Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 1st Sep 2008 08:55 UTC, submitted by Dan Warne
A common topic of discussion in the Windows world - in fact, in any operating system - is boot performance. Many systems take a long time to reach a usable desktop from the moment the power switch is pressed, and this can be quite annoying if it takes too long. In a post on the Engineering 7 blog, Michael Fortin, lead engineer of Microsoft's Fundamentals/Core Operating System Group, explains what Microsoft is doing to make Windows 7 boot faster.
Thread beginning with comment 328779
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
RE[2]: Comment by Kroc
by modmans2ndcoming on Mon 1st Sep 2008 22:42
in reply to "RE: Comment by Kroc"
Member since:2005-11-09
Member since:2007-08-11
If you knew HOW MUCH I AGREE WITH YOU!! Why is it that the first thing you have to do with a Windows laptop is to completely wipe the harddisk and install a plain Windows from scratch, while when you buy a new MacBook or iMac, you just boot it and start to USE it right away?
either you've never bought a "windows" laptop, or you are referring to the amount of crap that gets bundled with "windows" laptops...
in the second case its because you buy a "windows" laptop from a laptop manufacturer who makes money from the stuff they supply ON TOP OF windows (but not from the OS itself)...
and when you buy an apple laptop you are actually buying from the OS maker so they already are making a profit on the OS and the hardware so no need to add other crap.
Have a think about it. Apple are in control of the entire process, but on the windows side there are elements from different companies so there will obviously be differences.
Microsoft dont sell laptops.
Edited 2008-09-02 03:02 UTC
Member since:2007-02-17
They do add other crap but gasp its stuff that people actually find useful (iLife). They have trial software installed like some of the Omni stuff and some of their own software like aperture. What they don't do is have the machine boot up with five different apps asking you to pay attention to them or have the ever bloated Roxio start a service to burn disc (why the hell do I need a sytem tray icon to burn cd/dvds). They don't have symmantec bothering you with both a system tray icon and a pop-up screaming at you to update. Every app they do install in OSX can be easily removed from your machine and there is nothing starting up on your machine.
I understand what you are saying but OEMs need to get their act together and MS isn't helping any. Though if windows were free to OEMs they would still put crap on it and pocket the money they get from the crapware, if that isn't what they are already doing.
Member since:2006-01-10
Have a think about it. Apple are in control of the entire process, but on the windows side there are elements from different companies so there will obviously be differences.
That's perfectly true, but honestly I don't care much WHY it is this way. It IS this way, and it sucks. I work at IT, so yes I bought a lot of Windows laptops. I just hate that I need to custom reinstall every Windows laptop I buy, while all the Macs I buy just work out of the box and just need a little configuration for our network environment. This truly sucks and is just one more reason for me to prefer Macs over PCs.
Edited 2008-09-02 06:18 UTC
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 22:43 UTC
The Verge pointed me to a blog post by Leap Motion - which reveals how their Kinect-like motion control works with Windows 8. "From the second you plug in your Leap Motion Controller, you'll be able to browse the web and interact with your computer just by moving your hands and fingers in the air. With Leap Motion technology and Windows, you can do everything that's possible with multi-touch inputs - without actually touching anything. This also means that existing applications in Windows 7 and 8 will respond to your natural hand and finger movements. Soon, we'll show you how Leap Motion will work with Mac OS X." Quite cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 21:50 UTC
PocketNow interviews Marc Dillon, and there's an interesting note about why Jolla is keeping the display properties under wraps: "We're leaving some of those details out because we do understand that there are a lot of really big players in the market and they tend to take certain components in the market and dominate them. We created the ability to actually be able to run Sailfish on multiple hardware displays and be able to swap components, so this is part of the demand and supply planning phase. We are committed to this industrial design which is a 4.5-inch display, an 8 megapixel camera on the back and a front-facing camera at the front, and the exact specs of the display we'll provide when we're close to delivery." Something you rarely hear anything about.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:15 UTC
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.More News »
Sponsored Links
Member since:
2006-01-10
If you knew HOW MUCH I AGREE WITH YOU!! Why is it that the first thing you have to do with a Windows laptop is to completely wipe the harddisk and install a plain Windows from scratch, while when you buy a new MacBook or iMac, you just boot it and start to USE it right away?
Edited 2008-09-01 09:39 UTC