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Slash your windows boot time

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Curt:
The biggest advantage Soluto has, over Startup Delayer and Chameleon Startup Manager and (all?) others is, the ability to delay a hole bunch of system files. No other program, that I know of, will offer this feature.

But another problem is, that the user has nothing to say about the length or order of the various delays, but can merely chose between 'delay' or 'pause'. Nor can the user order what program to start all last. The absence of these features is why I have ditched Soluto, and still am using R2 Startup Delayer.

Darwin:
But another problem is, that the user has nothing to say about the length or order of the various delays, but can merely chose between 'delay' or 'pause'. Nor can the user order what program to start all last. The absence of these features is why I have ditched Soluto, and still am using R2 Startup Delayer
-Curt (November 02, 2010, 04:05 AM)
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This disappointed me as well when I tried Soluto a few months ago. I'm intrigued by the ability to delay system files, but not enough to prompt me to try Soluto again (I run WinPatrol and am very content with it), for one reason because I found removing it a bit of a chore. I also recall being underwhelmed with it in practice, my objections being in line with what hpearce experienced.

justice:
Looks great in theory until you realise you shouldn't even have to worry about it, because the OS should already do it for you.

Curt:
So far Soluto is freeware and maybe it will stay free. However, if you look at their About-page, there is a list of investors. Serious inverstors. I *guess* the product to make money will be the coming PC Genome - whatever kind of program that will turn out to become.

But what I really am hoping for is a Soluto PRO version with the features I spoke about in my previous post, making me able to adjust the startup in micro details, down to tenths of a second, in a fixed order. I would gladly pay to have such an option.

f0dder:
Heh, looking at the main product site I have absolutely no clue what the program does - couple that with the amount of buzzwords, and it's something that I'm very very wary (and weary!) of.

Looks great in theory until you realise you shouldn't even have to worry about it, because the OS should already do it for you.-justice (November 02, 2010, 08:44 AM)
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Indeed - but Windows does start a fair amount of stuff that a lot of people don't need. There's been a lot of work done by the kernel and "core OS" guys to reduce boot time, and it's being done on a lot of different levels; there's been some pretty interesting blogs and videos/interviews with Mark Russinovich on Win7 kernel goodness.

If all Soluto does now is look at boot time, then oh well - whatever. Especially if it's just by disabling and/or delaying load of services and startup apps. Sure, the graphics in the first post are pretty, and the idea of leveraging flock wisdom (I wonder what data exactly they're collecting...) is nice-ish. But disabling/delaying is nothing revolutionary.

And apart from HTPCs, is bootup time really that important? My workstation is usually turned on most of the day (goes to standby if I'm away from it for more than 10-15 minutes, shut off if I'm away for several hours). My laptop does standby or hibernation.

For me, the boot sequence spends a lot of time in BIOS initialization and all that jazz - from the Windows splash screen first shows to the desktop appears takes less time than the BIOS init sequence. Time until desktop appears and machine is usable is relatively fast, and most of the time is spent loading apps I'm depending on (FARR, LaunchBarCommander, etc.

And once you're at your desktop and ready, which is all a startup-management app can really help with, there's the issue of starting whatever programs you use for the task(s) you're going to work on... keeping your machine on (or resume from standby, or wake it from hibernation) is going to be a lot more efficient than micro-managing services.

But perhaps I'm missing something? I'm not going to install a piece of software with such a buzz-wordy tech-info-free site, especially not when there's this text (emphasis mine):Our patent-pending low level driver technology detects when you’re frustrated by your PC and tells you which application is causing it.-http://www.soluto.com/About/
--- End quote ---
Driver technology? If they're using a kernel driver to look at boot time, I'm a bit worried. If they're not using a driver, they're IMHO guilty of bad advertising.

EDIT:
OK, just watched their beta demo video - looks like it's not even managing services, just startup apps? (At least there will be no misguided recommendations to disable SuperFetch, then :P). There's a few things to say from that video, most of them positive:

* The user interface is great. Probably results in the app being bloated, but it has a really great & intuitive look.
* The boot-duration timeline could turn out to be useful.
* The built-in wiki integration looks nice, but I do wonder if it's going to turn out well. A lot of users are, sorry to say it, morons :)
* I'm interested in the after-bootup "My PC Just Frustrated Me" thing - what data is being sent? How can just sending whatever data be of any help without a description of what was frustrating? This looks a bit like snake-oil.

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