Stephen Downes

My Lenovo computer, which runs Windows 8.1, boots up in about two seconds, even after two years of use. No that is not a typo. It's a convertible, which means it can function as a laptop and a tablet (and I've used it as both). The screen is touch-sensitive. But none of this is the reason why it boots so quickly. Part of it is Windows 8.1. But the main part of it is that it is a solid state hard drive which basically contains a flashed image of the start-up state. Load it into memory (2-seconds) and you're under way. Why is this important? Because this is the counter-example to Doug Peterson's argument here that "the writing may be on the wall" for windows computers in education. Windows 95 and Windows 7 running on traditional hard drives took forever to start up, and so are increasingly unfit for schools. True. But my computer takes two seconds. (Note: I have to keep Norton's up to date, and I avoid Internet Explorer. Also, Lenovo doesn't do driver updates, so I have to do that manually, to fix a wifi slow-down issue.)