New computer but win 7 or 8

[Larry__Weiss]

My personal view is that the attention many people pay to how long it
takes to boot is unwarranted. Assuming that the computer's speed is
otherwise satisfactory, it is not generally worth worrying about. Most
people start their computers once a day or even less frequently. In
the overall scheme of things, even a few minutes to start up isn't
very important. Personally I power on my computer when I get up in the
morning, then go get my coffee. When I come back, it's done booting. I
don't know how long it took to boot and I don't care.

It does make an impressive demo.
And, folks will compare it to the time it takes to start up their tablet or cellphone.

That "instant gratification" pursuit.

 

[Ken Blake]

I consider long boot times as indicative of a lot of crap I don't need
being loaded and taking up precious RAM that could better be used
for something else.

Bear in mind that if you load a program and don't use it, the RAM it
took up is very quickly paged out. So what you say isn't necessarily
correct at all.

 

[Ghostrider]

I installed 32-bit Word 2000, the latest version my client had, on a
Thinkpad Edge with 6GB RAM running 64-bit W7 Pro. Didn't have to do
anything special. App runs hot, straight, and normal.

Stef

To eliminate a pop-up error message, a false positive, I run
MS Word 2000 under Windows XP-SP3 compatibility in Windows 7
Pro, 64-bit.

GR

 

[mick]

...winston <[email protected]>:
I've rarely used the Start Menu. Once the ability to pin to the
Taskbar, Jump Lists, and/or add the Quick Launch bar and in conjunction
with the simple method of searching (another Taskbar shortcut that open
'Search without the need to first open Explorer) the need to use the
Start Menu for routine tasks became unnecessary. Lol...and no my
desktop is not full of shortcuts (it has 5 total icons - iTunes,
Internet Explorer, SeaMonkey, my WordPress blog, and Computer)

That's five more than.

You'd love my desktop. With the help of Fences I had nearly 150 icons
present on my desktop.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided that might possibly be overkill[1], so
I converted all 14 of the fences into folders.

My boot time is now only two or two and a half minutes instead of twice
that.

[1] Sponsored by the Department of Understatement Department.

You'd love my boot time. 18 seconds.

AAMOI how did the words "my desktop" get snipped from "That's five more
than my desktop"?

It takes me at least an hour to boot up every morning before I am ready
to go. 102 seconds for my computer to do the same feels like warp
speed to me LOL

 

[Wolf K]

Bear in mind that if you load a program and don't use it, the RAM it
took up is very quickly paged out. So what you say isn't necessarily
correct at all.

Yes, but your comment doesn't AFAIK apply to start-up applets, which
will run in the background. Only cure is to prune the start-up and the
Windows services lists.

 

[Mellowed]

I tried most everything to get Thunderbird to recognize my live.ca
address but no luck. Then for the heck of it I tried one of my unused
live.com addresses, it worked right away. Next I went to my account
settings and changed all the settings to my live.ca address and it
worked, Thunderbird is working with live.ca now.

I also have problems with signing up to some websites when I use
live.ca, which is wierd because Hotmail was still giving out .ca
addresses up to about a month ago so I don't understand why they are
not being recognized. This is a PITA. I don't want to abandon my .ca
address because I have had it for years and it is a unique name that
is hard to get.

Congratulations on getting T-Bird up. I can't even imagine why some
sites won't recognize live.ca. Somebody familiar with MS stuff might
have an idea.

 

[Ken Blake]

Yes, but your comment doesn't AFAIK apply to start-up applets, which
will run in the background. Only cure is to prune the start-up and the
Windows services lists.

Actually, it does apply to most startup applets.They sit in the
background, not actually running, but waiting for you to press some
key (or some other event to occur) to activate and use them.

As a single example, I run PureText in the background. It removes any
formatting from text that I've copied and converts it to pure text.
But it sits in the System Tray, doing nothing and using the virtual
memory but no real memory (or almost no real memory) unless I copy
some text and then click the icon in the tray.

There are counterexamples of course, but most startup applets are like
that.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

...winston <[email protected]>:
I've rarely used the Start Menu. Once the ability to pin to the
Taskbar, Jump Lists, and/or add the Quick Launch bar and in conjunction
with the simple method of searching (another Taskbar shortcut that open
'Search without the need to first open Explorer) the need to use the
Start Menu for routine tasks became unnecessary. Lol...and no my
desktop is not full of shortcuts (it has 5 total icons - iTunes,
Internet Explorer, SeaMonkey, my WordPress blog, and Computer)

That's five more than.

