When I arrive at work in the morning, the first thing I do is turn on my computer. Then I usually walk to the kitchenette to put my lunch in the fridge. By the time I return to my desk, the Windows login prompt has usually appeared. After I enter my password, it usually takes three or four minutes before I can actually do anything with my computer.
This NYTimes article calls booting up your computer “the black hole of the digital age.” And for some, it’s not just time that disappears into that black hole… it’s money, too. Some employees are suing because they’re not paid for the time it takes their computers to boot:
During the past year, several companies, including AT&T Inc., UnitedHealth Group Inc. and Cigna Corp., have been hit with lawsuits in which employees claimed that they were not paid for the 15- to 30-minute task of booting their computers at the start of each day and logging out at the end.
We’ll explore this on an upcoming episode of Spark. And we’d like you to help out. Here’s what we’d like you to do:
- Dial 1-877-34-SPARK (1-877-347-7275)
- Turn on your computer
- Give us a real-time play-by-play of what you do while your computer is booting up
Maybe you get a cup of coffee, or feed the cat, or spy on your neighbours. Whatever it is, we want to hear how you fill the time it takes your computer to boot. Call now, operators are standing by!
[via NYTimes and The National Law Journal]
[Original image by lorentey]
What do I do while my computer boots up?
Nothing.
The only time my computer boots up is when there are OS updates to perform. At the end of the day I simply use the Fast User Switching (in OSX) to send my computer to the login window without logging me out. Don’t think this is just a Mac thing, I did the same on my WinXP machines for years with Fast User Switching, worked exactly the same.
This does a few things: I don’t have to close and relaunch my browser, filled with a typical minimum of 8 tabs, my email collects overnight so I don’t have to wait for 50 things to download at once in the morning, and, most importantly, I just don’t have to re-launch all of my daily apps. I enjoy the desktop persistence and my time isn’t wasted.
I am the same as Dustin, but using Windows. I simply lock my screen on the laptop. What I hate is when something goes wrong and I have to reboot in the middle of the day. Good 1/2 hour gone there and 15 minutes of it is simply after I login and have to wait until I can actually do anything.
Like Scott and Dustin, I rarely boot up my home computer – I put it to sleep when I walk away, but it comes out of that really quickly.
My office computer (like all the other ones in the building) boots up automatically early in the morning, before anybody gets in to work.
This discussion seems to be turning away from “what do you do while you wait” to “why wait?”
Since we are mostly heating our homes these winter days, why not simply leave your computer on and call it a space heaters that is nearly 100% efficient.
I’m always surprised when I hear that people still turn their computers off… It’s like unplugging your phone when you leave – weird.
Sure it uses a little extra power/money but you’d probably blow that much on wasted productivity while waiting to boot/shut-down 5 times a week.
After reading the postings above I was curious about exactly how long it took my computer to boot, so I restarted and timed it. 35 seconds to shut down, and 2 minutes 30 seconds to boot to full functioning. I use Win XP on a desktop, with a security software and an additional program to operate my dual monitors.
I like to leave my computer on all day, but shut it off if I am going to be away for 8 hours or more (bedtime). If people are waiting for extended periods for booting, it seems that they either have old or insufficient hardware ( not enough RAM) or they have too many programs in their startup list.. What I usually do while my computer boots up is make a cup of tea.
After reading the postings above I was curious about exactly how long it took my computer to boot, so I restarted and timed it. 35 seconds to shut down, and 2 minutes 30 seconds to boot to full functioning. I use Win XP on a desktop, with a security software and an additional program to operate my dual monitors.
I like to leave my computer on all day, but shut it off if I am going to be away for 8 hours or more (bedtime). If people are waiting for extended periods for booting, it seems that they either have old or insufficient hardware ( not enough RAM) or they have too many programs in their startup list.. What I usually do while my computer boots up is make a cup of tea.
If I’m the first one in the office, I usually just sit there grumbling “Vista is so much slower than XP”, but otherwise it’s a good chance to say hi and chat with people (aka bugging them).
I don’t understand the hardcore pride some people have in never turning their computer off. I’m running OS X 10.5 — a supposed never-turn-off-os and I still see it get more sluggish the longer it is on for.
My solution it to have a the computer automatically turn itself on and boot all the programs I’ll need just before I wake up.
Power cycling a computer (turning it off/on) is something best done only when necessary. My desktop is a web server, so it’s never off except (rarely) for maintenance. My laptop is only off when I’m going through airports/planes. Closing the laptop’s lid is enough to put is to “sleep.”
