Comments on: Microsoft toying with the idea of an “Instant On” operating system

By: The Steven

The Steven — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 17:31:32 +0000

Nothing new…
They use to have an instant on OS…
It was called MS-DOS, boot times were as fast as 20 seconds.

But that was when some guy said that 640k would be enough memory for anyone.

By: dub

dub — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 14:02:19 +0000

Of course I’d like Vista to boot to a usable state in seconds – who wouldn’t? Firefox is my main app for nearly everything, so I really dont’ care that much if it takes a bit longer to be able to run other apps.

The Vista-bashing here is pretty comical, though – I’m anything but a MS apologist, but if Vista would just cut out the background crap (DRM, mostly), it would be a damn good OS. Fact is, it’s a damn good OS now, and people who insist on “downgrading” to XP are giving up what is currently the best OS in the world in several important areas, especially for laptops: Vista’s handling of power management and wireless connections is better than *any* other OS out there (including OS X)!

A lot of “Vista” hatred from users is really about the new Office2007. I *hate* Office2007 and will never buy Office again, since there’s nothing worth having any more, but Office isn’t Vista, and Vista itself is actually not a bad OS, except for the bloat. (When I bought my laptop last year, Vista was still the *only* OS choice, so I chose the cheapest thing I could find with 2GB of RAM: an $800 Gateway that’s better than the multi-thousand-dollar Dells and ThinkPads I’ve had before. That 2GB may be why I’m happier with Vista then many others – Vista really needs it.)

By: Likeabite

Likeabite — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 13:48:40 +0000

Yes Vista needs improvements but so does every other OS out there…you take the good with the bad.

By: afstech

afstech — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 13:02:11 +0000

It is not MS fault that OEM manufacturers load tons of crap onto the PC, which is what slows it down and causes problems. A clean install of Vista will boot in 23 seconds. On my HP laptop I average around 30 seconds of boot but I don’t have IM clients or what not running at the start up. Also MS is working with OEM’s to optimize the start up from a new machine. Plus they are making the Windows 7 start up to not be impacted by the crap ware.

By: Skipper

Skipper — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 10:13:41 +0000

I love Vista. I love how slow it is, the bloatware, and all the visual effects – taking up precious resources – is a must in my book.
8 second bootup? What for?

By: MarxAnth

MarxAnth — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 05:21:49 +0000

Toying with the idea? Weren’t we promised faster startups with Vista but yet the start up time on Vista is a joke.. Most machines I used take 2 mins plus before they are actually usable. The sad part is that most users have no idea how to optimize their startup. Why does Toshiba, Lenovo, HP, etc etc..continue to crapify the os..

By: bluehorseshoe

bluehorseshoe — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 03:56:31 +0000

Nothing wrong with Vista? I like it, the most stable OS MS has put out there, but let’s get real. There’s area for improvement here without having to upgrade the hardware each and every time because the code just keeps getting bloated and bloated. MS needs to reinvent their OS.

By: r

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 22:11:13 +0000

sounds just like the mac OS.

By: hi

hi — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 21:36:25 +0000

J -

You hate Vista? Redirect your hatred back upon yourself.

Did it ever occur to you that Vista does not freeze 10-15 times a day for the rest of the world? I know… Vista has it in for you… Not like it’s a conspiracy or something.

By: johdaxx

johdaxx — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 21:02:17 +0000

Heh – they’re worried by manufacturers including a quick and simple media playing version of Linux along with their mobos, I’d wager.

By: Likeabite

Likeabite — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 20:55:06 +0000

It is a great idea and as always people skip the entire post and want to talk about Vista when there’s nothing wrong with it…such moronic individuals.

By: b.N

b.N — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 20:20:50 +0000

@Scott

Perfectly put.

—–
Vista definitely ran off in the wrong direction and I love the idea of a umpc with 5sec boot time. Seeing all these newer models are working with solid state drives and blazing fast read/write times, I see no reason why OS innovations haven’t kept up.

Ask us a hard one, Bill.

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 20:07:24 +0000

I wish they would concentrate on an OS that works.

By: bob

bob — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 19:32:47 +0000

I’d prefer they fix the problem with my Vista machine freezing up 10-15 times a day for as long as 30 seconds to 3 minutes each time. This is even after having turned off the dreadful ’searchindexer.exe’ that constantly runs in the background consuming memory & cpu. I HATE VISTA!

By: J

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 19:26:32 +0000

What they need is to let the OS start within 4-5 seconds to browse the web, IM or email.

And ALSO start loading Windows slowly in the background so that the heavier operations (playing a game, browsing files, printing, etc) will be able to work in somewhat approaching the normal amount of time (over a minute is standard to boot, sadly. It should be 20sec).

By: gquaglia

gquaglia — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 18:56:33 +0000

Don’t even know why they bother. M$ will do none of this.

By: Scott

Scott — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 18:13:52 +0000

Duh…Of course this is desireable!

But instead of utilizing the increased ability of the hardware over the years Microsoft has chosen instead to bloat the crap out of the OS.