dixson.org

An article about Windows 7 boot times quotes a Lenovo executive stating that they had achieved a 30 second boot up time and a shut down time of 10 seconds. Considering that I measure my Windows XP start up using geologic time, those numbers seemed to be a vast improvement.

I was curious how my one year old Apple iMac compared so I set out to run some simple (unscientific) time trials using the iPhone’s Stopwatch. The start up/boot up and shut down times are only part of the Mac and PC purchasing equation and my only goal was to measure how long these processes took on the iMac.

My Terminology
Start Up – manually turning on the iMac by pressing the power button.
Shut Down – forces all running programs to terminate or close and powers off the iMac.

Hardware
Apple iMac 24″ 3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 4 GB 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM (no external drives or devices, other than the keyboard & mouse, were connected.)

Software
The iMac used for these trials runs Mac OS X 10.6.1 (10B504) “Snow Leopard” with the most recent software updates and firmware. Boot mode was normal (vs. safe mode.) During the shut down time trial, the following applications were open: Apple Mail, Safari, Xcode, Interface Builder, BBEdit, Tweetie, iTunes, Things, Pages and of course the Finder. Any open documents within these apps had been saved prior to the test. During the start up time trial, the iMac did not require a login password and the Desktop only contained four folders and two documents. Additionally, the only start up item active was Google Notifier which displays menu bar alerts for new Gmail messages or upcoming Google Calendar events.

Time Trials
The first test I ran was to determine the shut down time. With only the ten applications listed above open, I selected “Shut Down…” from the Apple menu. The shut down confirmation dialog box appeared and as I clicked the “Shut Down” button I started the stopwatch. As soon as the iMac was fully powered off by the shut down process, I hit the stopwatch and noted the time. Next up, the start up test. With the iMac fully powered off, I pressed the power button on the rear of the computer. When I heard the distinctive Apple start up chime I started the stopwatch. After the Desktop and the items on the Desktop appeared, I again hit the stopwatch and noted the time.

Results
Shut Down: 5.6 seconds
Start Up: 35.3 seconds

I’m quite pleased with the results turned in by the iMac and I must point out that this performance is available now from Apple. No waiting until next month for the final release of Windows 7 to officially ship and then having to install it on a Lenovo PC.

[disclaimer: dixson.org is my personal blog. the views expressed on these pages are mine alone and not those of my employer.]

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