Now I’m a Mac-phile and I understand that Windoze PCs “age” and require a swift boot to their OS occasionally. But I would like to think that the days of turning a PC off at the end of a workday have past.
On Vista- Pet the cat
Xp- Make a sandwich
OSX- Call Apple
Ubuntu- Pet the cat again
Arch- Blink
On my laptop I do nothing, it takes 45s-1min to startup, 20s to shutdown. I run Ubuntu linux and run very few services on it.
My desktop takes roughy 2min 30s due to all the services that start up with it
what??
what kind of computer r u guys using ?
isn’t it suppose only take like 30 seconds to boot your pc up?
15–10 minutes?
I’m really curious about what type of contract is tied to their computer being running. I guess this is some sort of online time-sheet thing or something?
In my case I don’t turn my desktop computers off unless I’m going on vacation or otherwise out of town for a few days.
The only computer I turn off and regularly wait to have it boot is my OLPC XO. Then I’m usually travelling or in a pub or something. I don’t think I’ll call and say that I’m drinking while waiting for the XO to boot.
At work I use Windows xp and it takes time to boot, so I go to get a coffee and say hello to some of my colleagues. At home I use Ubuntu 8.10 and it is quiet fast when I need to use it. But I guess all depend on the operation system.
Nothing!
Running Linux, so I hardly need to reboot. My laptop takes about 30 sec to resume, and it’s hardly noticeable. The last time I rebooted was 10 days ago, when I installed kernel updates. That took around 1 min.
The desktop in the lab (at university) takes about 3 min to boot up and login. Someone usually reboots it once in about 2 months, when it starts to get sluggish. That’s when those 3 min seems like eternity!
How come in all this talk of whether or not to shut down and boot up on a regular basis is nobody mentioning the energy that can be saved by properly putting the computer down for the night. Enough with the so-called sleep mode. Go green. Go off.
On Fedora 9 running on a Dell Dimension 4600, simply get a cup of coffee and bring it upstairs to where the workstation is. It does not take long for Fedora 9 to boot.
whiskyrabbi,
I agree. In fact, last season Spark did a thing about the power consumed by devices and the phenomenon of “phantom power,” where devices suck power even when they’re turned off.
I don’t remember the episode (anyone? I think the device was called a watt-o-metre), but if you get the Spark RSS feed I think all of the old episodes are still available.
In the morning I touch my power button on my iMac and grab my guitar. I let my mind go blank and play whatever happens. I’m always amazed at what comes out – it’s something new and original. I don’t know where it comes from and I’ve learned not to analyze it. The sad thing is I’ve forgotten it by the time my computer is up and plays that in between F and F# chord. I’m back into the real world. Once in a while I’ll boot Garage Band and record the riff as an iDea – but I rarely listen to them again. It’s just how it is. Maybe my kids will discover these snippets one day and be inspired to create something. For me it’s an amusement.
@whiskyrabbi @kirby – the kill-a-watt was in episode 21: http://is.gd/a3k4
my former vista laptop took up to 5 minutes to reboot. i highly suggest not buying acer products. 5 MINUTES! even when it looked like it was done i would try to start a program and it would stall for a while. at work, this was always a good time to get a coffee and chat with colleagues (apparently pretty common behaviours, as noted in other posts), continue listening to some good tunes on my mp3 player, meditate, lay down by my desk for a quick nap or otherwise look like i was doing something important while really wasting time. sometimes that daily fiver is what poised me to avoid the insanity of what was to come.
now that i’ve started using a macbook, boot up time is only about 30 seconds, even with several programs opening at start-up, so all i really do during that interlude is stir my coffee. what i’ve lost in free meditation time i’ve made up for in efficiency, which is fine with me now that i’m self-employed.
ps. for all of you who leave your computers on all the time, even in sleep mode, i encourage you to at least shut them off at night. even sleep mode uses some electricity and the environment could do with us using less.
Some points:
In the Office tell your IT-guy to set the bios to automatically Boot the computer 10 minutes before your workday starts. You get there, type in your password and proceed to GO.
Use an OS that is adequate with your PC (dont try to run Vista on a Celeron with 512mb of Ram), on old PCs I highly recommend giving Linux a shot.
Get rid of all the useless services and programs you never use.
Defragment your disks.
