Microsoft mulls 'Instant On' for Windows

If you feel that Windows starts too slowly most days, Microsoft is considering an option that could help.

The company is surveying select users on whether an "instant on" feature, which would rush a usable desktop to your screen in just seconds, is something they'd like included with Windows.

"The concept is called 'Instant On.' Instant On takes your computer from being completely powered down or turned off to being usable for a few specific activities in a very short amount of time," according to excerpts from the survey posted by Engadget.

Is "Instant On" coming to Windows 7?

(Credit: Engadget)

"The Instant On experience is different from "Full Windows" because it limits what activities you can do and what applications you can have access to," the survey states.

Faster boot times are clearly a priority for Microsoft and could be included in Windows 7, the next planned release of the operating system.

"For Windows 7, a top goal is to significantly increase the number of systems that experience very good boot times. In the lab, a very good system is one that boots in under 15 seconds," engineer Michael Fortin said in an August blog post

Microsoft has already been working more closely with PC makers both on Windows 7 and Windows Vista to try to improve, among other things, system boot time. The first fruits of that effort are expected to emerge on certain new PCs for the holidays.

CNET News.com's Ina Fried contributed to this post.

[savagesteve13]

Instant On isn't a feature I'm really interested in. Boot times aren't significant if they're a minute or two. When I want my PC off....I want it OFF.

[ikramerica--2008]

Some machines take 5 minutes to fully boot up, making various activities really sluggish.

An instant on feature where the web browser and email are available immediately would really make some people happy, with the other services loading in the background. This is sort of what has been promised for 20 years or more.

The downside is that I am sure MS is only going to allow things like Explorer and Outlook to load instantly while third party apps need to wait. Another backdoor monopolistic approach? ;)

[NewsReader_]

Waking a computer up from "sleep" usually takes less than 10 seconds and you then have full functionality. If you want it faster than that, you are just impatient.

On the other hand, it should be simpler to configure your bios and Windows to achieve optimal wake up performance. There are still too many confsuing BIOS settings for most mother boards. The WIndows settings are also too confusing for most users.

[maverick_nick]

You've obviously never used Vista, because it wakes up instantly from sleep. It's brilliant.

[CmdrRickHunter]

@savagesteve13: Amen. I can't wait for MS to get sued when someone "shuts their computer down" then loses data because they pulled the plug when MS had secretly just gone to hibernation.

Now what WOULD be interesting would be a way to start using the OS while its loading, with preference going to the parts needed to run whatever programs you try to load. It'd be an interesting dynamic challenge, but it'd be useful!

[techman21]

Actually, hibernation saves the system memory to the hard drive and shuts off completely - it's "stand by" that's the tricky one, where memory is still powered but the rest of the system is off. A power loss while in Stand By can result in lost data.

[timber2005]

Well if they went into hibernation, there data IS safe. Sleep on the other hand, not so much. But you can't be sued over the functions of the computer. Its up to the USER to know their data is safe and saved.

[Imalittleteapot]

Apparently none of you have found the save menu on your computer yet. Anyway, if look up in the menu there's usually an option labeled File or something similar. The F is usually underlined. Just click that and then a few options down there's usually another options labeled Save As... Pick that option and the computer will ask you for a file name where you'd like to save your data. Save it to a file and then the data is stored on the hard drive. Now you can safety sleep your computer.

Make sure to do this for every program you have open. Also, you may want to consider making a folder or using the "Documents" folder provided to you by the operating system to create a collection of the files you save. Then once a month or so you should take a blank CD-R or DVD and make what's called a backup copy of these files. A Backup is when you keep a copy separate from the machine in case the machine crashes. The more you know...?

[zarrik]

You do NOT loose data when your PC goes into sleep mode. Windows cache's everything to disk when "going to sleep".

[kfelix18]

Instant On is already in Asus M50Vm and is called Express Gate. This is soo good to quickly check your email, chat etc....

[Kainchild]

Quoted from ikramerica--2008 "The downside is that I am sure MS is only going to allow things like Explorer and Outlook to load instantly while third party apps need to wait. Another backdoor monopolistic approach? ;)"

No doubt and on top of that, they are also trying to make windows standard on bios motherboards so all motherboards run totally on Windows. That was another one of their "ideas" to make a faster start up.

I remember there was this article awhile back about how Microsoft was purposely putting things in their start up sequence to make the Windows start up slower and how a programmer manage to reconfigure the settings to stop this but then showed how it would be impossible for an average person to do this without knowing about the many intricate Window's settings and also having to know about programming language to pull it off.

