Filed under: Productivity, Ask DLS
Ask DLS: how much does a sub-30 second boot matter to you?
See, I never shut my machine off. I close the lid, it goes to sleep. I open the lid, it resumes in a few short seconds. Windows 7 is especially quick, but Vista was fast, too. Unless I'm toying with an OS that can't pull off the go-to-sleep-and-wake-up trick (several Linux distros, I'm talking to you) I just don't need to power down that often.
My desktop computer at work is the same. When I leave it idle, it suspends. I bang on the space bar and up it comes - and in fewer than 15 seconds. Yes, sometimes a shutdown can't be avoided, but those occasions have been few and far between for me. Am I alone in this?
I wouldn't think so. A friend of mine hasn't rebooted his Linux-based media server in more than a year. It may take a full minute to boot, but I doubt he'd care if it can run for 365 days straight from then on.
Don't get me wrong. I love building systems with Raptors and watching them tear through the startup process. I understand that the amount of time an OS takes to boot says something about how it's been put together. It just seems to me that there are dozens of other things that are more important to compare when looking at the different systems.
What do you think? Do you shut your computer completely off that often? Is a half minute too long to wait for it to power back on?
So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do.
Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game.
The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Linkintek06 said 1:06PM on 1-22-2009
The reason I do not put my computer to sleep is that, by overtime will it not slowdown my speed or ending the lifetime of my laptop even faster?
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jupiterthunder said 7:26PM on 1-19-2009
I'm with you on this one. I don't really care about startup time unless it's horrid. And by horrid, I mean like the startup time on the machines that belong to people who have absolutely no idea how to keep their computers working smoothly.
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Drew Green said 5:14PM on 1-19-2009
Call me impatient, but it pisses me off having to wait for my machine to reboot, especially since I'm used to having it on all of the time. Having to wait 1-2 mins from the time the machine boots to being able to actively surf the intrawebs and use Outlook is unacceptable.
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Stuart Jones said 5:32PM on 1-19-2009
I'm a student, so battery life and boot time are near and dear to me. I've got several classes in a row, with about 20-30 minute breaks between them. Shutting my computer down (and Hibernation to some extent), are not really an option. If I walk into class and have to wait for my machine to boot up and load all my note taking programs, I could miss the first 2 or 3 minutes of a lecture.
Conversely though, suspend drains battery, making me have to carry my charger around and it dictates my seating arrangements.
A 30 second boot would solve all of these problems.
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Bolivar Baez said 5:52PM on 1-19-2009
What's wrong with using hibernation? It works great and loads fast.
rcarm said 4:11AM on 1-20-2009
@ Bolivar
windows can't hibernate if you have more than 4gb of memory
Alex M said 5:44PM on 1-19-2009
Are you kidding? I need to reboot my XP work PC every week, at least. Those damned windows updates always require reboots.
I hate how double-faced that is. They have a whole suite of recommendations for Windows software saying how you, as a vendor, should never ever ask the user to reboot when updating your software, but Microsoft can do it every single week.
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CaramelZappa said 5:49PM on 1-19-2009
You know you can have windows update run at whatever time you want, and then have it automatically reboot after updates? You can set it to a time when you're asleep, and when you wake up in the morning you'll have a freshly booted desktop.
Alex M said 11:35AM on 1-20-2009
I didn't know that.
Still, I tried it, didn't work. I'm at work, and the updates are forced through the network. So besides blaming Microsoft, I can now add my network admins, too.
And that still doesn't address who gets to request reboots and who doesn't.
CaramelZappa said 5:46PM on 1-19-2009
I'm with you on this. When I need to move my laptop without draining the battery life I put it in hibernate, otherwise it's just always on. It doesn't take terribly long to boot up, just a couple minutes, if that. If I'm really feeling impatient I might go downstairs for a snack. No big deal.
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akcpe said 5:48PM on 1-19-2009
I really dont care about the boot time that much. Like the OP says, i dont usually turn my computer off. My desktop is always on and my laptop is either on or in sleep mode. 20-30 mins between each class is no big deal for sleep. I lose 1% or less battery per hour of sleep on mine at least.
Muffin_man said 2:18PM on 1-23-2009
I have to shut down my computer. For some reason Vista won't stay in sleep mode, I've disabled the option in the BIOS for it to wake up, disabled the option on all my peripherals, disabled the option on my network card and disabled the option for every single scheduled task. Yet it STILL wakes up.
My machine takes less than a minute to boot up but when you've had the luvury of an instantly starting computer it's a real pain.
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sidewinder12s said 6:18PM on 1-19-2009
Mine is always on Sleep, also right now i have windows 7 installed on Dual Boot with Vista and windows 7 starts MUCH faster then Vista and its pretty nice. i hate waiting for it to start up, But i dont know how long it really takes since i select what OP to Boot everytime i start the thing.
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step21 said 6:22PM on 1-19-2009
On the topic: yeah, I'm like that too, my old Samsung notebook for long periods of its life only went to sleep when I had to travel or otherwise needed to move it, possibly why it died on me after barely 2 years.
@Stuart
I'd say listening closely and the papers / scripts that go with lectures are much more important than taking notes yourself. Note taking especially with a laptop only annoys other students and gives not additional information as all of that is already in the papers / scripts.
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jameseyjamesey said 6:11PM on 1-19-2009
I enjoy saving power, so I shut my box down when I'm not using it. A quick boot is important.
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andy said 7:17PM on 1-19-2009
i agree, call me crazy but i turn it off every night
bamboo said 10:47AM on 1-21-2009
Same here. Even in suspend mode the computer wastes power, so I shut mine down every night. My vista used to boot very quickly, but has gotten much slower with all the programs I run installed.
And as a gamer, I want every bit of resources the computer can give, and rebooting is the best way to free up memory and processes.
Peter Miller said 7:19PM on 1-21-2009
This is what hibernate is for - a computer does not use ANY power whilst in hibernation.
Hibernation saves the active memory to hard disk and then powers down. When it wakes, it copies the memory back from the hard disk to RAM.
TurboFool said 6:24PM on 1-19-2009
I shut my desktop computer down most nights to conserve power. As for my notebook, I do so occasionally. Typically if I have no apps open that I care about, I'll usually shut down instead of sleeping, as I might as well let the system clear its memory, fully shut down apps, apply updates, etc.
So yes, fast boots ARE still valuable to me, regardless of how often I use sleep.
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Lee Mathews said 6:26PM on 1-19-2009
Doesn't powering off only save about 1 watt vs. sleep on most modern machines?
Not to be "un-green," but that's only about 8kwh a year, right? Check my math on that one...