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.

Year 2010 Windows 7 Themes

We’re on the third day of the year 2010 today, and the holiday mood atmosphere still going strong!! It’s going to be another year before you could enjoy another long holiday, so enjoy the rest of the time before the workloads, school and study coming your way in the next few days.

New year comes with new wish/vision/target and etc. But how about giving your Windows 7 machines some facelift as well with new theme that reflect year 2010? There are 2 awesome Windows 7 themes that I came across this morning, that I think you’ll be pleased to have in your machine.

Smashing Magazine January 2010 Wallpaper Windows 7 Theme – This theme contains 32 wallpapers originated from Smashing Magazine, and turned to Windows 7 theme by Tim Heuer. Click here to download. And yes, the wallpaper contain only January 2010 calendar.

4238939650 3858a320b6 o Year 2010 Windows 7 Themes

New Year 2010 Windows 7 Theme – This theme was created by Yonited contains 12 beautiful wallpapers with 2010 as the main object. Click here to download.

4238165523 0bc376d249 o Year 2010 Windows 7 Themes

You can create your own theme as well by following this instruction.

Windows 7 Upgrade Kit for HP Computers

4186568134 35bbccdbdd Windows 7 Upgrade Kit for HP Computers

Receive Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade kit for my HP Pavillion DV2 which is part of the upgrade package if you purchase HP notebook or desktop between 12 October 2009 to 31- December-2009. The package consists of  Windows 7 Home Premium CD, upgrade manager software as well as the instruction.

In case if you haven’t claim your Windows 7 Premium upgrade, head to this page to download the form and follow the instructions provided.

Windows 7 Pricing

windows7 Windows 7 Pricing

It is quite surprising when there is no Windows 7 pricing listed on Microsoft Malaysia website, when they’re running full-force Windows 7 roadshow in Malaysia at the same time. In internet age era, wouldn’t  that be easier for users who wish to upgrade for Windows 7 to check the price online, rather than calling Windows reseller?

Probably that is marketing decision that I don’t understand.. Well.. but that made your brain work slightly harder to figure that out..by googling.. yep. This is what I found on the net.. not from Microsoft Malaysia… If you notice Windows 7 OEM price is cheaper, but what I understand is, OEM comes with hardware, and cannot be use with other machines? I’m not sure, so before you decide to purchase it, make sure that it can be used legally.

Via Amanz (price from Windows 7 launch at Lowyat Plaza)

  • Windows 7 Home Premium – RM525.00
  • Windows 7 Professional – RM855.00
  • Windows 7 Ultimate RM903.00

From traders at Mudah.my

Microsoft Windows 7 Starter OEM -RM 149
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium OEM – RM 369
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate OEM – RM 649
Microsoft Windows 7 Professional OEM – RM 478

Price at Tech Hypermart

Microsoft Windows 7 Starter OEM -RM148
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Basic – RM278
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium OEM – RM365
Microsoft Windows 7 Professional OEM – RM 480
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate OEM – RM648

From traders at Lelong

Microsoft Windows 7 Starter OEM -RM148 – RM 149
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium OEM – 365 – RM 369
Microsoft Windows 7 Professional OEM – RM 478 – 480
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate OEM – RM648 – RM 649

The differences between Windows 7 and Windows Vista boot animation

Windows Vista and Windows 7 beta users might already familiar with the boot animation on each operating system. Notice the differences?

To illustrate how Windows 7 boot works,  Windows 7 team has came out with a quite extensive post about it. Its comprising the comparison between Windows 7 and Windows Vista boot process, covering various aspect from sound, graphics, animation as well as performance.

The major different is obviously the boot animation – The glimpse of Windows Vista still can be seen, except that it is now without the Pearl Animation(see the screen shot below). There is also slight change on how Windows logo appears on the screen.  The new animation started with 4 different color dots, which then combined together to form shining Windows logo.

To get an idea what I’m talking about, press the play button to preview the animation.

Windows Vista

<a href="http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-US&#038;playlist=videoByUuids:uuids:76ad5217-d5f5-482a-85c1-2c84e14e178d&#038;showPlaylist=true" target="_new" title="Windows Vista boot animation">Video: Windows Vista boot animation</a>

Windows 7

<a href="http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-US&#038;playlist=videoByUuids:uuids:6b58ad0b-c45e-425e-b2f9-4bb2953f9420&#038;showPlaylist=true" target="_new" title="Windows 7 boot animation">Video: Windows 7 boot animation</a>

Vista Boot Sequence, with Pearl Animation

vista boot The differences between Windows 7 and Windows Vista boot animation

Windows 7 boot sequence, shorter now

w7 boot The differences between Windows 7 and Windows Vista boot animation


Beside the new animation, there are few other physical differences between Windows 7 vs Windows Vista. It was mentioned on that post that, to achieve all these changes, significant code changes made on the code..

  • Animation resolution = 1024 x 768 VS 640×480
  • Boot screen color depth = 16 bits per pixel (bpp) VS 16bpp
  • Startup sound – Play asynchronously, anytime after the logon screen loads VS synchronized with the pearl animation

via