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You know what really, really annoys me? How my computer, when booting into Windows, displays the desktop long before I can actually do anything with it. That is, although the taskbar and Start button, and my desktop icons, are all displayed onscreen, there is no point in clicking anything because the
system is still grinding away loading up services, Startup programs, gosh-knows what-all else. My idea is that, the OS should **not** display the desktop until it is useable. I would much rather wait another two minutes to see the desktop and know that as soon as it displays I can start working with it, than have to look at my un-useable desktop for those two minutes. It's like being taunted: "Ah yes, here is your beautifully drawn desktop with all your pretty icons, but you know what? You can't touch it yet because we're not finished loading up all the code that you'll need to actually get a response from a click on this beautifully-drawn desktop. But you are welcome to sit and admire it until the cessation of disk-thrashing indicates in a more-or-less reliable fashion that you can stop admiring and start using." I don't know about you folks, but I don't like feeling taunted by my 'puter. To use an automotive analogy - always helpful with computer thingies - the behaviour of Windows in this regard is like if you started your car but, when putting it in gear to back out your driveway, it just sat there until IT felt ready to go ahead and back out like you told it to. When I put the thing in gear I expect it to move, that's all. If it's not ready to move then don't allow me to put it in gear.
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There used to be this concept of "zero wait state" in computers. Haven't seen that talked about in a loooong time. |
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But what you want is doable. I've seen corporate desktops that don't release the splash screen until all the busy start-up functions have finished spinning their wheels. |
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One-Touch keyboard
You press a button and it boots your computer and loads your program. |
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Observation 1: Don't shut your computer off. Completely solves your problem. |
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Observation 2: Start -> Run -> "msconfig" [enter]. Remove some start-up and auto-load programs. If your machine sits there loading background and taskbar programs for two minutes after the desktop shows, you need to get rid of some crap. Kill those autoloading IM programs and the like. |
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Observation 3: Upgrade to XP if you haven't already. Faster booting than prior versions. |
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Also: even most desktop computers support the "sleep" and "hibernate" modes that have long been known to laptop users. Instead of shutting down, hibernate. It is much quicker to restore from that state than it is to actually boot. Plus all your open programs come back up the way you left them. |
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I've noticed that I can use the Quick Launch* toolbar well before any of the other icons will work. When I was using win98 this could save me about a minute of time at startup, so long as I had a shortcut to the program I wanted on that toolbar. It's still true with XP, but doesn't save me as much time. |
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* Quick launch toolbar, if you don't know, is a small toolbar that by defualt doesn't show in XP, but when turned on shows up next to the start button. It can be moved anywhere on the desktop or taskbar, however. |
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