Three-year effort knocks ThinkPad boot time down to 30 seconds
Lenovo, the world’s fourth largest PC maker, is rushing to claim the fastest boot-up and shutdown times for Windows 7 on its ThinkPad laptops and ThinkCentre desktop machines.
Why does a PC need to boot in 30 seconds instead of 60? Because boot time is one of the major factors that buyers focus on when shopping for a new computer. Shoppers use a computer’s boot time to gauge its overall performance, so it’s worth it for Lenovo to commit a full-time Velocity team in North Carolina to the sole job of speeding up boot and shutdown times.
A story in Computerworld recounts the geeky details of speed boosts that Lenovo engineers wrung from the company’s computers by searching for every possible way to knock a fraction of a second from boot time and from shutdown time. Here’s a list of just a few of them:
- Fixing the source code of device drivers that had been written to the worst acceptable specifications.
- Hiding some devices from the computer while it’s booting, then loading them afterwards.
- Hiding those nagging self-updating Adobe applications until after Windows is fully booted.
Even if you can’t follow all the nerdspeak, Computerworld’s story is a good read that shines a light on just how much work goes into making a computer boot up a few seconds faster. There’s an unwritten insight in the article: For all the time we spend using our computers, we can’t stand to wait a few seconds for them to boot, or to shutdown. It seems to be hardwired human behavior, like the urge to throw a mobile phone in aggravation. Lenovo’s Velocity team can take pride in making the world’s information workers, impatiently toe-tapping in line at Starbucks, just a little less peevish.
Next Story: Finance startup Yodlee: We weren’t screwed by Mint’s acquisition
Previous Story: Abu Dhabi looks to raise $600M for renewable energy hub, Masdar City
About the Author, Paul Boutin
Paul (paul@venturebeat.com) covers Apple & the iPhone, social networks & social media, digital music & video, and any crazy Internet story. Paul wrote and edited for Valleywag from 2006-2008, after several years with Wired magazine and Slate. He writes regularly for The New York Times' technology section and sometimes for Wired and The Wall Street Journal. He studied computer science at MIT in the early 1980s, and worked as a software developer and network administrator for 15 years before becoming a professional writer. Follow him on Twitter at @paulboutin, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.