![]() ![]() Hibernation mode is used today to put a PC in a deep sleep state, which uses very little power and extends battery life way beyond the standard standby mode. Here's how Umesh Shah, an Intel engineer, described it to me in May. But that can be confusing because the Windows 8 changes are all about emulating a complete shutdown and hibernating kernel sessions (more details here) while Intel's Rapid Start is about Windows 7 hibernation mode and hardware. The terminology, in fact, sounds very similar to what Microsoft blogged about this week. Think of it as instant-on from hibernation. Intel has a technology, due by the holiday season, called Rapid Start Technology. But, again, that comparison would flip if the EliteBook had an SSD.)Īnd we can look forward to even faster startup tech for Windows 7 later this year. The 2009 Adamo often feels snappier on a variety of disk-dependent tasks than the 2011 EliteBook. I'm guessing it would be a lot closer to my MacBook Air's 16-second bootup time than the Adamo. Which makes me wonder how quickly the EliteBook would boot up with an Intel 160GB SSD-which is an option HP offers on the 2560p. The "faster" (but older) Adamo has a dated Core 2 Duo SU9400 processor but a zippy 128GB SSD. How critical is the SSD? The "slower" (but newer) EliteBook has a new Intel Sandy Bridge Core i5 2520M processor but a run-of-the-mill 7200RPM 320GB hard disk drive. The Adamo boots faster than the EliteBook for one simple reason: it has an SSD. And an HP EliteBook 2560p that I'm using (temporarily) with Windows 7 Professional boots up in about 40 seconds. My Dell Adamo (again, without any software tweaking) running Windows 7 Home Premium boots up in less than 30 seconds. (Note that I am not going to address manually tweaking MSCONFIG and other settings here, because the average Windows computer user is oblivious to these settings.) That said, for Windows 7 laptops that I use, startup times can be pretty quick with the right storage tech. And even my flash-drive-equipped iPad 2 takes about 30 seconds from a hard shutdown to startup. My third-generation MacBook Air with a solid-state drive takes about 16 seconds from power-up to the main OS X screen. Let me begin by saying I am also a little skeptical of Microsoft's claims of eight-second bootup times for Windows 8 (see: Microsoft promises faster startup for Windows 8). Windows 8 startup in 8 seconds? I'll focus on Windows 7 for now, thank you. But Windows 7 startup can be pretty snappy too with the right hardware, and it should improve later this year. It's one of those nuts-and-bolts issues that affects (plagues?) every Windows user. Maybe the biggest piece of Microsoft news this week was about Windows 8 startup times. ![]()
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