You'd love my desktop. With the help of Fences I had nearly 150 icons
present on my desktop.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided that might possibly be overkill[1], so
I converted all 14 of the fences into folders.

My boot time is now only two or two and a half minutes instead of twice
that.

[1] Sponsored by the Department of Understatement Department.

You'd love my boot time. 18 seconds.

AAMOI how did the words "my desktop" get snipped from "That's five more
than my desktop"?

Careless drag and paste by the poster (me).

AKA Oops

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

On Sat, 13 Apr 2013 22:04:39 +0100, Mike Barnes wrote:

...winston <[email protected]>:
I've rarely used the Start Menu. Once the ability to pin to the
Taskbar, Jump Lists, and/or add the Quick Launch bar and in conjunction
with the simple method of searching (another Taskbar shortcut that open
'Search without the need to first open Explorer) the need to use the
Start Menu for routine tasks became unnecessary. Lol...and no my
desktop is not full of shortcuts (it has 5 total icons - iTunes,
Internet Explorer, SeaMonkey, my WordPress blog, and Computer)

That's five more than.

You'd love my desktop. With the help of Fences I had nearly 150 icons
present on my desktop.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided that might possibly be overkill[1], so
I converted all 14 of the fences into folders.

My boot time is now only two or two and a half minutes instead of twice
that.

[1] Sponsored by the Department of Understatement Department.

You'd love my boot time. 18 seconds.

AAMOI how did the words "my desktop" get snipped from "That's five more
than my desktop"?

It takes me at least an hour to boot up every morning before I am ready
to go. 102 seconds for my computer to do the same feels like warp
speed to me LOL

I can't argue with that!

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

My personal view is that the attention many people pay to how long it
takes to boot is unwarranted. Assuming that the computer's speed is
otherwise satisfactory, it is not generally worth worrying about. Most
people start their computers once a day or even less frequently. In
the overall scheme of things, even a few minutes to start up isn't
very important. Personally I power on my computer when I get up in the
morning, then go get my coffee. When I come back, it's done booting. I
don't know how long it took to boot and I don't care.

I don't operate that way.

And when I need to reboot to do something, e.g., complete an
installation or make a setting stick, 2.5 minutes is better than 5,
although still not great.

That said, I don't really care enough to spend so much time solving the
remaining 2.5 minutes that it will take 5.37 years to amortize.

BTW, the change I talked about above was free, in that the idea occurred
to me out of the blue and I wanted to reorganize the desktop anyway.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

...winston <[email protected]>:
I've rarely used the Start Menu. Once the ability to pin to the
Taskbar, Jump Lists, and/or add the Quick Launch bar and in conjunction
with the simple method of searching (another Taskbar shortcut that open
'Search without the need to first open Explorer) the need to use the
Start Menu for routine tasks became unnecessary. Lol...and no my
desktop is not full of shortcuts (it has 5 total icons - iTunes,
Internet Explorer, SeaMonkey, my WordPress blog, and Computer)

That's five more than.

You'd love my desktop. With the help of Fences I had nearly 150 icons
present on my desktop.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided that might possibly be overkill[1], so
I converted all 14 of the fences into folders.

My boot time is now only two or two and a half minutes instead of twice
that.

[1] Sponsored by the Department of Understatement Department.

You'd love my boot time. 18 seconds.

I forgot to say this about your boot time: Grrrrrr.

Nothing serious, just extreme jealousy

AAMOI how did the words "my desktop" get snipped from "That's five more
than my desktop"?

About boot time: I really don't know how to measure it, meaning when to
start and stop my stopwatch, or whether instead, there's an app for
that. So I don't promise consistency - but with my 150 seconds compared
to your 18 seconds, there's a bit of room for some methodological
inconsistency

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

I tried this some time ago with a "real" sound level meter.
It turned out that there was quite a bit of variation between cars of
the same make and model.

Thanks. Not totally surprising, and it might help figure out which side
of that divide my car is on compared to its siblings.

Hopefully, if my methods are consistent, including the tool I use, then
the indications should be useful even without a professional meter.
Unless the phone and its app aren't sensitive enough to give a reading
when I get around to trying it

 

[stones]

And, folks will compare it to the time it takes to start up their tablet
or cellphone.

That "instant gratification" pursuit.

Apples and oranges there. Not only are phones and tablets booting from
SSDs, but almost always when you "start up" your phone or tablet, it's
just dehibernating (and from an SSD!) -- if you ever have to "reset" the
device because something stopped working properly (a friend's iPhone
needs this from time to time because Safari gets into a wonky state
occasionally), you'll see how long it truly takes to boot up (for that
iPhone it's about 30 seconds to 1 minute, faster than a PC but again,
it's booting from SSD, and it sure as hell isn't instant). The "reset"
procedure is the eqivalent of actually choosing "Restart" from the "Shut
down" menu on a Windows PC.

