Re: OT: Ultraportables--recommendation sought

[Wolfgang Bechstein bechstein@xxxxxxxx]

"Patricia M. Godfrey"  wrote:

> I tired W2K on a 256 box, and it took 15 minutes to boot.

More anecdotal evidence:

On an HP Omnibook XE3 laptop (Pentium III) with all of 256 MB, Windows
XP Service Pack 2 takes exactly 58 seconds to boot. This is the time
(checked with a stop watch) from the point where I slide the power
switch to ON until the desktop (classic view) with fully functional
mouse pointer (no hour glass) is available. This even includes
swift-fingered me hitting the Enter key at the dual-boot menu (Windows
XP or 98SE). On the same laptop, Windows 98SE takes 72 seconds to boot.

This just goes to show that sweeping statements like "the faster the
processor (or the more RAM) the quicker the boot" aren't worth the
electrons they're written on. A _lot_ of factors enter into the picture,
many of them hard to pin down, such as the number of services run at
startup, the vagaries of various hardware components and their
respective drivers and so on and so forth.

Wolfgang Bechstein
bechstein@xxxxxxxx