I listen to Spark using the podcast version while driving in the car. Helps the time go by. There was discussion about how we have become a society that expects to have everything immediately and implied it isn’t that big of a deal to actually wait a few minutes for the old computer to boot up. While that may be true, a long boot up time simply goes against how we are trying to have the computer replace everyday things. For example, if I need to look up a phone number, I simply press one of the pre-programmed buttons on my keyboard to open up the Canada411 page. Type in the name and city, and Wa-La, there’s the number. No need for a phone book anymore. Same with the need for a dictionary reference. With these things so readily available, why do we still have the paper versions? BECAUSE… Looking these things up if you have to actually start your computer to do it isn’t quite so fast anymore. I would bet that flipping through the old White Pages to find Bob Smith is a lot faster than waiting for the computer to grind its way into conciousness.
I have a Mac OS X and I usually only put my computer to Sleep when its not in use.
When I do re-boot it, it only takes about 37 seconds.
In that time, all I do is take good, healthy swig of my freshly-made coffee.
Cheers.
Booting up computer is not the issue, issue is unpaid time that we spend by loging in to the corporate applications. I work in call center and daly I need to log in to at least five different applications in order to start taking calls. Since this is call center I can’t be late( affects adherance/compliance) I have to come every day at least 15minutes before my shift. This is unpaid time – simple math 15min x 5 days = 75 min weekly or 300min monthly of unpaid overtime. I just hope that we will have somebody like David Schlesinger here in Canada to look at slavery throughout the Canadien call centers.
These applications which need logging into are made by smart programmers in theory. They just haven’t been given any direction to make them more streamlined and offer universal log-in protocols for a call-centre environment.
As for booting up the computers, if you take all the nonsense software off, you’d be very surprised how quickly they can boot.
I run Ubuntu Linux as well. I run an old, single core laptop which boots in 30s (Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid) and shuts down in about 10. I have a pretty heft startup queue too.
You talked about new fast-boot technologies and featured the Windows Vista startup sound. However, ALL of these startup programs – which can start up as fast as 2 seconds as a Japanese Linux company just proved – run a variation of Linux. Whether they are Debian GNU/Linux / Ubuntu Linux run or RedHat/Fedora run, they all use Open Source technology at their core.
Windows – even after Seven – takes longer to boot than Linux. And Ubuntu9.04 will boot even FASTER!
And that, according to the Linux Foundation, is why Linux (combined) will outship Windows (Vista and Seven) next year
http://www.linux-foundation.org/weblogs/jzemlin/2008/10/29/linux-to-ship-on-more-desktops-than-windows/
This drives me crazy – it happens in my job too. BUT I was speaking to a flight attendant the other day and did you know that they don’t get paid when they’re on the ground?
My flight went from Toronto to Montreal and we were supposed to stay in the same plane for the second leg of the journey to Austria. But there was some problem, so we had to switch planes, and we ended up on the ground for several hours.
The flight attendants worked the whole time – NO PAY!
Hey Nora (& co.),
I boot 1 to 4 computers in the morning when I start work; 2 Macs, 1 or 2 Linux boxes, and if necessary one of the Linux boxes goes Mr. Hyde on me and boots Windows XP. So, time varys for boot up, but is usually about 1-3 minutes. Being “old”, I usually read a bit in a current tech book or magazine, sip coffee, or just ponder the mess in my office. Oh ya, over the past couple of years, I also have been transferring all my vinyl and cassettes to digital, so I sometimes get up and set up the analogue device to start playing so that I can start the appropriate program on my Mac to capture the music.
As for the (I assume) class-action suit by AT&T employees over lost time due to boot/login stuff, I think this is representative of our extremely short-sighted, immediate reward culture. This issue is not new; I believe that the stone masons on the pyramids tried to charge for the time they spent walking to and from the quarry arguing that they wouldn’t be walking unless they were employed. (Gee, does my commute to Calgary count as work?). Anyway, there’s always give and take at work. How many of those AT&T people spend 1 or 2 (or 5 or 10) minutes a shift not actually working? They are inviting AT&T to put in more stringent work monitoring practices, which will never be lifted and make their lives incrementally more hellish.
Love the show!
eeKnud (double-E Knud)
I’m among those who only boot up after an update, so I’m not sure how long it takes.
As far as stringent work guildlines, my cousin worked in a tech support call centre for a time, and was horribly tempted to write log-in scripts for all his Apps. He decided to quit when one of his co-workers (who was very pregnant) was being docked pay because she was taking too many bathroom breaks.
