

"we want to start with boot time – no feature gets talked about and measured more." What? I've never understood why I should care since it's something I do once a week or less for a few seconds.

jackvalentine 15y ago

Agreed. Just discourage people from turning the PC off instead of putting it to sleep.

slewis 15y ago
You guys don't care but they're reporting that the majority of users do. They're not saying its rational.
- Splines 15y ago
  It's not rational to turn my PC off? Why would I want my home PC turned on at 3AM, exactly?
  - neworbit 15y ago
    Probably because you're awake playing Starcraft or doing an all night coding session. Ok, maybe that's just me, but I suspect I can't be the only HN reader who uses his home PC at 3 AM more than he does at 3 PM.
  - justanotheratom 15y ago
    You shouldn't have to turn it off because atleast on Windows 7 - by default it will go to sleep after certain inactivity. And then wake up after a few hours and go to hibernate. Since hibernate is 0 power state, it is as good as turn off. Additionally, you don't lose any of your in-memory data.
rhplus 15y ago
No. The right response is to have two modes: on or off. A user shouldn't have to understand the difference between blank screen, sleep, hibernate and shut down. The iPad can do it, smartphones can do it. A user just wants to turn it 'off' when not in use and only very occasionally should have to turn it /off/ off.
- wvenable 15y ago
  If you read the article, most users don't like sleep mode (which is what iPads and smartphones do). When they start up, they want a clean boot. I'm one of those people, I shut off my computer every night and have it auto-start on a timer in the morning.
  - rhplus 15y ago
    Sure, I read the article and I get that, but those are user expectations based on existing Windows PC behavior. In a 'post-PC' world, computer devices don't behave like that. Users will come to expect instant 'on' and only one possible 'off' state once they realize that their $300 Android tablet can get to their email instantly, yet their super fast expensive laptop can't.
    - sid0 15y ago
      But all that exists today with sleep mode, yet apparently a large number of people don't use it.
      - johnyzee 15y ago
        That is his point. Most people don't want to know about "sleep", "hibernate", "standby" etc. The device should not need to bother the user with that choice.
        sid0 15y ago
        The device doesn't really bother the user with that choice. All the user needs to do is close the laptop's lid or hit the power button and the device would go to sleep (by default). Every time a shutdown happens it means the user's going out of the way to make that choice.

trafficlight 15y ago

Not so much for desktops, but for laptops it's nice. I coldboot my laptop a couple times a day. I'm running Ubuntu 11.04 with an SSD and it takes about 8 seconds after autologon.

jerf 15y ago

Your homework is to go to the office of a company of more than 10,000 employees at the start of the work day, turn on your computer along with everybody else, and sit there doing nothing until you manage to pull up a browser and hit a web site of your choice and can actually manipulate it. My father's laptop, larded with the corporate, err, "value add software", once took five minutes to pass that gauntlet, without even any local network activity. You do want to make sure you can pull open the browser and do a bit of real work, though; the desktop appeared in about a minute, but you couldn't actually do anything. With the Maverick release of Ubuntu, the same test could be passed in 45 seconds. (Still not what I'd call speedy, I just include that for reference. Yes, it's a laptop and the hard drive hurts, but the hardware wasn't that bad. Also, this was XP, which I know from experience on that hardware should have taken roughly 45 seconds too.) You might understand why it's a bit of a sore point with many people whose wallets Microsoft is listening to after that experience. (It appeared to me, based on the process list and the way the machine was performing, that the simultaneous presence of backup software trying to scan every file access and virus scanning software trying to scan every file access, and for all I know trying to each perform other real scans of the disk, was causing major disk thrash, which combined with the fact the virus scanner insisted on scanning various files before the OS could execute them caused major, major slowdown. I'd never put up with this on my machine, but somehow I suspect this is not an uncommon case in the corporate world...)

drivebyacct2 15y ago
Right, that start up time is not Windows starting, its the bullshit software. Meaning that even if Windows 8 boots a bit faster, that same bloatware is still going to make it slow...
- ak217 15y ago
  That and the slow booting BIOS. In a legacy PC, there is very little need for most of what the BIOS does, and that firmware code is usually not well-optimized by the OEMs... I wonder what's taking EFI so long.
  - 15y ago

rhplus 15y ago

Boot/sleep/hibernate performance will be one of the features that makes or breaks Windows 8. It's all about the tablets and laptops. A laptop and - more importantly - a tablet needs instant on/off like an iPad or a smartphone. That means ultra low power consumption during sleep and fast task resumption when I turn it on.

ak217 15y ago
None of the current tablets and smartphones do boot, sleep, or hibernate. They go into a low-power state.
- Osiris 15y ago
  My HTC phone actually does have a Hibernate option and a quick-boot, which is similar to this Windows 8 method of hibernating kernel and driver code causing cold boots to be extremely quick.