Lenovo Tweaking Windows 7 Boot Time Speed
Windows 7 to load up to 56 percent faster than XP/Vista.
Many of us here leave our computers on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We do it because we simply need to have some tasks always running (and we have the compulsive need to know whenever a new email comes in). But for those users who are energy efficient and shut off their computers when they're done using them, the issue of boot times is somewhat important.
No one wants to hit the power button on their computer and have to wait minutes before he or she can click on anything.
Lenovo knows that, and boasts that its ThinkPad notebooks and ThinkCentre desktops will boot Windows 7 up to 56 percent faster compared to running Windows XP or Vista, and shuts down in as little as five seconds.
The Idea line of Lenovo computers will also see a performance boost, though not to the same degree as the Think line. Idea PCs will boot up to 33 percent faster and shutdown 50 percent faster than identical configuration, non-optimized PCs even while still initializing things such as anti-virus software.
Lenovo calls its tweaks the "Windows 7 Lenovo Enhanced Experience," which are composed of optimized system files, processes and hardware settings and achieve quicker boot and shutdown compared with non-optimized PCs.
“To achieve Windows 7 Lenovo Enhanced Experience certification, Lenovo’s technical team and developers have worked with Microsoft during the making of Windows 7 to create an exceptionally-engineered hardware and software experience,” said Fran O’Sullivan, senior vice president, Think Product Group, Lenovo. “Advances in PC technology are giving users even better tools to increase their personal productivity at work, and this Enhanced Experience certification lets customers know that our Think PCs are optimized for business.”
Last week, Phoenix Technologies, makers of the popular BIOS, demonstrated a new fast-boot BIOS that goes through the POST phase in around one second. The shorter boot time allowed Windows to load almost immediately, shaving down the time to desktop considerably. The Phoenix BIOS was demonstrated on a ThinkPad T400s, so perhaps that technology is making it into the Windows 7-equipped new PCs from Lenovo.
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Wow, this would be fantastic. It's the little things that make it worthwhile . . .
I understand this could be competitive advantage but I think Lenovo and MS should share what they learn and MS should incorporate the changes into its software ASAP.
Why shutdown at all? Just go to stand by/suspend if you want to save energy (just make sure you save your work, as a power outage could KO all the info).
but on my fresh installed slim down xp boots in 2 seconds not including post time
Meh, i don't have any problem with waiting, turn it on, go do something a lil while and come back...not that i have to wait very long with my velociraptor
Can anyone see Windows 7 booting from an SSD? Yeah yeah!
Yeah, I dont turn my PC off for the past 7 years I think now. So the times that I have to restart my PC i need to be infront of it so faster reboot is really a good thing.
Nah. Someone will figure out how they did it and reverse-engineer it for the rest of us.
Windows 7 boots up super fast on my machine that I built. Yay!
I'm glad they're moving toward faster boots, but it doesn't really help me. I just put my computer into standby instead. 3 second "boot" time... and I'm on an ancient P4 system.
Ok, I'm done playing grammar police for now.
I wouldn't even worry about the competitive advantage. These things tend to pop up among competitors in no time in the PC Industry
First off one user said his PC Boots up in two seconds, ok now come out of your dream. I agree with oneuser who said goto standby mode, i use that durring the day and it works great.
Asus Express Gate ftw
I understand this could be competitive advantage but I think Lenovo and MS should share what they learn and MS should incorporate the changes into its software ASAP.
It's not that simple. What they did was optimize it for those specific sets of hardware. To get the benefits on other systems you would have to completely re-optimize for whatever the hardware config is. It would be very time consuming to do that for all the possible configurations and would take up more space on install discs (and possibly on the hard drive) to store all the tweaks for the hardware combinations.
I would like to know what optimizations are made, so we can do them ourselves. Detective Tom S Hardware go find out please.
Okay but the problem with standby is that data is still residing in volatile memory which requires a constant electrical charge. Therefore, standby is not as energy efficient as a full shut down. In a home environment, one machine on standby is no big deal, but in the workplace multiple machines that are constantly on or in standby still suck considerable juice and raise that electricity bill. And going back to the memory issue. If there's a power failure of any kind, anything in volatile memory like unsaved documents or open programs and their data files, it's toast. That doesn't really fly with the business market that Lenovo is so deeply involved in. Standby simply is not the same as a fully shut down machine, that's why it's called standy and not shutdown. So on that note, any optimization that can improve time-to-live from a cold stop will go a long way to convincing people (especially businesses that run their computers 24/7) to shut down and save some power.
What I want to know is, 56% of what? If it was taking 2 minutes, initially, then it is an improvement, but I wish it could be better.
Hmm...
My old 80GB drive and Pentium D booted Win7 in 1 minute.
My i7 with a nice new 7200rpm Samsung F1 1TB boots in about 1 minute...
Hmm...
Anyways, good for laptops, but for desktop users (as myself), we don't turn our systems off. ^_^
I go to "standby" mode on my desktop PC:
-almost instantaneous restart
-same power consumption than when it's off ! (actually in when "off" my Watt-meter says that it consumes 30W...)
i have had the win 7 running for a month now (developing win7 not RC fully useable with xp mode and everything. start up is 45 sec from cold.
win 7 ultimate developer
p5b deluxe
E8400
4 gb pc2 6400
4 500 gb green
I go to "standby" mode on my desktop PC:-almost instantaneous restart-same power consumption than when it's off ! (actually in when "off" my Watt-meter says that it consumes 30W...)
Thats why I turn off the power strip when I am done shutting down the computer, 30 Watts is way too much draw when you aren't using the computer for anything. I only put the computer to sleep when I am not going to use it for an hour or two, but if I am not leaving it run overnight for something it gets shut all the way down and the power strip turned off to stave of that extra power usage.
You know that this means absolutely nothing... get some numbers!
On my ThinkPad R61, Windows7-RC.
Boot time is about 40secs after post. Totally smoked XP's boot time on the notebook.
Thats with a lowly 1.6Ghz Pentium Dual Core
1GB DDR2 / 80GB 5400RPM HD.
Memory usage is slightly more than XP and the overall system performance is quite nice.
I go to "standby" mode on my desktop PC:-almost instantaneous restart-same power consumption than when it's off ! (actually in when "off" my Watt-meter says that it consumes 30W...)
You must have a bad (well, non-efficient) power supply.... On stand by I use 15-ish W. Fully off there's maybe... 4W bleed.
It still boggles the mind that most people never use standby or hibernate. Especially standby for desktops. But nooo. "Shut down"...
Would be nice if it's possible. I usually do something else while waiting for Windows to start so I can't really say it's non-productive time.
Can't help but always feel that my computer gets more sluggish the longer I keep it on, so it's nice they're keeping boot times in mind.
If my computer boots in under 6o seconds when will there be time to get coffee ?
The one reason to keep running windows is to be able to run for coffee at least once a day!
I can testify that Since I just recently downgraded from windows 7 ultimate 64bit build (7600) I think down to Vista Ultiamte 64bit and the loading times felt so much slower on vista..I was trying to figure out why my PC was booting up slower but now I remember because WIndows 7 is way better.