It seems that a part of human nature is to accept things as they are and adapt accordingly. This can be both a strength and a weakness. With regard to tools and products, we use what we have, most often accepting the shortcomings, until someone comes along and invents something better or makes an improvement. And then we examine the new product or improvement in awe, wondering why we didn’t think of it, surprised at how obvious it is in hindsight.
It is not easy to remove oneself from the everyday flow of life, from the behavioral patterns we form and adaptations we make, to acknowledge the problems and ask “how can this be better?” And yet, this is the space where designers should spend a great deal of time.
To that lofty end, I’m going to step down from my dramatic soliloquy and ask “Why in the name of all that is holy does it have to take so long to start Windows?”
I, like many others I’m sure, use my computer for hours and hours every day. And one of my chief frustrations is waiting for my laptop to start up, and for that matter shutdown. Because I use a laptop, I start up and shutdown often. This isn’t as much of a problem for desktop users who leave their computer running, but when the power goes out or you have to install new software, prepare to wait.
And why should this be acceptable? Would it be acceptable if it took a web site 5min to load? Would it be acceptable if it took your camera 5min to start? What about your TV? Your washing machine? Your car? We have adapted and come to accept it as “the way it is”, but I argue that it is the biggest usability bug in Windows! To be fair, this problem isn’t limited to Windows. I don’t use a Mac, so I can’t compare, but I’m sure it doesn’t turn on instantly.
If it were up to me, I would have a team working around the clock on a solution for instant-on/off computers. I’m sure it’s not an easy problem to solve, but a fix for this unacceptable bug would have a tremendous impact on productivity and the entire user experience surrounding computers.
I’ve just about decided that shutting down Windows is something that should never happen. My family has an Acer notebook at home, and it’s so much more convenient to Hibernate the thing than to shut it down. Comes back up *so* much faster!
When I was kid, we had a TV set which took about 5 minutes to warm up and show black & white screen.
:D… and then we can invest in research on an instant iron, a washing machine that wash my clothes in five minutes and on a magical oven (something better than a microwave one, please)…
It isn’t ironic… It was a good idea…
See, that’s the trick. You haven’t used a Mac.
Go down to your local Apple store, and try one, especially a laptop.
I don’t worry about boot times, ’cause I only boot about once a month, after OS updates.
I never shut it down.
All the rest of the time, when I’m not using it, my laptop is in sleep mode, which Apple hardware does extremely well. Apple’s sleep mode is one of the main reasons I bought a Mac laptop to begin with, after seeing a friend’s. I’ve never owned a Windows laptop, but my wife has one, and being in IT I’ve used many, many of them.
After my laptop has been in my bag for hours, I can grab it, open it and get my desktop in under 2 seconds… and then I’ve got wireless connectivity and an IP address less than 5 seconds later. Usually close to 6 or 7 seconds total, from opening.
If my laptop is in my bag for too long, say, overnight, it simply drops into hibernate mode. It does take about 15 seconds to “re-boot” after hibernate mode, but even that’s not too bad, and I don’t often let the battery die like that anyway.
Actually, I ran my battery out once while I was playing World Of Warcraft… my laptop had entered hibernate mode… I quickly realized what happened, plugged in the power cord, and my laptop came back out of hibernate and got back into WOW without even disconnecting me from the server.
Just for reference, I own a PowerBook G4 15″. It’ll be two years old, bought new, in November.
You have demonstrated that you don’t understand the way electronics work, and what needs to happen in order for you to get your desktop.
Also, your comparisons are pointless. You are comparing something which is made to be such a multi purpose device to things which are so dedicated to their intended purpose.
As the first anoymous comment says - hibernation. Anyone? A website loads in secs, because it does not have to fill up half the server’s memory with stuff that lets it run, detect devices and things like that. It is made with one purpose - to deliver content, read from disk and show (executing a server process sometimes). Same for TV, camera and others mentioned. A computer is made to let you do virtually evertything, write Documents, watch movies, open websites like the above, listen to music, code, even work with Photoshop or similar photo editing software. You can’t expect to have all this functionality ready to launch in a millisecond.
I’m not sure what definition of “usability” you’re using, but I’d argue that, while it’s very annoying, this is not really a usability fault as such; it doesn’t make Windows less counter-intuitive or increase the likelihood of errors, and for the most part there is feedback that Windows is “doing something” while it’s loading. It doesn’t make Windows “unusable” for most of the target population.
So yes, it’s very annoying and faster would be better (when wouldn’t it?); but it’s not a usability fault.
As for speeding it up: I remember having a 2Mb hard disk cache on a 4Mb machine (486DX33) back about 15 years ago, when Windows fit into something like 400k and was a separate program you started from the DOS command line. While it still took a while to come up the first time, if you closed it down and typed “win” again, it would boot almost instantaneously
This sounded a bit odd to me. It takes about 15-20 seconds for XP to load on my desktop that was one step away from top of the line 15 months ago. There are a lot of things that can slow down a machine on startup and windows is only one of them. Is your laptop old? Do you have enough memory? Is your HDD slow? Do you have Win 2000 that takes an ice age to load or the more friendly XP? Do you have a lot of stuff that loads on startup? (Check your toolbar). Also keep in mind that some programs are sneeky. Instead of loading only when you launch them, they load a part of themselves on Windows startup so it seems they load faster. This of course makes Windows load slower.
By all means go ahead and bash your OS but always keep in mind there are about half a dozen other things contributing to your overall speed.
As Raymond Chen points out, the start-up time isn’t just down to Windows:
http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2005/03/11/394249.aspx
@Rob-
If you don’t think this is a usability issue, then you’ve never begun a usability test from a cold start (or done hardware testing). Watching test subjects peck away at random keys (or pressing the power button again, which is a big mistake) while waiting up to 3 minutes while the computer boots and maps the various network drives we use at my university might be an eye-opener.
Putting my Windows XP Thinkpad into stand by used to take about half a second.
This same process takes about 5 minutes after I upgraded to Vista (if the laptop is really unhappy on some days, it takes even longer)
@Rob: as a usability professional, I can say that startup time for any software is definitely a usability issue, whether it’s the time from clicking its icon or the time from pressing the power button.
The second biggest usability bug is how long it takes to shut Windows down:
http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2007/09/09/the-biggest-usability-bug-in-windows/
What’s wrong with sleep mode on Windows?
I use a MAC Desktop and a WINDOWS Laptop. Both take just as long to boot up.
Not shutting down is an option- but what’s a few minutes? Read a book
http://www.entrepreneur.com.sg
Over the years as I got new computers, I marvelled at how it took longer and longer for each new one to boot up - even though each new computer is faster than the previous one.
What really impressed me, though, was when I recently bought a new box, installed Ubuntu Linux on it, and started using it as my daily box. It boots up FAST.
forget about computers and laptops.
I’d just like my Cell Phone to be instant on/instant off!!