Why Do Computers Take So Long to Boot Up?

An anonymous reader writes "Computers take too long to boot up, and it doesn't make sense to me. Mine takes around 30 seconds; it is double or triple that for some of my friends' computers that I have used. Why can't a computer turn on and off in an instant just like a TV? 99% of boots, my computer is doing the exact same thing. Then I get to Windows XP with maybe 50 to 75 megs of stuff in memory. My computer should be smart enough to just load that junk into memory and go with it. You could put this data right at the very start of the hard drive. Whenever you do something with the computer that actually changes what happens during boot, it could go through the real booting process and save the results. Doing this would also give you instant restarts. You just hit your restart button, the computer reloads the memory image, and you can be working again. Or am I wrong? Why haven't companies made it a priority to have 'instant on' desktops and laptops?"

Comments

Re:Errr....

[Hirsto]

CRT TV's turn fast because the tube has a bias circuit to keep it warm. When turned "OFF" most TV's burn about 5W to keep the tube warm for fast start. You definitely weren't around in the 60's and mid 70's when we watched the tube warm up and the displayed image grow from a small dot to the full size of the screen. Sometimes it would take 20 or more seconds before the picture stabilized. When you turned the TV off you got to watch the "boot" process in reverse as the display shrunk to a dot. It was a big deal when we got "instant-on" TV's.

Re:hum

[Shawn is an Asshole]

What you need to do is:

1) Create an account
2) Log in
3) Check the checkbox next to "I am willing to help test Slashdot's New Discussion System"

With the new system, just click on any subject and the comment expands out. Regardless of the rating. It's a massive improvement over the old way. My only complaint is that anoying floating thing on the left*.

* This has actually become more anoying in the last week. Before I could click the "X" and it would go away. Now after clicking the "X" (in Camino and Firefox 2 (OS X and Linux)) it takes up the top half of the window and I have to click the "X" again to finally get rid of it. I have this happen on three different machines, so it's not my computer.