Microsoft mulls 'Instant On' for Windows
If you feel that Windows starts too slowly most days, Microsoft is considering an option that could help.
The company is surveying select users on whether an "instant on" feature, which would rush a usable desktop to your screen in just seconds, is something they'd like included with Windows.
"The concept is called 'Instant On.' Instant On takes your computer from being completely powered down or turned off to being usable for a few specific activities in a very short amount of time," according to excerpts from the survey posted by Engadget.
"The Instant On experience is different from "Full Windows" because it limits what activities you can do and what applications you can have access to," the survey states.
Faster boot times are clearly a priority for Microsoft and could be included in Windows 7, the next planned release of the operating system.
"For Windows 7, a top goal is to significantly increase the number of systems that experience very good boot times. In the lab, a very good system is one that boots in under 15 seconds," engineer Michael Fortin said in an August blog post
Microsoft has already been working more closely with PC makers both on Windows 7 and Windows Vista to try to improve, among other things, system boot time. The first fruits of that effort are expected to emerge on certain new PCs for the holidays.
CNET News.com's Ina Fried contributed to this post.
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An instant on feature where the web browser and email are available immediately would really make some people happy, with the other services loading in the background. This is sort of what has been promised for 20 years or more.
The downside is that I am sure MS is only going to allow things like Explorer and Outlook to load instantly while third party apps need to wait. Another backdoor monopolistic approach? ;)
On the other hand, it should be simpler to configure your bios and Windows to achieve optimal wake up performance. There are still too many confsuing BIOS settings for most mother boards. The WIndows settings are also too confusing for most users.
Now what WOULD be interesting would be a way to start using the OS while its loading, with preference going to the parts needed to run whatever programs you try to load. It'd be an interesting dynamic challenge, but it'd be useful!
No doubt and on top of that, they are also trying to make windows standard on bios motherboards so all motherboards run totally on Windows. That was another one of their "ideas" to make a faster start up.
I remember there was this article awhile back about how Microsoft was purposely putting things in their start up sequence to make the Windows start up slower and how a programmer manage to reconfigure the settings to stop this but then showed how it would be impossible for an average person to do this without knowing about the many intricate Window's settings and also having to know about programming language to pull it off.
This strikes me as going to a lot of effort to do something easily achievable now. Remember how the Americans spent a fortune to make a pen that could write in space, while the Russians used pencils?
steven sprague
Boot Up/Shut down speeds bother ALL computer users. A computer should be operational in the time it takes a TV or monitor to render a picture.
If you had a quick mode then it would basically be worthless unless you could use email, facebook/myspace, calendar, instant messenger, and use your music or videos with it. Well, your web browser would have to work at the very least.
If you could get the web browser working in "quick mode" why not just go the extra step and make the whole system boot that quick? After all to make a web browser work you need the mouse/keyboard working, the hard drive working, network support, video support, and audio support and USB working if you need to save to a flash drive. So, all your drivers are loaded. If you already have all those things working what else is there? You may as well ship an SDK so app developers can make all their software work in this "quick mode" and then what have you done? You've built an entirely new OS. Isn't that what people have been requesting for years? A lighter OS? Why just have half a lighter OS? Why stop in the middle?
Also, obviously the only browser that would work in this "quick mode" would be MS's. FF, Opera, Chrome. They're probably not going to work in this "quick mode" Also, 8 seconds isn't instant on. My system boots in about 20 seconds anyway and probably quicker than 8 seconds if I use sleep. They'd actually be slowing me down.
No what MS needs to do is change their licensing with OEMs. All the adware that comes with your system shouldn't be pre-installed when you get your system. The OEM should just install one program on the computer that advertises the rest of the adware that comes with the system and have the setup files for the rest of the adware stored on the system, but not installed. This way a new system boots up quick, but the user can also browse the adware that comes with the system in case they want to install it with a click. This would speed up Windows more than anything not having all that crap boot at start up.
Also, when I go to shut-down, it should cleanly shut everything down without errors and further user interaction. So I press shutdown, and even if it takes some services some time to properly turn off, it should eventually do that, when I come back the next day to the PC, it still should not be working on a Shutdown from yesterday or asking me to confirm something.
Funny this work like a chart on Linux:
shutdown -P now
works everytime, and damn stupid windows can't get that right......
#1 Superfast bootup- Only boots up and allow programs such as media players/browsers (what is described)
#2 Boot up described above, but windows will use errr... half the cpu for loading up the rest of the comp.
#3 Normal Boot.
Also forget about instant messaging, if your going to have web browsing then you need e-mail as well.
Robert
Microsoft owes the world billions of hours for the loss of productivity.
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by jaypres
October 16, 2008 6:59 PM PDT
- I got a full OS X in 40 s from cold boot. Sad there are so many people asking for features that are already available for years on alternate platforms.
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