

Instant On - silentbicycle
http://prog21.dadgum.com/index.html

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fr0sty
Mobile devices these days are most definitely _not_ "instant on" devices. They
are "always on" devices which fool you into thinking they are off.

Try it. Power down your phone, start the clock and measure how long it takes
to boot....

....see?

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ugh
Hey, stupid definition-wisecracking – I’m in!

Mobile devices most definitely _are_ “instant on”. Try it. Press the power
button, the device is immediately off, press it again, the device is
immediately on. Nearly everyone would call that “instant-on”.

That the devices don’t really ever power down completely is merely an
implementation detail, not really relevant for the scope of this discussion.
(At least no warranting a statement like “most definitely not instant on”.)

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Semiapies
Then every desktop or notebook that goes into sleep mode or even just a blank
screen saver is "instant on", too.

So it means nothing.

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ugh
I would argue that they are, yes. At least to some extent. (I use my laptop
that way. My mom doesn’t.)

What has changed is the UI. People are now often encouraged to send their
devices to sleep, that’s not really the case with even current laptops. Truly
powering down is an equal citizen on desktop operating system instead of some
weird function only nerds would use (like it is on smartphones).

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Semiapies
You mean the "weird function" that people use to conserve their batteries or
that they see happen when their Droid updates?

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ugh
I’m not familiar with Android phones. I have never seen or heard of anyone
intentionally rebooting or shutting down his or her iPhone or iPod touch,
though.

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DougWebb
A more-fair comparison for current devices would be mobile vs a laptop or pc
coming out of sleep mode... but even then it's not fair unless the pc has an
SSD rather than a drive that has to spin up and seek.

All of his 1970-1980's devices ran from ROM rather than media. A C64 computer
could boot up to a Basic prompt very quickly, but to load a program took many
minutes. Apples and Ataris were similar, unless the program was on a ROM pack.
To compare that to todays computer you have to stop at the initial BIOS
screen, because that's where the ROM loading stops and media loading starts.

Modern devices are more powerful and more flexible partly because their
functionality isn't burnt into a ROM anymore. Only the initial loader is ROM,
and the rest is loaded from media.

The one thing that would make this faster is if computers remembered their
initial hardware and software state after bootup and could quickly verify if
anything has changed since the last boot. That would avoid the time consuming
initialization of hardware and software. Of course, the hardware would need to
remember its state too, and that's probably the sticking point.

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swombat
Every mac laptop is instant-on by this definition. And while I agree that it's
one of the features of Macs that I love, it hardly makes my monster 17"
macbook pro a "mobile device"...

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nc
The new MacBook Airs are 'Instant On' the few seconds difference that the SSD
makes compared to other Macs is actually noticeable and very much appreciated.
It makes quickly turning it on to check something a lot more fluid.

TLDR lower response time increases usage.

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num1
I see Instant On and Crash-Only Programs as being two very similar goals. Sure
one is about turning on and one is about turning off, but both of them exist
because we're attempting to fight the problem of complex software. It'd be
interesting to see if making a program crash-only (not relying on data
structures which can become corrupt) leads to noticeable boot speed
improvements. The published literature on crash-proof software seems to think
so.

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bretthopper
"Instant On" is actually the norm, not the exception. There's really only 1
popular device that isn't "instant on" and that's the computer (smartphones
and video game consoles are just extensions).

Think about cars, microwaves, TVs, virtually any audio component, etc.

In general, the more software a device has, the longer it takes to use it
after turning it on.

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aidenn0
Slightly off-topic, this is why I've copied all my DVDs to hard-drive. I have
some DVDs that take 5 minutes to reach the opening credits of the movie.

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gcb
video games today are even worse! they take also two minutes to get you into
the game. then the game have cut scenes that you have to keep pressing A to
get to back to the fun part.

Main reason i hacked my wii is to cut the crap on most intro and whatnot a
game have (not to mention the time to speed up the disc).

a player that is using the official disc takes around 2min to start playing
COD:black ops.

Myself, using a USB driver and a dump of my disc (which is pretty much the
setup pirates uses, with the added benefit of being cheaper and not having to
walk to a store) waste less than 1min to start playing. not to mention that
multiplayer load times are faster too. so i'm usually roaming the level some
2sec before the rest.

NB: i didn't see the need of all that while playing mario kart. just used the
disc and was happy. pretty sleak interface and no lame 1min company logo
animation like COD:black ops.

