New computers will boot in seconds--25 year old BIOS technology on the way out

[C0RR0SIVE]

A lot of it depends, I usually work on 5-6 computers for varying age groups. Middle aged people don't seem to use a lot of storage space, but older people that DO know how to use a PC, generally have huge, epic sized albums of family photos stored on the PC, along with various other things, a lot of them average ~200g worth in family histroy/pictures/home videos.

Then you have the "youger" crowd, who usualy store entire movies and several hundred albums on there computer, all thanks to iTunes... I will agree, an SSD would be great, such as a small 40GB one, the manufacture can easily have all the documents/program files directories point to the other drive upon install, it isn't that hard to customize the OS for such things.

 

[PP Mguire]

I have an epic sized folder filled with about 8 years worth of photos from family, school, computers, guitar, concerts, gigs, ex gfs, /b/, ect. Thats on a 200GB external thats occupied by all my regular install files, then a huge folder filled with patches/trainers/younameit for every game i have currently, that also hosts my FLAC music, and finally has a years worth of reviewing crap on it too. I have about 40GB left on that drive. My OS/Programs drive is a single 64GB SSD with the exception of a 160GB platter drive for when i head to LANs.

Sure i have a server but the only thing on it is literally games and movies with the newest addition of folding. Your average person (And i mean literally very average) can get away with a 200GB drive for everything. Games, installed off a disk. Movies, disk. Music, mostly on the drive but most have an MP3 player too. MP3s dont take that much even if you have a retarded amount of music. With the addition of apps off sites like Facebook and such your very typical average computer user plays those instead of installing something.

 

[Druid]

That's sweet. I just leave this guy on most of the time cause I hate waitin for him to turn on and load up.

 

[CntdwnToExtn]

Meh, 30 seconds of my life wasted booting up a computer isn't going to change my life.
I come home, turn on my computer and go get changed. I come back it's at my login screen.
My laptop has been using sleep mode for the past 5 years.

If they succeed, great. If not...oh well in my books.

 

[TheOtis]

Ah storage. I've got 2x1TBs, the first has a partition for my system/software which is 244GB, other partition is for data, I've got 418GB of data on that partition. I use the other 1TB for back up. Once I accumulate another 100gigs or so, I'll throw these two Greens in a NAS, then splurge on a little SSD like a 40/64GB for a sys drive and a smaller WD Black.

Boot time on this isn't that bad really, Windows takes longer and that's because of my HDD. The day the BIOS takes up most of the time from the On button to Windows, is the day I care haha.

 

[redfish]

I think that the biggest leap in the BIOS technology will come with quantum computing. Granted, it's still a few decades away, but anything with modern technology has to have a basic input and output system.

 

[bob442]

well, i think it wil take more then just advancing the "bios"... you ever had to wait for a server with lots of memory, like 100+ gb... it takes a while reguardless. it could definitly improve it, but i guess it would bennifit avrage desktops and workstations more. Pluse servers are more likely to be planed for shutdowns and what not.... cheers

 

[TheMajor]

My computer takes quite long to boot because I use 4 hard disk controllers (7 hard disks). Each of the controllers takes some time to detect its disks. A single controller with many ports may be faster to boot, but I don't really care and don't want to spend money on an expensive controller.

 

[kmote]

Blimey that must take ages! How do you have 4 controllers for just 7 disks?

 

[TheMajor]

ICH7R: 1x1TB, 2x1,5TB (max 3 disks)
Jmicron: 1x SATA optical drive (max 1 disk + 1x esata which I don't use)
Silicon Image: 2x1,5TB in RAID1 (max 2 disks)
cheap PCI-E-SATA-adapter: 2x 2TB (max 2 disks)

the first three of these controllers are all onboard (Asus P5W DH Deluxe)