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Windows 7 install takes 15 minutes, how long does OS X take?

post #1 of 43
1/12/09 at 12:04pm
Thread Starter 
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!

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post #2 of 43
1/12/09 at 12:59pm
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.
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post #3 of 43
1/12/09 at 1:06pm
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. Me View Post

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.

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post #4 of 43
1/12/09 at 1:09pm
OS X install takes about 45 minutes but it depends what you install from. Installing from a hard drive takes much less time - about 25 minutes.

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.
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post #5 of 43
1/12/09 at 1:10pm
Hell a 15 minute OS install is something to strive for.
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post #6 of 43
1/12/09 at 1:34pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by hmurchison View Post

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.
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post #7 of 43
1/12/09 at 2:18pm
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin View Post

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.

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post #8 of 43
1/12/09 at 2:40pm
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
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post #9 of 43
1/12/09 at 3:08pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin View Post

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. It is called optimization.
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post #10 of 43
1/12/09 at 3:39pm
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!)
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post #11 of 43
1/12/09 at 4:44pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by vandil View Post

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
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post #12 of 43
1/12/09 at 4:55pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by bbwi View Post

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?

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post #13 of 43
1/12/09 at 8:32pm
I have windows 7 and the total install time is much closer to 45 minutes after three or four rebbots along the way.
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post #14 of 43
1/13/09 at 2:11am
Quote:
Originally Posted by rob_06 View Post

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.
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post #15 of 43
1/13/09 at 7:10am
Quote:
Originally Posted by bbwi View Post

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.
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post #16 of 43
1/13/09 at 7:30am
Quote:
Originally Posted by vandil View Post

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
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post #17 of 43
1/13/09 at 8:33am
My 15 minutes took two hours.
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post #18 of 43
1/13/09 at 10:55am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by billp1 View Post

My 15 minutes took two hours.

Haha!

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post #19 of 43
1/13/09 at 11:27am
Quote:
Originally Posted by SpamSandwich View Post

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.
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post #20 of 43
1/15/09 at 6:56am
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. Additional fonts turned on. I think the Printer drivers were on, but not sure all of them (there were 2 sets or Epson/HP/Other or something). They take few GB on their own.

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.
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post #21 of 43
1/15/09 at 7:14am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by shadow View Post

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.

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post #22 of 43
1/15/09 at 11:18am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ireland View Post

... 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.

That's all good and fine. However, Installing the OS is a task that you you need to do only once every 18 months or so per computer. Even if the installation time were reduced to zero, the incremental increase in our productivity would be vanishingly small.
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post #23 of 43
1/15/09 at 12:46pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. Me View Post

That's all good and fine. However, Installing the OS is a task that you you need to do only once every 18 months or so per computer. Even if the installation time were reduced to zero, the incremental increase in our productivity would be vanishingly small.

Tell that to the enterprise, heck you might not care, but in my judgement most consumers do. They actually do, it's a selling point, and the faster it is the more convenient it is.

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post #24 of 43
1/15/09 at 4:22pm
bbwi: As others have posted if you are in a lab environment and using the system disks to do your re-installs, then you are definitely doing the wrong thing. You should have an image that goes down on those computers. That way you are not only faster installing the BaseOS, but you have also put in a lot of the rest of the work of setting up individual computers as well.

As a way of comparing: Installing only the base os with the Apple-provided DVDs typically takes about 45 minutes (start to finish), but that does not include the time of setting up users, or installing software and configuration. By comparison our mac-only image takes 6-8 minutes to go onto the disk, and then about the same amount of time to verify that (can be skipped if you know what you are doing). That includes the default users, is setup for our directory services (so people can log on), and has some of our software. To get the rest of the way we go with Radmind, and that is a little longer, but that is not part of the time we are talking about here.
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post #25 of 43
1/15/09 at 5:32pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ireland View Post

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!

Yer joking, right?

I'm much more concerned with boot times than with installation time. It's not like I'm going to install it every day (hopefully).

That being said, I haven't noticed it installs that fast. Took an hour on 2.8GHz P4. Should be faster on new hardware, but that fast... don't think so...
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post #26 of 43
1/15/09 at 5:38pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by bbwi View Post

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

Ah. for that, we install single PC, do sysprep and create it's image with ShadowProtect or something similar. Couple of GBs image of fresh OS setup (or even with Office and some other common software) usually takes less than 10 minutes to restore, sometimes only 5 minutes on fast hardware.
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post #27 of 43
1/16/09 at 4:11am
I have win7 beta, a CLEAN install(no upgrade) probably does take 15-20 mins, BUT an upgrade takes a a lot longer than that and if after the upgrade if something fails, it will then downgrade you back to your previous version of windows. OSX is still better, Win7 is basicallly vista R2 with a modofied task bar(and that isnt too hot either)
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post #28 of 43
1/16/09 at 5:15am
Quote:
Originally Posted by The General View Post

I have win7 beta, a CLEAN install(no upgrade) probably does take 15-20 mins, BUT an upgrade takes a a lot longer than that and if after the upgrade if something fails, it will then downgrade you back to your previous version of windows. OSX is still better, Win7 is basicallly vista R2 with a modofied task bar(and that isnt too hot either)

The Win7 installer only installs one language, right?