[Lerianis]

Now, that doesn't make sense: putting things in the start-up sequence to MAKE Windows start slower? That was only back in the Windows 3.1 days, when they were competing with multiple other flavors of DOS.
They haven't done that bull since they got caught doing it with Windows 95 and got hammered for it by the antitrust people.

[CBattery]

Source?

[rapier1]

My feeling is that you might be misinterpreting things. Windows is used in a wide variety of situations and, in order to be functional to the widest range of users, a significant number of background services are loaded by default. Not everyone is going to make sue of these services so, to them, they are a waste and only serve to delay boot up. However, a lot of other people will use these services and if they weren't running it would cripple functionality in their compute environment. So MS tries to balance the needs of different user classes by enabling a wider range of services than might be used by someone who is just browsing the web.

[martalli]

I wonder if this couldn't just be achieved by encouraging users to chose hibernate or suspend, instead of shutdown. My laptop is back in action in ~2 seconds when returning from suspend. The times when a hard shutdown is necessarily are really quite few - big upgrades and power-outages. Of course, I have been using Linux long enough not to really have a feel for out often reboots are really required.

This strikes me as going to a lot of effort to do something easily achievable now. Remember how the Americans spent a fortune to make a pen that could write in space, while the Russians used pencils?

[Lerianis]

Well, really... I've left a Vista PC on for DAYS while it's getting HEAVY, HEAVY usage: downloading files, surfing the internet, playing games, etc. and it hasn't needed a reboot at all. It's been just as 'snappy' as before.

The fact is that no computer should need restarted even for an update. The system should generously let go of control for the second it takes to update a file, then if it needs it again...... grab it again. That's the one thing that I don't like about Windows PC's: they need reboots, sometimes multiple ones, when you get updates.

[rapier1]

Every OS needs to be rebooted if you update kernel level components. I just rebooted my PowerBook yesterday to handle updates from Apple. I've some unix boxes that have been up for more than a year - but thats only because I've not bothered to upgrade the kernel.

[skswave]

the big challenge will be security so that instant on does not require another authentication scheme and data protection scheme. Full Disk Encryption hard drives may be critical to acheiving this as they are instant on and at a hardware level.

steven sprague

[JonathonStriker]

Don't waste my time with "Instant On". If I want booting to be faster, I'll invest in a Solid State Drive just for booting windows XP.

[cyberDJ-2038765336053745013836]

The fact that MS is even pondering this instead of making it a feature is a bad sign for Win7.

Boot Up/Shut down speeds bother ALL computer users. A computer should be operational in the time it takes a TV or monitor to render a picture.

[CBattery]

Who shuts down a computer these days anyway? Just tell it to sleep. With Vista on a midrange $600 box it's ready to go in about 3 seconds. I can't remember that last time I actually shut down my computer.

[Imalittleteapot]

I thought they already had this feature. I thought it was called sleep mode? Anyway, do a fresh install of your new computer and get the crapware off the new machine. That will usually put your system's boot up speed in the seconds range and not minutes.

If you had a quick mode then it would basically be worthless unless you could use email, facebook/myspace, calendar, instant messenger, and use your music or videos with it. Well, your web browser would have to work at the very least.

If you could get the web browser working in "quick mode" why not just go the extra step and make the whole system boot that quick? After all to make a web browser work you need the mouse/keyboard working, the hard drive working, network support, video support, and audio support and USB working if you need to save to a flash drive. So, all your drivers are loaded. If you already have all those things working what else is there? You may as well ship an SDK so app developers can make all their software work in this "quick mode" and then what have you done? You've built an entirely new OS. Isn't that what people have been requesting for years? A lighter OS? Why just have half a lighter OS? Why stop in the middle?

Also, obviously the only browser that would work in this "quick mode" would be MS's. FF, Opera, Chrome. They're probably not going to work in this "quick mode" Also, 8 seconds isn't instant on. My system boots in about 20 seconds anyway and probably quicker than 8 seconds if I use sleep. They'd actually be slowing me down.

No what MS needs to do is change their licensing with OEMs. All the adware that comes with your system shouldn't be pre-installed when you get your system. The OEM should just install one program on the computer that advertises the rest of the adware that comes with the system and have the setup files for the rest of the adware stored on the system, but not installed. This way a new system boots up quick, but the user can also browse the adware that comes with the system in case they want to install it with a click. This would speed up Windows more than anything not having all that crap boot at start up.

[Imalittleteapot]

Yeah, I don't usually use sleep just out of habit I suppose, but I just checked it. My system was back up in around 2.5 to 3 seconds. That's already faster than 8. Why even bother with this instant mode?

