[Ben]

How long does it take you to start up your computer, eh?

Well, my Macbook Pro, which I'm in love with, takes exactly 30 seconds. In my book that's pretty impressive!

Don't ask me why I timed it, I just did. Now you have an excuse to time your computers, also ;)

[3g-g]

"Oh you're such a geek" the wife said as I started the stopwatch on my phone and hit the power button at the same time!

My iMac goes from power on to desktop in exactly 27.3 seconds, love it! :)

On my XP Pro laptop we haven't even got to the XP logo with the blue bar under it by that point, and I still need to log in after that... and then it's still loading up other things in the background for another 3 or 4 minutes!

Oh Apple, I do love thee.

[miffed]

the Macbook manages 34 seconds - but interestingly , XP pro (parallels) boots up in EXACTLY the same time ! (spooky )

Another interesting point is shutdown time , I remember my old XP machine used to take so long to shut down , that I would forget I was shutting it down and go to use it again , only to find it unresponsive - then it would finally shut down and all would come flooding beck to me ! :D

Macbook shuts down it 15.6 seconds :)

[chagle]

the Macbook manages 34 seconds - but interestingly , XP pro (parallels) boots up in EXACTLY the same time ! (spooky )

Another interesting point is shutdown time , I remember my old XP machine used to take so long to shut down , that I would forget I was shutting it down and go to use it again , only to find it unresponsive - then it would finally shut down and all would come flooding beck to me ! :D

Macbook shuts down it 15.6 seconds :)

Same with me...! XP loads so much faster in Parallels - in fact, it generally is so much faster in Parallels! Weird...! :-)

[MORPH]

Erm..... an embarrassing 7&1/2 minutes! Not so much the PC or windows, but all the things on 'startup' slowing it down!

[Ben]

Yeah, I think Windows really suffers through startup items, they can often render a machine unusable until they have all loaded. I'd imagine few startup items is why our Mac crowds XP installs are as swift as their OS X ones.

Fortunately OS X doesn't seem to suffer badly from startup items, though the different style of OS negates the need for some of them.

[gorilla]

Well I haven't timed it, but my lappie running XP is about 2-3 mins, but my GF's is enough to time to make my tea, then watch something on the tele and then it might be ready.

[Hands0n]

I get a fairly consistent "well-under-30-seconds" on my family of Macs (Pro, Mini and Macbook Pro). Shut-down takes a bit longer on the Mac Pro than it does on the Mini and Macbook Pro.

I'm seeing similar XP-under-Parallels results to those above.

All of my Windows XP machines take significantly longer to get to the point where they are actually usable. I notice that OS X is quicker at letting you get your hands on the machine to use it rather than hang around in a seemingly single-threaded mode locking you out until it [the OS] has finished doing its stuff before letting you get on and play.

[Ben]

My XP install on Parallels is starting to lose its nippy shine now... I use it for a Windows business software package and pretty much nothing else, but can already feel it slowing down.

The MacBook Pro, on the other hand, is going even faster. The 'blue bar' before one arrives at the desktop now shoots past in the blink of an eye. Fine by me!

I bet that new 2.8GHz EE iMac doesn't hang about...