Even letting the battery go dead usually won't result in a true reboot
when it's recharged. Phones and tablets sense low battery and gracefully
hibernate to their SSD, usually, then refuse to dehibernate again until
the battery's charged back up above some threshold.

 

[Wolf K]

Actually, it does apply to most startup applets.They sit in the
background, not actually running, but waiting for you to press some
key (or some other event to occur) to activate and use them.[...]

We're quibbling about semantics. An applet that "sits in the background"
is using RAM, and checking interrupts. In my lexicon that means it's
running. It may or may not load additional modules when it detects a
"go" signal, depends on what it does/how it's designed.

Have a good day,

 

[Char Jackson]

I use Windows 8, almost exclusively with the traditional desktop
interface, and with Start 8 installed. If you were to look at and use
my computer, you would have a hard time realizing that it's not
Windows 7.

Did you manage to kill the 'hot zone' in the upper left corner and the other
W8 zone along the right edge of the screen that pops out the multiple icons?
Also, were you able to kill the capability to switch UI's when pressing the
Windows key by itself?

Until I can completely hide the new UI, I'm still recommending Win7 to the
people who ask me, so it would be nice to address these last few items.

 

[Char Jackson]

What you call "the horrible look" isn't there on my machine. Please
reread my message quoted above, and let me repeat "I use Windows 8,
almost exclusively with the traditional desktop interface, and with
Start 8 installed. If you were to look at and use my computer, you
would have a hard time realizing that it's not Windows 7. "

In addition to the things I asked about in a previous post, is there a way
(a theme, perhaps?) that takes the Win8 "square-windows Win3-look" and makes
the windows look more like Win 7?

 

[Char Jackson]

As always, hold down the Windows key, and press Pause|Break. Or just
look around enough and you'll see a few small differences. But there
aren't many and they are small.

The Windows key, by itself, is enough to switch UI's. I'd like to disable
that single key press and make it require a double key press so as not to
trigger it inadvertently.

 

[Char Jackson]

As far as I'm concerned, the most important thing to remember is that
it has *two* interfaces. The one you are talking about (the
"smart-phone like GUI") is only the default one, and one that doesn't
have to ever be used.

Consider this an open invitation to explain how the new UI "doesn't
have to ever be used". I've got it down to a minimum, but so far I can't
avoid it entirely, although I would like to.

 

[Stef]

Bear in mind that if you load a program and don't use it, the RAM it
took up is very quickly paged out. So what you say isn't necessarily
correct at all.

If it's not used, it's a waste of time to load it, and it shouldn't
be regardless of what the system does with idle processes.

If I start an app or applet at boot time, it means it's necessary and
will most likely be in use immediately like an antimalware utility or
firewall. I consider "quick launch" stubs a waste of RAM. So, it
takes a few seconds longer to load an app. Big deal. Also, application
background auto-updaters are removed from the boot startup. (I do have
the system updater running, but in "Notify" mode. It's important.)

I like fast, lean, efficient systems. I even "turn off" much of the eye
candy, so even that crap doesn't get loaded. Unfortunately,
Microsoft's policy is the exact opposite. By default, everything is
loaded including the kitchen sink. Functionality is secondary. No
wonder, Windows has always been such a resource hog.


Stef

 

[...winston]

If it's not used, it's a waste of time to load it, and it shouldn't
be regardless of what the system does with idle processes.

If I start an app or applet at boot time, it means it's necessary and
will most likely be in use immediately like an antimalware utility or
firewall. I consider "quick launch" stubs a waste of RAM. So, it
takes a few seconds longer to load an app. Big deal. Also, application
background auto-updaters are removed from the boot startup. (I do have
the system updater running, but in "Notify" mode. It's important.)

I like fast, lean, efficient systems. I even "turn off" much of the eye
candy, so even that crap doesn't get loaded. Unfortunately,
Microsoft's policy is the exact opposite. By default, everything is
loaded including the kitchen sink. Functionality is secondary. No
wonder, Windows has always been such a resource hog.


Stef

For the most part that's true. With Windows 8 a few changes (MSFT calls
them features) come into play. Win8 includes a Fast Boot feature to
significantly reduce shutdown to startup signon time. The feature can be
turned off, if not it uses the hibernate file to speed up the process
(which is actually quite significant).

Though, as you've noted, operating lean and efficient usually trumps bloat.