It's pretty clear Apple needs to work on getting Snow Leopard in install faster than
Windows 7. Whatever they do technology wise to OS X (and we all can look at
this page), they should probably try to make sure the installation time is faster than Windows 7 - Discuss, with vigor!
Comments
You clearly misunderstood Aric Annear's post. The 15 minutes referred to was not the time to install Windows 7 beta. It was the time between that Annear entered the last requested data until he was dropped into a working desktop.
Shit, I knew something was fishy with that time lol.
It's not important at all how long it takes though. You do it once and that's it and new computers will have it preinstalled.
The important thing is overall performance, stability and avoiding backwards incompatibility.
Hell a 15 minute OS install is something to strive for.
It has to improve with Snow Leopard based on the fact they said it would have a significantly reduced memory footprint. Currently, the size is about 7 or 8 GB. This has to be transferred from the DVD to the hard drive. That transfer alone takes quite a while, which is why transferring from the HDD takes so much less.
Reducing the amount/size of the OS to 4GB means the transfer will go about twice as fast. The installation may not go twice as fast if there's still a decompression step but breaking the 30 minute install time would be a good achievement. HDD installation would then drop below 15 minutes, which is good if you do batch installs.
It has to improve with Snow Leopard based on the fact they said it would have a significantly reduced memory footprint. Currently, the size is about 7 or 8 GB. This has to be transferred from the DVD to the hard drive. That transfer alone takes quite a while, which is why transferring from the HDD takes so much less.
Reducing the amount/size of the OS to 4GB means the transfer will go about twice as fast. The installation may not go twice as fast if there's still a decompression step but breaking the 30 minute install time would be a good achievement. HDD installation would then drop below 15 minutes, which is good if you do batch installs.
Yeah, I pretty much knew this, but they need to optimize the procedure to the maximum too, as well as the data package sizes. To blow away the competition, and not merely be "pretty fast". I want to see a revolutionary improvement myself.
It's not important at all how long it takes though. You do it once and that's it...
Huh, no, Windows 7 will require regular re-installs, more often than OS X reboots between point updates, that's why it takes so little time.
Folks, we're talking about the OS here, not some silly game or office suite install. The OS is the backbone of everything you're going to be doing with that machine from Day One. The installation can take as long as it needs to take, so long as it installs fine and provides the stable base to use the computer.
I could care less if the install took an hour, so long as it works.
Boot times are something more practical to consider, though in regard to Windows PCs, I always tell people to stop counting boot time once the hourglass drops from the mouse pointer instead of when the desktop appears (just because you see a desktop doesn't mean anything you clicked actually registered!)
Why is OS installation time even a consideration?
Folks, we're talking about the OS here, not some silly game or office suite install. The OS is the backbone of everything you're going to be doing with that machine from Day One. The installation can take as long as it needs to take, so long as it installs fine and provides the stable base to use the computer.
I could care less if the install took an hour, so long as it works.
Boot times are something more practical to consider, though in regard to Windows PCs, I always tell people to stop counting boot time once the hourglass drops from the mouse pointer instead of when the desktop appears (just because you see a desktop doesn't mean anything you clicked actually registered!)
As I stated in my earlier post... It's a HUGE issue for those of us who work in large environments. Problems happen, and if it takes me 15min to reinstall versus 2-3 hours to troubleshoot... the decision becomes elementary
I work in a medium to a small-large sized environment and we capitally replace 20-30 machines per day during cap rep season. A 15 min install would save a bunch of time
Maybe if they started selling OSX pre-installed on a chip?
I have windows 7 and the total install time is much closer to 45 minutes after three or four rebbots along the way.
I guess it depends on when the installation is defined as completed, but mine took about 25-30 minutes from the point of choosing the DVD as boot-up to a usable desktop (i.e. after the initial system benchmark is performed). And if I remember correctly, it automatically installed all drivers too. Can't really comment on the number of reboots, but it was at least two.
I have it installed on the Dell XPS M1330 laptop with a 320GB 5400rpm hard drive.
As I stated in my earlier post... It's a HUGE issue for those of us who work in large environments. Problems happen, and if it takes me 15min to reinstall versus 2-3 hours to troubleshoot... the decision becomes elementary
Anyone in the business of supporting a deployment of user desktops should have system imaging implemented. The whole point of system imaging is if a computer software issue takes more than 30 minutes to solve, you simply backup their data (if it is not on a network drive), reimage their computer with the standard image, and log them back in. Done.
There are free and commercial packages to do this for both Windows and Mac OS X environments.
If you're reinstalling OSes from scratch, you need to get your boss to pony up the cash for a system imaging solution or you're just making more trouble for yourself.
Anyone in the business of supporting a deployment of user desktops should have system imaging implemented. The whole point of system imaging is if a computer software issue takes more than 30 minutes to solve, you simply backup their data (if it is not on a network drive), reimage their computer with the standard image, and log them back in. Done.
There are free and commercial packages to do this for both Windows and Mac OS X environments.
If you're reinstalling OSes from scratch, you need to get your boss to pony up the cash for a system imaging solution or you're just making more trouble for yourself.
System imaging isn't done anymore due to the large number of images you need to keep around. For every model of computer you have in your environment there needs to be an image. This is the old way of deploying computers.
The new way is to have one copy of Windows on a server (kinda like an ISO of the Windows CD but a little different, its called a WIM file or WIM image) and then a set of driver folders for all model computers you have. Saves a ton of space on servers, don't need a million different CDs for all models and ancillary software, 32 and 64 bit versions are built into one WIM file, you can patch the WIM Image with security patch, etc
Of course, I'm talking Windows here not OS X
My 15 minutes took two hours.
Haha!
Maybe if they started selling OSX pre-installed on a chip?
That's actually not a bad idea. They could have an 8GB solid state chip on the motherboard with OS X. People are forever losing their installation disc. This way, a reinstall is always possible no matter where you are. Having this bootable chip also means you can do drive repair. It may be a security concern as it also does the password reset but I think Apple should enforce manual encryption more so this isn't a concern.
Future upgrades on a memory card would be good but Macs don't have built-in card readers. Plus it's easy enough to get your own card and image the DVD for this purpose.
The SuperDrives on the macs, especially portables, are generally slower than the average DVD burner on a desktop PC (especially those w/o DL burning support or dedicated DVD readers).
Installing from the DVD provided with the Mac is even slower, because it installs a bunch of additional SW.
A clean install OS X on a fast mac from external FireWire 800 drive or internal volume with English, German and Japanese only takes about 15 minutes.
We're clearly talking about installing from the DVD. I don't want to hear excuses, I just want to see improvements. That said I can see that 15 minutes with Win 7 isn't actually average at all, far from it.