My mom used to go to work 30 min early for her 12 hour shift so that she had extra time to talk to the previous shift and get everything prepared before hand. She wasn’t paid for the extra 45 minutes she usually spent in the building, but she considered it time well spent as it helped her to be more efficient.
Perhaps salary based on call volume or phone time would be more acceptable than an hourly wage?
What I usually do while my computer boots up is, go online on my phone I recently bought a pocket PC so I can usually check my e-mail and get the weather and news within seconds but the computer, usually takes about three minutes.
Hi Nora,
What a great question.
There was a time when I fretted about how long it took for my computer to boot up. I would sit there and look at it as it chugged and sputtered. I watched the progress bar as if it was the count down to a big race I was about to start. I also take my laptop home from the office most evenings, so there goes the option to leave it on.
I also work for a large organization, which means that in addition to the computer start up folly, I also have to log onto the corporate network. By the time everything has started up, loaded up and launched it can take upwards of eight minutes.
How I broke the spell was to simply turn away from the glowing screen after I hit the power button. Then I start on all the other things I need to do to set up my day. I have found this time to be just perfect for changing my daily voice message, check and respond to voice messages (thus beginning the daily game of telephone tag), and if the wind is at my back I will pull out my Blackberry to start on my email.
Love your show.
Good question. The ultimate waste of time is sitting and watching it. I normally only do a complete shutdown 1x per week. Usually, I just logoff the work network and then close the laptop putting it into Standby mode.
In the morning when I re-dock and “wakeup” my laptop, it usually takes 1-2 minutes to turn on and then login to the network. In that time, having walked to work, I usually have to blow the frigid winter out of my nose or mop my brow in the summer, this takes a few seconds. I then record my daily voicemail message. Untie my hiking boots (you know those annoying sets of lace hooks that you need to completely unhook in order to get your foot out), put on my shoes, unpack my knapsack, put on my glasses, hangup coat and grab my mug for a trip to the coffee pot. By the time I have done all this, Windows has done all its redundant checks and annoying pop-ups telling me ‘a Windows update is ready to install’, ‘wireless network connection available’, ‘low disk space’, local network connected’ etc (why does it have to tell me all this crap, EVERYtime I start the thing up??).
What’s worse is when the darn thing locks up during my work day and I have to sit there impatiently waiting for a reboot thinking all the work I could be doing if it hadn’t crapped out on me… ARGHH!!
On a similar note, if I could add up all the minutes (hours!) that I have sat looking idly at the screen while Windows displays a “Please wait” message, I could probably get another years work done in my lifetime! Talk about wanting to BOOT my computer!
You people are idiots (generalising here) – you must have badly-configured computers, and you’re wasting energy. If you run a webserver, fine, or have some other legitimate reason to leave it on 24/7 – but you confess that the only reason you leave it burning hundreds of watts of power for 16 hours or more (16 at work, 8 if you work from home) when you’re not there is to shave a minute off your waiting time. Impatience and waste? Unbelieveable.
I’ve been using Windows for years, XP and now Vista too, and I used Acorn machines before that – talk about fast startup! RISC OS knocks the pants off any Linux box. Even the Windows machines aren’t too sluggish – their times can compare to Ubuntu 8, and all it takes is a little knowledge. Why leave the “autostart this program” box checked when installing something? Why not take ten seconds to open the settings and disable the tray icon/autostart? It’s generally not hard. Oh and…
@ Eric van Wesenbeeck: the extra time and all those pop-ups that are annoying you? They can all be disabled in a few clicks! Even the Windows built-in ones! It’s really not that hard! Sheesh. Ignorance, laziness towards finding things out for yourself, and then you just complain and complain… nobody to blame but yourselves.
Take that extra two whole minutes out of your working day and save those other 8-16 hours of wasted power for the environment. Home users: if you aren’t running a task all night, set it up to boot 30 minutes before you get out of bed – that way it’s all ready for you. Power users: use HIBERNATE instead of SUSPEND, it uses significantly less power (ie, none) and does exactly the same, taking maybe 2-3 seconds longer (oh dear god no, think of the wasted seconds). Plus on laptops it doesn’t use battery at all, yet remembers your settings like in suspend mode, so it’s perfect. Not sure about other platforms, but in XP you just press and hold Shift when the shutdown options are displayed, and Suspend changes to Hibernate. Sheesh. I recommend you all spend a little more time using Google.
While my pc boots up i do nothing, coz my pc boots in 5 seconds. :>