In Age of Impatience, Cutting PC Start Time – NYTimes.com

We’ve spent so much time trying to make our computers go faster, run applications better, store more data, and stream video more seamlessly.  It’s pretty interesting that our expectations for the start-up of a computer is never questioned.  In fact, we restart our computers so often these day, whenever we install updates or applications, and we never expect anything else.  Our future computers intend to address this constant need to wait.

In the past, we waited close to three to five minutes for our computers to start up.  As new computers arrive on the market, we expect faster performance for everything: the length it takes for an application to open or a web page to load.  I sometimes see students waiting for minutes for a web page to appear, totally unaware that all web pages should load within fifteen to twenty seconds max.  Or the other type of user who is so impatient with the loading time that he or she keeps refreshing the browser, delaying the the page even more. 

When Apple released the Macbook Air computer with solid state drives (flash memory), it made me wonder when we will see computers with instant startup, like we expect from an IPod or a cell phone.  You press the on button and you are ready to go.  I’ve become accustomed myself to never turn off many of my home computers to prevent having to wait.  Debates revolve online if leaving your computer on all the time is healthy.  I wake it up and go.  Hibernate is one feature in Windows machines created to address the need to wait, returning you back where you were when you turned it off.

As humans, we don’t mind to wait.  We spend so much time in lines for baseball games and concerts.  We wait in traffic and for our food to cook.  I think we have accepted the wait times involved in using a computer that we haven’t expected more.  I look forward to seeing a computer without a delay in start-up.  Then maybe I can be more green, save energy, and get more accomplished.

As we rely more on achieving our goals online, in the cloud, using a browser, our system demands of an operating system become less important.  Perhaps our operating systems of the future will become slimmer and less memory intensive, translating into quicker bootup times and more streamlined computing experiences.  We will be able to do more with less.  Along with this, I’d like to see the expectation of a system restart disappear along with the startup times.  That would be a simple future I’d like to see soon, and I hope these promises are not forgotten.