As operating systems have become more complex, boot times seem to have consistently gone up. One of Microsoft's big claims for Windows Vista was that boot time would be better than XP, but the real-world results ended up disappointing. So again, Microsoft is claiming that Windows 7 will boot faster than Vista.

Unfortunately, Iolo, a company that sells tune-up software for Windows machines, has found that in many cases Windows 7 boots noticeably slower than Vista, results that are corroborated by CNET labs.

Personally, I'm not sure that boot-up time is such a big deal any more. Computers have suspend and hibernate states that make the need to reboot very infrequent. I find that I reboot my laptop about once every two weeks, so if it takes a few seconds longer, that really doesn't bother me too much.

How about you? Are you disappointed that Windows 7's boot times are slower than Vista?

[via Engadget]

There's no question that we all want computers that boot up and shut down more quickly. While a fresh install of Windows XP might boot as quickly as 30 seconds on some computers, the more applications you load onto your computer, the slower it will boot. Things get even worse with Windows Vista which loads about as quickly as paint dries. While Microsoft and other OS makers are working to cut boot times, if you're using a current generation operating system, odds are you spend at least a few minutes every day waiting for your computer to startup and shut down.

Now here's the big question of the day - if this is your work computer we're talking about, should you be paid for that time? Apparently employees at seveal companies including AT7T and Cigna have filed lawsuits alleging that they weren't paid for the time it took to turn their computers on and off each day, a process which they claim takes 15 to 30 minutes.

The employees say they should be paid for their time, because they're doing other work related activities while the computer loads, while employers argue that just as often, they aren't. But you know what? It's not like the employees are lying in bed sleeping at home. It's hardly their fault their bosses installed software that takes for-friggin-ever to boot. Not that I'm taking sides in this dispute.

What do you think? Sound off in the comments.

[via TaxProf Blog and Gizmodo]

Knowing what's going on inside your OS is critical to keeping it running smoothly. Sure, task manager and msconfig are built-in to Windows, but they're pretty minimalistic. For something with a little more punch, give Winpatrol a shot - we first looked at it in 2005, and it's bigger and better than ever.

Winpatrol offers a software "Swiss-army knife" of features for protecting and tuning your Windows system. Scotty (the app's mascot) keeps a watchful eye on process, services, startup programs, IE helpers, lmhosts, and a slew of others. It'll even lock your file associations and alert you to attempted changes to your hosts file. If you're interested in paying for the plus version, you'll get more detailed information on processes and tasks via a connection to an online database.

You can also use Winpatrol to help speed your Windows boot time a la msconfig - but not just by enabling and removing unwated startups. You can move and startup item to a delayed group, which allows apps that you want to give priority a little more elbow room when you boot your rig.

Anyone who's looking for tighter control over Windows performance or who wants a little extra virus or malware protection would do well to download Winpatrol. Scotty's definitely a nice addition to any Windows (32 and 64-bit) perimeter defense.

One of our biggest complaints with Windows Vista is that it takes far longer to boot up and shut down than Windows XP installed on an identical system. When Microsoft first announced the feature set for Vista, one of the things they claimed was that you would actually have shorter startup times, but we later discovered that what they meant was that there would be power saving features that would make it easy to put your PC into sleep mode when you're not using it and quickly resume.

But if you're a Vista user that likes to completely shut down your computer, you've probably gotten used to waiting a while for it to start up when you next hit the power button. It turns out that part of the problem might not be with Vista itself, but in 3rd party software that doesn't play well with Vista. For example, although we've long been fans of AVG Free Edition anti-virus software, Ed Bott and Dwight Silverman both suggest that it could have a dramatic impact on Vista startup times.

So we went ahead and uninstalled AVG and lo and behold, our system did seem to boot up more quickly. Of course, there are various ways to measure boot speed. For example, you could stop the timer when you first see your Windows desktop. But for many users, what really counts is the moment when you can start clicking on programs and expect them to respond or the moment when your internet connection is ready, allowing you to launch a web browser, chat program or other online applications. And we have to say, the time between the desktop showing up and our internet connection working has gone up significantly since uninstalling AVG.

Our tests were completely unscientific, so we don't have a lot of numbers to share with you. And our system still takes 80 to 90 seconds to startup with Vista, while we can boot Windows XP on the same system in about half the time. But now we're curious. If you're using AVG on Vista, have you tried uninstalling it to measure the impact on your startup times?

We still highly recommend AVG Free if you're using Windows XP. But if you're using Vista, you might want to check out some free alternatives like Avast!, AntiVir, BitDefender, or ClamWin.

The more fonts you have installed on your Windows computer, the slower it boots. It's one of those basic facts of life. It's not fair, but it's true. Because Windows needs to read each and every font while it's loading, it can take 30 seconds longer to boot a system with 1000 fonts installed than one with 100.

It turns out Windows XP installs just 44 fonts. All the other fonts on your system were probably installed by other programs. And you can safely remove the majority of them. But who has the time to sift through all of those fonts one by one?

Font Frenzy simplifies things by letting you uninstall any non-Windows font with just a few clicks. Worried that you might accidentally delete fonts that you meant to keep? No problem, you can create a snapshot of your font directory which you can use as a restore point. You can reinstall all of your fonts or just pick and choose from your backup directory.

There's also a handy font viewer for seeing how various fonts look at different point-sizes, and a browser for adding and removing fonts on a case by case basis.

Keep in mind that this software is designed for Windows XP. There are several new fonts included in Windows Vista. So using Font Frenzy to remove all non-system fonts in Windows Vista could actually result in removing necessary fonts.

[via gHacks]

When they said "shortly" I didn't realize just how shortly. narf2006's $13,000 solution for booting Windows XP on your Intel Mac is available right now, in the form of a 777kb zip file. In order to accomplish the feat you'll need a PC on which you'll create a custom slipstreamed XP install disc. In case it's not obvious, this is not for the faint of heart, but the distribution contains clear instructions in sensible English, which is promising. As you might expect, the XP-on-Mac site is under significant load just now, so if you have difficulties, head over to Engadget for a list of mirrors.

You read that right. Colin Nederkoorn, the guy who's had $13,000 burning a hole in his pocket has handed the cash over to narf2006, having verified that his solution to getting Windows XP to dual-boot on an Intel Mac is authentic. Nederkoorn says that the solution will be posted shortly and that all further donations will go "into an account to sustain the open source project that will be launched with the initial solution." The dual-boot solution reportedly works on 17" and 20" iMacs, Mac Minis, and MacBook Pros.

narf2006, the guy who posted some low-quality photos to Flickr of Windows maybe booting on an Intel iMac, has now produced video evidence of the feat in action, and it actually looks pretty convincing. The video goes through the whole (uneventful) install process all the way through through a full boot, and narf2006 spends some time showing off the Control Panel and System Properties. Though such things can surely be faked, he has sent his technique to Colin Nederkoorn, the guy running the $12,000 XP-on-Mactel contest, so we ought to know soon.