I’m experimenting with an online database collection service and thought it would be interesting to put forth a practical question; How fast does your computer boot up? To measure the boot-up time of your computer, time it from the moment you turn the computer on until the desktop and all background applications are fully loaded (i.e. no hourglass present and no hard drive activity present). Click the title of this article above or the read more below to get to the form.
Use the form below to answer at least the first two questions, then click submit. I will keep this survey up for a few weeks and then compile some results. Share this survey with all your computer friends and families so we can build a large database. The larger the database, the more meaningful the results will be.
Thanks!
The first results are already making their way in, thanks, but please be diligent about your times. One result already in said they had a Windows Vista desktop with 256mb of RAM and it booted in 1-1.5 minutes. I’m calling big time B.S. on that time. Please read the instructions before filling in the survey. To properly time a boot-up start your stopwatch the second you hit the power button, then don’t shut off the stopwatch until there are no more hour glasses and no hard drive activity (indicated by the blinking LED on your computer). Also, ONLY answer the questions in the poll that you are sure of, please.
Many of you are reading this, but few are filling out the form (only 86 responses through 1/22). Please participate and get your friends and family to do so as well. Here are the results through the first two days:
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Tags: hard drive, survey, Windows
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The first results are already making their way in, thanks, but please be diligent about your times. One result already in said they had a Windows Vista desktop with 256mb of RAM and it booted in 1-1.5 minutes. I’m calling big time B.S. on that time.
Please read the instructions before filling in the survey. To properly time a boot-up start your stopwatch the second you hit the power button, then don’t shut off the stopwatch until there are no more hour glasses and no hard drive activity (indicated by the blinking LED on your computer).
Also, ONLY answer the questions in the poll that you are sure of, please.
I know you can’t cover everything, but one thing stands out to me. A 3 gH Pentium 4 processor is going to be slower than a 2 gH Core 2 Duo.
I thought about it, but then I thought I needed to keep it pretty simple. Good point, though.
Heh heh, just been tweaking my laptop for boot speed, & then I find this! Call BS on mine if you like, AMD dual-core lappy @ 1.6Ghz, 2GB RAM, under 30 seconds running KDE3 on Sidux. Actually was 31 seconds but took me at least 1.5 seconds to hammer in my password so I’m claiming it.
I’ve tried enough Linux distributions (not the one you are using) to know that it is a fast booting OS. Thanks for participating!
About 48 seconds on a Macbook w/ 4 GB of Ram, 2GHz processor running OS X 10.5.5.
Thanks for the entry…invite some more Mac friends to fill out the survey too!
Just clocked in at 1;10.75, Desk top running AMD Athon 64 X 2, Ubuntu 8.04, 64 bit, 1.6Ghs, 2GB ram had to put in user and password did not deduct it.
Debian minimum install, plus XFCE4, to desktop in about 45 seconds (minus the time for password and such)
Dell 6000
1.6 GHz, Single Core Pentium M
1.5GB RAM
5400RPM 60 GB HD
And I’m sure I could drop that down to about 30 seconds if I removed some non-essential services (folding@home, MySQL, apache…)
I have w/xp and since I quit booting normally and started using hibernate it takes about 10 seconds…no bull! I don’t know why hibernate isn’t publcized
more. Every once in awhile I reboot just in case it needs it. I’ve been using it for about 2 months now and love it. No more 10 minute boots.
James Ewing
Staring a computer from hibernation or sleep mode does not count towards booting since the computer is already booted up…you are just waking it up. I think that you don’t hear too much about sleep or hibernate mode with Windows’ machines because they don’t work very consistently. Too often, a piece of hardware or software will hang the machine during entry or awakening from the sleep or hibernation and force you to restart the computer anyway. When it works, you are right, it makes things much easier and faster.
My Win7 beta takes 1 min., 15 sec. to completely boot. That’s half what XP takes on the same machine. Complete disclosure requires me to say that XP is starting more processes, but even allowing for that, 7 is noticeably faster.
My Windows 7 beta laptop boots much faster than it did with Windows Vista…but still not as fast as my EeePC laptop running Linux (27 seconds!!). Hopefully Microsoft doesn’t go and screw with all that speed between this beta version and the release of 7.
I tried to time it but I couldn’t seem to find the correct time. I finally gave up on it. I don’t have a stop watch so I used a watch with a second hand. I think my boot up time is over 2 minutes but I’m not sure…. so much for that…