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Study: Windows 7 can boot more slowly than Vista

Ina Fried CNET News

Published: 08 Oct 2009 10:14 BST

Although Windows 7 has been praised for loading and shutting down faster than prior versions, according to one software company, in many cases the new operating system can take longer to get started than Windows Vista.

Iolo Technologies, which sells PC tune-up software, said its lab unit found that a new machine running Windows 7 takes one minute and 34 seconds to become usable, as compared to one minute and six seconds for Windows Vista. Iolo said it measured not the time it takes for the desktop to appear — which can be as little as 40 seconds on a fresh installation of Windows 7 — but rather the time it takes to become fully usable, "with CPU cycles no longer significantly high and a true idle state achieved".

The results are also fairly similar to those found by ZDNet UK's sister site, CNET News, in its testing of the operating system. A Microsoft representative was not immediately able to comment on Iolo's findings.

See Study: Windows 7 doesn't boot faster at CNET News for the full story.