cold start took more than two minutes (Mossberg)

[Matt Penna]

On Apr 5, 2007, at 12:12 PM, Kevin Callahan wrote:

> Using Even New PCs
> Is Ruined by a Tangle
> Of Trial Programs, Ads
>
> I also was shocked at how long this machine took to restart and to  
> do a cold start after being completely shut down. Restarting took  
> over three minutes, and a cold start took more than two minutes.  
> That suggests the computer is loading a bunch of stuff I neither  
> know about nor want. By contrast, a brand new Apple MacBook laptop,  
> under the same test conditions, restarted in 34 seconds and did a  
> cold start in 29 seconds.

Long load times are typical of most new PCs out of the box.

The morass of trial software and useless programs that load on  
startup on most new machines is staggering. There was an article a  
couple of years ago about Windows PCs that were advertised as being  
optimized/best for games, but in actuality performed terribly in  
their default configurations because of all the garbage that was  
preloaded on them that sucked up CPU cycles and RAM. My own  
experience has borne this out time and time again.

Whenever someone I know orders a new machine, the first thing I do  
for them is wipe the drive out and re-install Windows myself,  
skipping over all of the junk that came preloaded. There were a  
couple of times at the office when I was short on time and tried to  
make do with the default configuration, and I lived to regret it.  
Systems exhibited bizarre behavior that was difficult to troubleshoot  
- momentary freezes of the interface, unpredictable program  
interactions, and endless dialog boxes popping up from various  
programs that sit in the system tray. It's a jungle out there.

When I switched to the Mac, it took some time to get used to the fact  
that I didn't need to reload the system after it arrived on my  
doorstep; I could just get to work. It may have seemed like  
hyperbole, but the Get a Mac ad where PC says he has to delete the  
trial software on his hard drive before doing anything constructive  
is right on the money. Some PC vendors are better than others, but I  
can't say anything good in this regard about Dell, Gateway, or HP.

I like it here, thanks. :)

	Matt
--
Matt Penna

matthew.penna at gmail.com
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ICQ: 399825

"The trouble with computers, of course, is that they're very  
sophisticated idiots." -Dr. Who