Remember the days when you turned on your computer, made a cup of coffee, and came back to your computer in a usable state?
Those days are numbered, and the motivating factor has very little to do with your computer itself. It is primarily driven by the expectations we have of our smartphones. Our smartphones have become smaller versions of a portable computer: they are a phone, they hold our contacts and calendar, they allow us to send and receive email, we can browse the web, and countless other Internet-connected functions. Most importantly – our smartphones need to be on instantly when we need them, and they need to respond quickly when we need them.
Fortunately, the newest Windows and Mac laptops come straight from the factory being able to boot to a fully usable machine in under two minutes, and if you’re waking them up from sleep mode or hibernation, you can start using them within seconds.
In the early days of Windows XP, waking a computer up from its hibernation state was a hit-or-miss scenario. Sometimes the hardware didn’t support it; other times, Windows wasn’t able to communicate with the hardware correctly. As Windows XP matured, hibernation became more reliable. And with Windows 7, it is incredibly reliable – and is slated to be ultra-reliable with the soon-to-be-here Windows 8.
Aren’t you glad the smartphones are pushing our computers to be faster? Just think – what if you had to wait three minutes for your smartphone to boot up every time you needed it?
