Measuring PC boot-up time by component - and tweaking it with Soluto

[IainB]

Update 2011-03-31 from me:
Sorry I haven't posted anything on this subject in a while.
What I can report is that I continued using Soluto up until mid-December 2010, at which point my Toshiba Satellite A100 laptop died. It was quite a good laptop, with good keyboard ergonomics, and had an Intel Centrino Duo CPU, WinXP and 3GB of RAM. It actually had been on the blink for a couple of months - the keyboard processor seemed to be intermittently failing - but I think I might have finished the whole thing off by accidentally shorting the battery terminals when I was checking them with a voltmeter.  

Anyway, I managed to get hold of an HP ENVY 14-1112TX laptop at about 50% discount.
It has an Intel i7 CPU, Win7 (64-bit) and 4GB of RAM. This is a superb laptop - it would be a good games machine too as it has a very good/fast GPU (ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650) and a beautifully clear display. (URU/Myst Online looks good on it.) The keyboard ergonomics and the narrower screen are different to my Toshiba and I have had to get used to them. It scores 5.9 on the "Windows Experience Index". Overall, this laptop comes highly recommended by me.        

I decided to not install Soluto initially, as I didn't want to put anything into the mix that might cloud my learning/understanding of the new laptop and new OS. I have now got a handle on things and I don't think Soluto would be of much benefit to me right now. The new laptop is blazingly fast on startup and very stable, so I run it either switched on, or in standby (in RAM) for many days at a time, with only the occasional reboot following an update or new program installation that might necessitate a reboot. Though there are a lot of small ancillary (mostly non-essential) processes running from startup - e.g., including HP 3D Drive Guard (an accelerometer), Hard Drive Sentinel, and some convenient utilities - I don't perceive any problems with boot-up times as I had done with my Toshiba. Incidentally, I used to keep the Toshiba on, or in standby most of the time too, with infrequent reboots.

Win7 lets you know when it has problematic processes - e.g., unresponsive or slow processes, or processes that won't unhook on shutdown. I might try Soluto on this new configuration some time later this year, purely out of interest. If I do, I will post the results here.

[Curt]

-thanks for the update, IanB

I don't think Soluto has any long-lasting future! As far as I can (not) see it can only be of interest if the machine has very little memory and/or many programs in Start.

--------

I posted this under their "Report a problem" in Soluto Support Community

Are you going to create a totally better way to update Soluto, please? On my Vista it is necessary to do everything from scratch; I must click each and every program just like the first time I installed Soluto Beta! [hint] I have many programs, that is why I use Soluto... [/hint]

-Curt

-Curt (March 30, 2011, 04:42 PM)

Their answer was to the point:

Yes.
If you are running Soluto without any problems, you do not need to update every time. We will update the community forum when there are major changes.

[Curt]

Soluto has been updated..., so now I know that my many extensions for Firefox is slowing down my web browser! Wow, all this time I was installing this and that extension, without noticing that Firefox lost speed accordingly! Oh, I am so happy for the new Soluto telling me that I can gain more browser speed by removing some extensions, and even offering to do it for me! Happy me.

I have a key for Startup Delayer 3 Premium - now seems a good time to test it.

[Curt]

AWFUL! You had the perfect opportunity to make The Best startup manager ever - Soluto Beta was terrific - and then you make THIS?! Do you really think it is important for a startup manager to tell that I can gain more browser speed by removing some extensions? Do you take me for a complete ignorant? -even an ignorant who cannot figure out how to remove extensions that I have myself installed?

The crash predictor would be more trustworthy if I had the program it was warning me about installed. Yes, that program crashed, that was why I removed it. I don't need Soluto to warn me two weeks later about a program I don't have.

Soluto Beta was terrific; you were close to making The Best startup manager ever! But I got so disappointed with these two new features, that I now have removed Soluto.

-Curt, disappointed ex-user of Soluto

http://community.sol...about_it_in_our_blog

[cmpm]

So, does Soluto work good or not.
Or just another startup program to add to a long list?