[zarrik]

Exactly, Sleep mode will boot in under 10 seconds. My Vista PC takes 8 seconds to wake from boot. This is exactly why the default power button state in Vista is sleep instead of a cold shut down.

[Imalittleteapot]

Well honestly after thinknig about it, as far as I can tell my Vista box is back out of sleep and running before my monitor even kicks back out of power saving mode , and my old CRT would take about 8 or 9 sec sometimes to get out of power saving mode. I don't know if you're using a CRT or anything, but as far as I can tell the system is coming out of sleep even faster than I think, I just can't see it because the monitor hasn't come back on yet. Which means even if it did come back faster I couldn't tell the difference.

[Seaspray0]

What I would like to see available before the logon screen: Wireless network connections. In a domain environment, having a network connection is a need prior to logon if you wish to logon as a domain user that is not yet cached to the machine.

[RompStar_420]

Make the damn thing run nice, when I am using it.

Also, when I go to shut-down, it should cleanly shut everything down without errors and further user interaction. So I press shutdown, and even if it takes some services some time to properly turn off, it should eventually do that, when I come back the next day to the PC, it still should not be working on a Shutdown from yesterday or asking me to confirm something.

Funny this work like a chart on Linux:

shutdown -P now

works everytime, and damn stupid windows can't get that right......

[jamorama]

It should be able to have three boot options...
#1 Superfast bootup- Only boots up and allow programs such as media players/browsers (what is described)
#2 Boot up described above, but windows will use errr... half the cpu for loading up the rest of the comp.
#3 Normal Boot.

[Imalittleteapot]

It's a waste I think. Once you've loaded all the drivers to make your media players and web browsers work you've basically already loaded an entire OS anyway. The web browser uses the HD, network card, sound card, and video card right? If you can get a web browser working then you can get Word or Excel or Solitaire working too. Why stop half way through? Why not just skip steps #2 and #3 and put a whole new super fast OS in BIOS? Well, if MS did that then you wouldn't need to buy Windows anymore would you? That's why MS only wants to provide half the solution.

[Heebee Jeebies]

Instant on would only be interesting if it did the instant on thing while the full Windows continued to load in the background so that after a minute or two you can do everything. If you have turn it off and boot normally then Instant On is Instant Trash.

Also forget about instant messaging, if your going to have web browsing then you need e-mail as well.

Robert

[zarrik]

Microsoft could very easily offer an "instant on" mode considering you can boot from sleep mode in under 10 seconds. They could find a way to optimize the "wake from sleep" mode in order to give it an even quicker power up.

[purcell429]

Uhh... I wouldn't really consider 8 seconds to be "instant" especially when OSX on my Macbook Pro will FULLY turn on in under 15 seconds, and off in under 5.

[zarrik]

A cold boot of a MacBook takes aprox. 40 seconds to load, assuming you are running Leopard. A cold boot of Tiger takes about 25 seconds.

[rapier1]

ON my system it takes around 65 seconds to reboot. This is from hitting the power button to having a usable desktop. My Vista box takes around 75 seconds.

[utollwi]

every morning. 10 minutes and often more (especially on update Tuesdays...when the laptop has a mind of its own) it takes for the laptop start. That is criminal. Thats 40 hours per work year! 10x240/60.

Microsoft owes the world billions of hours for the loss of productivity.

[rapier1]

There is something seriously wrong with your laptop.

[zarrik]

My problem with today's "instant on" solutions is that you aren't loading the same apps... One of the common uses is to check your email quickely. So let's assume you setup your favorite POP3 email account in the "instant on" email client. You check your mail and download the messages. Now you boot into the full OS. You don't have your email because you downloaded it via a different client. Same goes for things like documents.

[Imalittleteapot]

Good point.

[rapier1]

Then don't use POP3. IMAP is a better solution anyway.

[Imalittleteapot]

And this is the nature of POP vs IMAP. rapier1, also good point.

[jaypres]

I got a full OS X in 40 s from cold boot. Sad there are so many people asking for features that are already available for years on alternate platforms.

[zarrik]

40 seconds is far from Instant.

[ckurowic]

Yes but it is far better than most windows machines. My brand spanking new 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo machine I built (XP, 4GB of RAM) takes 1.5 minutes to fully start up (fresh install of XP mind you)! My 2.4GHz iMac Core 2 Duo takes 25.

[rapier1]

It takes me 65 second with OS X and 75 seconds with Vista to get to the same state (a usable desktop). I don't really see a 10 second difference as being all that problematic.