What Made Windows 7 To Start Fast?

Everyday, we rely on technology in many aspect of our life. That’s includes to get things done properly,  entertaining us or even making us looks fair. It is not a secret that we have some kind of favoritism toward any product that produce highly satisfaction to us in any kind of form, such as design, color, the ecosystem, coolness, usefulness or simpleness.

We used to memorize the favorite brand, but we tend to forgot the technology behind that product. To some extent we don’t even want to know or come to our mind, who contribute or create the technology behind it? Haven’t you? Don’t feel bad though, that is just too normal for us as human.

Ever head of this guys called, Aaron Dietrich? Nope, some to you I guess. Ever heard of Microsoft? Yes. Ever heard of Windows 7? Yes, I use them, but why, does he invent it? Nope, this is not the guys that single handed creating Windows 7.  But the works from Aaron and his team has leads to faster Windows 7 start or ‘boot’ as some of us more familiar with. He is the team lead that tasked to give Windows 7 start a boost.

Usually, the first things comes to mind about Windows operating system is sluggish, especially the start up time.  Yes, damn slow to start after install it with may app or running for 2-4 years. There is joke that the first thing, you should do once come to the office, is turn on the Windows running computer and only then make some coffee, because making coffee is faster than Windows.

Aaronn Dietrich is featuring in Microsoft’s story titled The Man Behind the Windows 7’s Fast Start. I stumbled that story recently and found it quite interesting. It is an interview with this guy that cover variety of topic which included the roles, team work and Windows 7 itself.

So what made Windows 7 to start fast? According to Aaron “There were a couple of key features that allowed us to get better boot times. The first was we introduced what we call the fast boot feature, which allows some parts of boot to happen in the background while Windows is discovering and initializing devices. That helped us gain up to 25 percent of our boot time over Windows Vista, depending on the hardware.The other big one was that we significantly reduced the size of the operating system required to be read from disk in order to boot. Whereas Windows Vista required somewhere on the order of 220 to 240 megabytes of operating system code to boot, Windows 7 requires anywhere from 140 to 180 megabytes, depending on the configuration of the system

The explanation made the feature sound simple but I believe it is hard to be implemented. Otherwise Vista is not such a disaster to Microsoft. You see, even the boot require 140 to 180 Mb amount of code, which is equivalent to 28-36 songs. Now I start to wonder, do they test Vista’s startup time before it was released? For Windows 7, what happen after additional software and hardware were added, does that grows the amount of code as well?

Need sometime to figure that out. At the mean time, please read the full interview.

Gmail turns 5

Last Thursday, Gmail turn 5, a quite achievement for the Gmail team. Human at this old, has enrolled to kindergarten, started to learn letters and reading, mathematics and etc. Brilliant kids do much greater things, including solving complex mathematics for instance .

But Gmail is not human, although it was invented by human.. genius human being. It has changed how mailbox suppose to be, beyond its traditional function of sending and reading email. Gmail has transformed email to the extent, that it was like other not an email application, which is great. You can chat, create and manage task and many more. But it still not free from outage, which hurt millions of users.

Take all these as lesson to improve it further. Keep up all the good work!

The real Lauren in ‘I’m a PC’ TV commercial

laurendelong The real Lauren in Im a PC TV commercialThis is another I’m a PC commercial run by Microsoft targeting its chief rival, Apple as the focus. The storyline this time, ‘Lauren goes in search of a laptop - with “speed”, a comfortable keyboard, and a 17-inch screen - for under $1,000‘. If she can get it, she can keep it, that how the ads goes

I has caused a stir when it was aired on TV in the North America. You can guess why ,because this is just another never ending PC vs Mac commercial wars . We all know this is just commercial about the pricing war, but somehow, the human being is unpredictable. Someone goes another miles to dig who  ‘Lauren’ is, which turn out an actress name Lauren De Long who lives in Los Angeles. I guess she never expect to be an instant hit like this, and on internet because of this commercial.

Although, she portrayed as geeks on the commercial, but you can judge the real person by her photos above.  The commercial targeted only for North America, but who know there will be regional version later? And if you notice, this is only the first hunt for PC commercial, based on the ads title ‘Laptop Hunters #1 - Lauren

There are more Lauren bio on Apple 2.0 and photos at Gizmodo. See, how the big tech blog has become PerezHilton version of tech fame..

StatCounter’s Top Browser Statistic

statcounter global stats browsers jan to mar 09 full StatCounters Top Browser Statistic

click to enlarge

The folks at StatCounter just release the statistic of how web browsers are performing for the period of July 08 to March 09. Internet Explorer continue its dominance with 63% market, drop 8% from 68%, while Mozilla Firefox  gain 2% to 27%.

IE experience lowest ever percentage of Internet Explorer usage had in recent years, thanks to its own image. It has something to do with the bad perception that tech savvy internet users had, toward Microsoft and its product, including Internet Explorer which is slow, bug-happy and malware-magnet. The emergence of better and open source web browsers such as Firefox and Chrome also contributing to the loss when users are looking for more secure, openness and promote standardization web browser.

The new StatCounter Global Stat is useful for in depth view of the stat. It is flexible, as you can filter the statistic based on period and region as well as the statistic type as bar or line statistic. There is option for you to download the data in .CSV format, or turns the statistic to image (.JPG).

Please note, this stat built from the data collected ONLY from websites that running StatCounter script. Hence it didn’t provide overall pictures of how this web browsers are performing.

Global

StatCounterGlobal_Worldwide

Asia

In verall, Asian countries still favor Internet Explorer over Mozilla Firefox with market share 74.72% to 20.79 respectively.

StatCounterGlobal_asian

Malaysia

Unlike Asian statistic, Malaysian internet users are more favorable toward Mozilla Firefox compared IE with almost 36.61% to 59.13% market share respectively. For Firefox, this percentage is higher than Firefix global stat. The trend showing Mozilla Firefox is consistently capturing more percentage, while IE is consistently losing its market to Firefox and other rivals.
StatCounterGlobal_Malaysia

How mobile phone’s Friend Finder service helps recover stolen vechicle

Sometime you don’t need an expensive anti-theft car system to protect or recover back your vehicle from being stolen. There are cheaper and more convinent alternative to do that.

The story of 1 car owner who relied on telco’s Friend Finder service to get back his stolen car is very insightful for other car owners. The mobile phone equpped with that service, is kept secretly on the stolen car, and with the service’s guidance, the car manage to be tracked and recovered.

This prove that simple mobile technology is useful for other purpose too, including keeping your belonging safe . 

The article didn’t mention which telco service he is using, but Maxis and Digi are curently offering these service.
3333540089 cfcd22f758 o How mobile phones Friend Finder service helps recover stolen vechicle