By the way, I found MP4 downloader.
http://mp4downloader...zdev.org/drupal/home
Works better then DownloadHelper.
If you want to try it.
Don't know the memory load it takes on FF.

[Curt]

-Soluto is working very fine indeed, so fine that I already am tempted to give up setting Startup Delayer 3, and re-install Soluto! But I am disappointed with Soluto's two new features, I feel they are silly!

And still Soluto is missing the important option, for you to tell in what order you want your third party programs to start.

By the way: many people seem to overlook that Soluto has the option to close itself after the end of the startup procedure. Also, Soluto is stable. I like Soluto. However, if startup speed is your main goal,  the brand new Startup Delayer 3 is offering many more options, including much more speed - but is so far also less stable.

[IainB]

@Curt:
Thanks for your link to this Soluto forum comment.
I have not been to that forum for a while.
By the way, as a tip to other DC forum users: I took the trouble to copy the URL http://community.soluto.com/soluto/topics/ and drop it into my Google Reader, so I can now scan/read all the new posts on that forum without having to go to the forum to read them (that's how I read all the DC forum posts too).

It is interesting to see - from the posts in this DC forum and in the Soluto forum, how the Soluto software seems to be morphing depending on user feedback. I see that users are starting to come out with stated "requirements" now, too! (Users can be soooo demanding!)    
This looks like almost random prototyping to me - i.e., with no clearly defined policy or end result, the end result being whatever the thing will be following user experimentation with, and modification of the software ("suck it and see"). A potential developer's nightmare. Development by committee.
I would be interested in seeing the company's business model and the risks they take into account in their funding of Soluto development.

[cmpm]

Interesting, Soluto beta, I installed and rebooted, looked at everything.
A few things it advised to turn off with windows and FF.
But I want everything I have running. So I left it alone and rebooted again.

All my tray icons 30, now 31, with Soluto, show up without fail.
Which was not happening on a cold boot or restart.

The problem I was having was icons in the tray not showing after booting.
I use an auto logon found at gHacks/Sysinternals.
http://www.ghacks.ne...tologon-for-windows/

Most of the time I had to log off and logon to get all the tray icons.
Cause the programs would be running but no tray icon, which I need.

FF is starting a bit faster as well. Maybe that's in my mind.
Seems quicker to load.

I didn't change a thing, maybe cause Soluto slowed the process' just enough.
I don't really know.

I didn't pause or delay anything that it could find.
Maybe it just rearranged the load by priority.

[IainB]

At the point when I migrated all my PC stuff from an old (failed) Toshiba laptop (Win-XP) to a new HP laptop (Win7-64), I did not install Soluto on the new laptop. I had all but forgotten about it. I think Soluto has become defunct by now.
I was just clearing out/updating the feeds in my feed-reader (BasQux Reader) that I am trialling, and came across the now-broken link (404) to the Soluto/Satisfaction feed. After DuckDuckGoing "Soluto", I came across this news item at TechCrunch:
(Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images.)

Soluto Brings Web-Based PC Management To Small Business, Ranks The Best Windows Laptops For SMBs (It’s A Mac)
Rip Empson
Wednesday, April 24th, 2013
Comments
soluto-iphone

Over the last few years, Israeli IT startup Soluto has morphed from simply being PC software that helps users run diagnostics on their hard drives, to a web-based platform that aims to turn you into a one-person Help Desk. In other words, Soluto now allows anyone to offer remote tech support and run diagnostics, whether that be for your mom’s computer or dozens of customers.

From the beginning, Soluto has been focused mainly on individual users, but today the startup is launching a new version of its remote PC manager that brings a handful of new features and beefed-up support to small businesses. In turn, Soluto is also releasing its first trend report, which compares and ranks the market’s best-selling laptops based on reliability and usability, giving small businesses some basic guidelines to consider when purchasing a new PC.

