I don't worry too much about boot time, but as others have said Windows doesn't always handle startup too elegantly -- too many programs trying to do too much at the same time. Rather than use yet another program I just run an AHK script at bootup to delay some programs, e.g.:

Sleep, 30000
Run "C:\Program Files\Local Website Archive\wsarc.exe"
Sleep, 15000
Run "C:\Program Files\Rainlendar2\Rainlendar2.exe"
Sleep, 15000
Run "C:\Program Files\FastCheck\FastCheck.exe"
return

And I guess you could just use a Windows batch file, using the SLEEP command.

I had a quick look at NASLite2 when I was wondering what to play with for my own NAS, (which will hopefully work out to be a silent sub-60W w/ 4TB unit), but it didn't seem to support DLNA which a large number of media players support

-4wd (December 07, 2010, 04:43 PM)

NASLite-M2 is the dedicated media streaming version of NASLite, covering UPNP, DAAP etc. Quote from NASLite-M2 product page: "UPNP streaming is enhanced by profiles targeting DLNA, XBOX, PS3 and Generic media clients directly".

I think the opposition are going to find it very difficult to match the iPad, much more so than the iPhone.

The iPhone is (arguably) priced at a very high premium -- there's plenty of room for the opposition to work.

But the iPad is different. For me it's the first time Apple have gone into a market without a very heavy price premium (when you consider the hardware), making it difficult for the opposition. The (iPS) screen on the iPad wipes the floor with the current opposition. iPS panels are not cheap, that's why you see so few monitors using them. The iPad screen is so good that some photographers are using them as occasional/second monitors.

Mostly, though, it's (as always) about the software. One of many examples: newspaper and magazine publishers have been waiting for a long time for third-party hardware to arrive that would be the ideal e-publishing mechanism. A lot of the big players seem to have decided that iPad/iTunes is the one, for now at least. The only real opposition? The Kindle. There'll be lots of commercial arguments with Apple, sure, but publishers trust Apple to produce first class kit and a shopfront for their wares. The fragmented Android market will find it difficult to make the same promise to publishers.