Do macs turn on faster than PCs?

[glen]

This came up in a discussion with a friend of mine. She said that the great thing about Macs was primarily that they turn on virtually instantly. 1 is this actually true about Macs. 2 is this actually what people like about Macs?

 

[Printer Bandit]

once turned on, i haven't restarted my mac in months. that's what i like about it.

 

[drebo]

My PC can turn on instantly, too, if I put it to sleep instead of shut it down.

 

[Mixolydian]

My experience has been that Macs boot very quickly. I recently changed out the drive in my Mac Mini with an SSD, and it boots from power button to desktop in about 10 seconds.

 

[gamefreakgcb]

My X230 with a 512GB SSD boots in about 9-12 seconds to desktop.

 

[videogames101]

Sleep != Off

 

[Broheim]

it takes longer for my desktop to POST than to boot, so I really don't see the point.

 

[CottonRabbit]

My Lenovo Yoga takes 5 seconds to get to the login screen from a cold start. I think all Windows ultrabooks should be around that fast.

 

[Pia]

IMO, doesn't matter whether a machine takes 10 seconds or a minute to boot. The important thing is not having to reboot it, and in that regard Macs are slightly better. You are very rarely forced to reboot when updating the OS or installing new programs.

 

[Nintendesert]

Windows 8 turns on pretty fast even on some crappy hardware. It really doesn't much matter to me since I don't turn on my computer but in the morning and leave it on for the day.

 

[lxskllr]

On equal hardware, GNU/Linux tends to be faster than Windows, and I wouldn't be surprised if Apple were the same. There's a lot of boot tricks that can be used to speed up a login, but I don't add or deduct points for that. I seldom boot, so it doesn't matter to me how fast it is.

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

On equal hardware, GNU/Linux tends to be faster than Windows, and I wouldn't be surprised if Apple were the same. There's a lot of boot tricks that can be used to speed up a login, but I don't add or deduct points for that. I seldom boot, so it doesn't matter to me how fast it is.

By far, the longest part of my cold boot sequence is POST. Actually loading Windows only takes around 10s.

More important is once you get into the OS, how long you can stay in it before having to reboot it. And Linux is probably king of that by a long way.

 

[lxskllr]

More important is once you get into the OS, how long you can stay in it before having to reboot it. And Linux is probably king of that by a long way.

Could be. I'm not familiar with Apple, but I'm on 15 days of uptime so far with daily updates. My last reboot was do to power failure. I'm not sure when I last needed to reboot due to update; a couple months ago maybe.

 

[T_Yamamoto]

depends. if its mac os on a hdd vs win7/8/whatever on a ssd, ssd would win

ssd vs hdd, ssd wins
ssd vs ssd, depends

 

[eldorado99]

depends, on cold days sometimes they start slower and you have to use ether to get them to fire.

 

[Lonyo]

On equal hardware, GNU/Linux tends to be faster than Windows, and I wouldn't be surprised if Apple were the same. There's a lot of boot tricks that can be used to speed up a login, but I don't add or deduct points for that. I seldom boot, so it doesn't matter to me how fast it is.

GNU/Linux can boot in <12sec including POST?

 

[lxskllr]

GNU/Linux can boot in <12sec including POST?

My POST takes longer than 12s :^D

Dunno how long it is after that. I seldom boot. My first part was a bit OT, but I think is more relevant than boot time. Boot time with a modern O/S is more dependent on hardware than O/S.

 

[Leros]

After POST (which takes about 10 seconds), I can boot into Ubuntu or Windows 7 in about 5 seconds.

 

[ThinClient]

Who the hell turns off their computer any more, other than to do windows updates?

 

[Zodiark1593]

With a fairly minimal Win 7 install on a 5400 RPM drive on my laptop, it took about 30 seconds from pressing the power button to getting to my desktop, including Post and login. Nowadays, I rarely turn my machine off except when I want to game and my switchable graphics act wonky, which is rather common after day 2. (sadly, I doubt I will ever see a driver fix for my particular laptop)

 

[ImpulsE69]

Who the hell turns off their computer any more, other than to do windows updates?

Kind of what I was thinking...I so rarely turn off my PC it stopped mattering. And POST is what is slow these days, not the OS.

Work laptop is another story..they put so much bloat on it it when I turn it on I walk away for 10 minutes and it "might" be at the login screen...

 

[Red Squirrel]

Since UEFI came in the picture, I'd say yes or do macs have that too? UEFI makes bootup time so much slower on PCs because of all the added complexity, it's basically an OS on it's own so you have to boot two OSes now, not just one. It's a kick in the ass that my Core i7 machine takes longer to turn on than my old Core2Duo HTPC, because 10+ seconds is spent on the startup black screen before it finally POSTs and boots into the OS, while the older box is already done POST within 5 seconds and then Ubuntu takes maybe 10 seconds to boot.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

My PC and Mac load the OS at about the same speed. (plus or minus a couple seconds, but so what?) Both are using SSDs, although the Macbook's is only running at SATA1 speeds.

My PC takes a few seconds to POST, but the Mac will decide to run an extended memory check or do some kind of maintenance script every now and then. (So every now and then it'll take +30s to boot.)

I don't turn either of them off that often.

 

[BladeVenom]

Change your BIOS setting to skip most of the checks, and get an SSD.

 

[JulesMaximus]

My experience has been that Macs boot very quickly. I recently changed out the drive in my Mac Mini with an SSD, and it boots from power button to desktop in about 10 seconds.

My quad core Win7 PC boots from power off to desktop in about 20 seconds. That's with a SSD.

My Win8 laptop with SSD is significantly faster.