Lately, as tablets continue to eat into worldwide PC shipments and sales, the forecast for both the PC and for Windows has been increasingly grim. A recent report from IDC last month showed that global PC shipments in Q1 were even worse than it had expected, declining by 7.7 percent. The one bright spot for PCs, however, appears to be small businesses, which are expected to buy over 150 million PCs every year until 2017, Soluto founder and CEO Tomer Dvir tells us.

At the same time, 53 percent of small businesses are frustrated by their computing technology, he says. Soluto wants to be a part of the solution by helping SMBs improve their productivity, operations and the overall PC user experience. The startup’s new “Business” plan gives companies a full PC management and support service starting at $9/month, which the founder says makes it considerably more affordable than comparable services.

soluto With the launch of Soluto For Business, the company will still offer a free plan for up to three PCs (or three sessions/week), along with its Pro plan for up to 10 PCs at $9/month, Business Pro for up to 50 PCs at $60 and a Business Plus plan for enterprise users that want support for more than 50 PCs. The company’s new business product allows IT managers to collect all the PCs they monitor in one place, receive email alerts when things go haywire, along with the ability to fix problems or remotely access a PC with one click from any of their devices.

In turn, the new and improved version of Soluto now includes cloud-based, offline support, allowing users to access PCs and fix problems even when the PC they’re fixing is offline, receive automatic activity reports and tap into better communication tools — all of which apply to each of Soluto’s plans.

With three million downloads to date, Soluto is now analyzing 100 million data points each day, including the frequency and types of crashes, app hangs, blue screens of death, boot times and background noise. When viewed in aggregate and put in context, this data can yield some valuable insights on trends in PC performance and help inform purchasing decisions.

So, today, in conjunction with its new plans and features, Soluto released its first industry report, which compares and ranks the best laptops on the market. From here on out, it plans to release new reports each month, which will be available to Business Pro customers. The report is based on a sample of 150K PCs that were analyzed over three months, including data points taken from over one million boots, 224,000 crashes, 84,000 BSoDs and so on.

Screen shot 2013-04-24 at 6.04.24 PMIn its description of the report, Soluto says that its “big-data frustration analytics” are unique because they’re based on “long-term, ongoing analysis of a huge number of PCs” and take into account events like the ones mentioned above (i.e. crashes, etc.).

In turn, it defends its findings by saying that most other “best of” PC lists are based on hands-on reviews made over the course of a few days, or benchmarking software that pushes the machine to the limits. Instead, Soluto’s report is based on real data taken from the experience of actual, live human beings “in the field” under real conditions. Price was not taken into account.

Without further ado, Soluto’s report found that the most reliable and best performing Windows PC laptop is … The 13-inch MacBook Pro. Ha. Yep. MacBook Pros that run Windows in parallel to its native OS X are the most stable, albeit the most expensive. Soluto’s explanation:

    A main factor in this machine’s metrics is the fact that every Windows installation on it is clean. Today, with PC manufacturers loading so much crapware on new laptops, this is a bit of an unfair competition. But on the other hand, PC makers should look at this data and aspire to ship PCs that perform just as well as a cleanly installed MacBook Pro.

To its credit, Soluto also lists a few of the disadvantages of running Windows on a Mac, including longer set-up and configuration time and potential driver issues.

In second place, ranking as the top native PC, was the Acer Aspire E1-571. This was surprising even to Soluto’s analysts:

    Our data has long shown that Acer machines are very stable and well-performing, but to find the E1-571 so high on the list was surprising even for us. The reason is that Acer’s E series are considered more entry level vs other series, like the V series (which you can find in the 5th place).

Dell’s XPS 13 captured third place, with Dell, Acer and Lenovo making up the rest of the rankings. You can find the full list here.

Now I guess we know what the Soluto genome software was probably for - to gather information about the vast market for PC support.

[Curt]

Thanks, IainB, interesting read  

-------------------

Global average boot time: