Lenovo claims fastest Windows 7 boot-up and shutdown times

According to Lenovo, ThinkPad laptops and ThinkCentre desktops will boot up Microsoft's Windows 7 "up to 56 percent" faster than current Windows Vista or XP systems. Of course, detractors will scoff at this claim as yet another marketing ploy, given that figures are skewed when compared with low-end gear.

Before you dismiss this completely though, Lenovo is also saying that the tweaks it has made have resulted in loading times that are 33 percent faster, and shutdown times 50 percent faster than otherwise identical hardware. That piqued my interest: How did Lenovo achieve that?

Apparently, the company fixed the drivers of a number of hardware components that it says were causing "massive delays." The driver of an unspecified wireless device, for instance, was written with such a conservative buffer that it added five long seconds to the time needed to enter sleep mode.

In addition, Lenovo also tweaked the BIOS not to reveal selected hardware to the operating system until after the boot process. This has the effect of deferring the loading of device drivers for these components to after Windows 7 boot. The mechanics of how this works is not clear, though this sounds like something that would work.

Of course, such tweaks are traditionally done by other computers as well, according to independent analyst Jack Gold. As such, it remains to be seen if Lenovo is actual doing more work or merely doing it better than its rivals.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at InfoWorld

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