Letters to the Editor
-
Simple answer
The simple answer as to why Vista takes so long to do anything is because it sucks. My solution is to not shutdown Vista, but only to standby, which makes for a better experience.
Still I can't switch to the Mac, nothing runs on it, well at least none of the games will run on it. I just hope that game companies port to Linux before they port to the Mac.
-
Cruft
This all goes back to the old software industry joke -
Q: Why was God able to create the world in only seven days?
A: He didn't have an installed base.
There's a lot of old crap in Windows designed to make it mostly backwards compatible. With the exception of driver issues, there's an awful lot of software that runs even on Vista that was written a very long time ago.
Apple got a chance to rewrite it's OS with OS/X. It's not the only reason but it's a big part of the reason Macs startup faster and shutdown faster.
-
yeah, but you could wait a long time trying to start up most software I use on the Mac
Like... forever.
Since it's not made in a Mac version.
-
Services
It is possible Windows boots up more slowly because it starts more internal programs or services as it starts. It is also possible that Windows starts more slowly because it has to account for a wider range of hardware platforms. Since there are multiple manufacturers of hardware of Windows machines, Windows has to be sure it can run on a variety of different baselines. Mac however only has to run on Mac. It is much easier to optimize your platform if you only have 1 hardware system to run it on. That Mac runs Vista faster than PCs would lend strength to this idea since Vista could be optimized to that hardware setup.
-
New Mac commercial
In the commercial, PC and Mac are talking to a therapist and the therapist is telling PC that it's not his fault he has so many problems. "It's no wonder all of your stuff is made by different people so it has trouble working together. But Mac's operating system and hardware is all made by the same people so it all works together." says the therapist. I think that points out an issue with Macs, that their users are very closely tied to Apple and is actually promoting the proprietary nature of Macs. It doesn't seem like it's something they really want to advertise. Did the commercial strike anyone else as strange?
-
When Popular Mechanics...
...tells me which one does a better job of pounding nails, I'll take their computer reviews seriously.
-
Calling the Evil Empire
Your PCs are reporting in to the mother ship, of course.
-
Cruft is one reason.
Another is that Macs have a simpler hardware base. Windows has to do a lot of poking and prodding to figure out what hardware is there and what drivers are needed. Macs work with a much smaller hardware base.
To see what difference this can make, just load up one of the Linux distros. Time the bootup process. Then compile into the kernel just the drivers required for the hardware you have. You will find it boots a lot faster.
Now, the shut down is a little different. Under Windows in general, shutting down processes is a time intensive process for reasons that aren't clear to me. Maybe it does some fancy garbage collection when it deallocates the memory that the process claimed or doing updates to the registry. Macs probably just write out any state information they need and shuts off without shutting down the services and processes one by one.
-
Only a matter of time
I find that Windows XP boots a bit faster when there is no antivirus software to boot up. Otherwise, regardless of which AV software I use, it will slow down the start up.
I'm planning to switch to a Mac this year. I will, however, keep Windows (XP; I want nothing to do with Vista) and use Parallel or the other program to run Windows its on window on the Mac.
-
This is like the grand old days of IBM PC servers
They would take forever to start up, between the BIOS checks, RAM checks, device loading, then the OS...you could go out for quick sex while the machines booted. Their rationale, much like Porsche engineers rationale behind having a REALLY shitty linkage to first gear was, "You only need it once!"
Windows follows on this theory by assuming that everything is a customization that has to be loaded. And then behind the covers it kicks off a ton of services that few people ever need anyway. Now services don't take a great deal of time to start, they're services, that's what they do - start quickly. But the overall bag of crap you have drag around does tend to make it sluggish. So I guess the theory is you should never have to start the machine that often. I know I generally run XP desktops in the 200 hrs uptime range. Every 200 hrs or so, restart them to flush out the crap. 700 hrs uptime appears to be the max limit for being able to run a machine w/o having do crazy shit on its own.
Also never discount the incredible shittiness of Vista drivers. When they work at all they work poorly. Last but not least OSX is BSD/Mach/uKernel based. Starting up fast is one of its design points. Try as they might Windows will NEVER EVER EVER be a reliable SRT (soft real time) system kernel whereas BSD is.
-
CombJ1
Windows ensures all programs are shut down before logging. It also performs maintenance at that time, that's probably much of the process right there.
-
An answer and a rant
The previous posters have nailed the reasons for the Windows slower startup and shutdown. More services, more legacy devices, and - the big one - antivirus scanning the boot sector and monitoring the boot process. Windows also loads and runs the firewall at boot, which I don't believe Mac OS/X does.
Now the rant.
Farhad said:
I found the tests backed up something I've long hated about Windows: It takes forever -- forever -- to start up and shut down.
Can we be just a scosh less dramatic? We're talking about a difference of forty-five seconds. That can seem like a long time if, say, you're in an elevator with someone who just fumigated the place. But is it worth even one --forever-- ? C'mon Farhad.
And who the hell cares how long it takes an OS to shut down? If I shut my system down its because a) I'm leaving for the day or b) going to do something else. So I leave or go do something else and the computer completes the shut down while I go about the rest of my day. This isn't a car or a power tool. I don't need to see a black screen before I can walk away.