Systems experts with stop watches have poured cold water on Microsoft's claims that its Windows 7 operating system boots up faster than Vista.
The Vole has been marketing Windows 7 on the claim that it can boot up quicker than Vista.
However according to Iolo Technologies, which flogs PC tune-up software called System Mechanic, Windows 7 takes a minute and 34 seconds to become usable, whereas Vista takes only a minute and 6 seconds.
This tallies with our experience with Windows 7 too. It can take a long time for network cards to activate and since you can't get onto the net straight away you still end up going and making a cup of coffee while the machine boots up.
Iolo said that most measurements were based on the time it took the desktop to appear. In Windows 7 this is much faster and can be about 40 seconds. However Windows 7 is not actually completely usable at that point.
It decided to trip its stop watches on the time it takes Windows 7 to become fully usable "with CPU cycles no longer significantly high and a true idle state achieved".
Windows still gets slower and slower as time goes on, apparently. Iolo found that a three-month-old machine can take up to a minute longer to boot, or 2 minutes and 34 seconds.
Windows 7 did outperform Vista at the three-month and six-month marks. But it "trailed the older version significantly" in its earlier boot-up tests.
Iolo plans to release more details on its findings and methodology next week.
