I guess most geeks will leave their Windows PC or laptop in sleep/standby/hibernation mode instead of completely shutting it down. It’s simply because of one reason – booting into Windows desktop no matter it’s Vista or XP simply takes too long and we’re so impatient to wait for the boot-up process.
ASRock has rolled out a new technology for motherboards, called Instant Boot, which is claimed to take only 3-4 seconds to boot up to Windows desktop, even after a complete shutdown. The technology leverages the S3 and S4 ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) features, which normally enable the Sleep/Standby and Hibernation modes in Windows to cut boot times down to only 3-4 seconds.
The Instant Boot calls the S3 and S4 at specific times during the startup and shutdown process, which enables the computer to boot up to Windows desktop in only few seconds. The Instant Boot has two modes, which are the fast mode and regular mode. The fast mode utilizes the S3 which takes only 4 seconds to boot up. Whereas the regular mode uses S4 and needs 20 seconds to boot.
A complete shutdown of your PC is a good practice as it saves energy. Some more every clean start-up frees your computer from those garbage processes that have been accumulated over times due to it’s always been on standby. With the ASRock InstantBoot, you can now completely shutdown your PC, which lets you save energy and free your PC from accumulated garbage processes.
Check out here for the list of AMD and Intel motherboards that get the Instant Boot and you’ll have to download and update the BIOS. Unfortunately the catch is InstantBoot works only with Windows XP/Vista that have only a single-user account and no password protection, which is definitely unsuitable for corporate use.
November 23rd, 2008 at 7:12 am
where can i get this program….instant boot…tnx
April 20th, 2009 at 7:15 am
[...] your computer is painful as you have to wait at least over a minute or more for the computer to boot into Windows. This is why I’ll always leave my laptop on standby mode to reduce the needs to boot from the [...]