It's also a 2.44GB image whereas Mac OS X Snow Leopard is a 6.6GB image currently.
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post #29 of 43
1/16/09 at 10:34am
Installing Windows 7 onto a empty NTFS partition in Boot Camp on a 1st gen 1 7" MBP took about 35-40 minutes from start to finish. Most of that time was spent decompressing files. The actual configurating of the OS and setting it up was pretty quick.

EDIT: Also, after using it for a while, I think Windows 7 may be the best OS that MS has put out in a long, long while. Not good enough to take me away from OS X, but it's a huge step forward even from Vista, as they're beginning to add little touches and polish to the whole user experience.
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post #30 of 43
1/16/09 at 11:34am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Karl Kuehn View Post

bbwi: As others have posted if you are in a lab environment and using the system disks to do your re-installs, then you are definitely doing the wrong thing. You should have an image that goes down on those computers. That way you are not only faster installing the BaseOS, but you have also put in a lot of the rest of the work of setting up individual computers as well.

Karl Kuehn and nikon133:

I cannot comment on Apple installs because we only have a handful of them. I was commenting on Windows installs.

As a previous post of mine states, it simply isn't feasible to maintain dozens of images in large environments no matter the tool you use to image machines. It's far more efficient to use newer technologies such as System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) to deploy Windows. SCCM does NOT use images, it installs Windows from scratch. Therefore, the install process for Windows taking only 15min is HUGE for large customers.

However, after a number of posts here, I think the 15min install has been debunked
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post #31 of 43
1/16/09 at 1:10pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by JLL View Post

The Win7 installer only installs one language, right?

It's also a 2.44GB image whereas Mac OS X Snow Leopard is a 6.6GB image currently.

yes, only one language, and limited drivers.
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post #32 of 43
1/17/09 at 8:56am
Windows Vista and Windows 7 install by deploying a standard base image to your computer, then it scans your computer for its specific hardware build, copies over the appropriate drivers to the base image, and then finishes setup. (If its doing an upgrade, it archives your current system setup, does the install as stated before, then migrates the appropriate settings from the previous system and nukes the previous system.)

Mac OS X does not use an image, it installs everything from scratch based on your computer's hardware, firmware, and your installer selections in the setup program. This takes a lot of extra time.
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post #33 of 43
1/17/09 at 5:29pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by The General View Post

yes, only one language, and limited drivers.

Vista and 7 have almost 2GB of drivers within the WIM file, so I wouldn't say it's "limited."
With vLite, one can remove a large chunk of drivers from being installed on the hard drive.
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post #34 of 43
1/17/09 at 6:26pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by KevinN206 View Post

Vista and 7 have almost 2GB of drivers within the WIM file, so I wouldn't say it's "limited." ...

The degree of limitation is determined by the percentage of the installed base that is supported, not by the size of the WIM file.
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post #35 of 43
1/18/09 at 12:02pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by vandil View Post

Mac OS X does not use an image, it installs everything from scratch based on your computer's hardware, firmware, and your installer selections in the setup program. This takes a lot of extra time.

It does install everything. A MacBook doesn't get anything a Mac Pro doesn't and you can use an install on another machine without problems.
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post #36 of 43
1/18/09 at 12:39pm
This is something I would 'LOVE' to see.

These are the things that could help Apple differentiate themselves from the Wintel companies.
Instant install and Instant-On machines!!

Some form of High Speed/High Capacity solid state chip installed like a SIM Card containing the OS. Linked to apps and documentation on a second internal SSD/HDD.
(Optical Disks or USB Drives could be offered for older machines)

I cannot imagine these are technological sticking points in 2009, more of an outdated/historical/legacy way of thinking from computer companies?
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post #37 of 43
1/26/09 at 9:30am
Quote:
Originally Posted by The General View Post

yes, only one language, and limited drivers.

well, actually you can choose the language (most people only need one), and on top of that, you can download all the languages you want on windows update. Also, the list of drivers is close to 10x the amount of macs, because it is an open system. I installed 7 on a ten year old 533mhz cpu (AMD K6) with and upgraded to max 384mb of memory, and it runs about the same as xp (a nine year old system). you guys love to hate vista, but it was built from the ground up a couple years ago. they just tried to do the apple thing and load a ton of junk software that most people dont need. they figured that out and stripped the operating system down, and it runs smooth. no driver problems, and it deals with a lot more that macs 100 drivers. think in the thousands.

vista was hated because it was an upgrade that manufacturers didnt support. nobody made drivers for it. All of the drivers are there now for windows 7. if people would stop being idiots and drop a grand on a new laptop, which is less than they would do on a new macbook, no one would complain because they would actually have decent hardware to run the system.
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post #38 of 43
1/26/09 at 11:15pm
A new installation of Vista or Windows 7 should take about 20 minutes because Windows does only copy the image from the DVD. This image-based installation was introduced with Vista.

Upgrading a system will take much longer, about an hour on an average machine.

But yes, installation time isn't sooo important. Important is, that it does not need user action before it's finished so you can enjoy a coffee or two
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post #39 of 43
1/26/09 at 11:28pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Threpac View Post

no driver problems, and it deals with a lot more that macs 100 drivers. think in the thousands.

The Vista DVD (pre SP1) has 19,000 drivers on board and 78,000 devices and components are supported via Windows Update (source: http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/win...vista-sp1.aspx)

XP "only" had 10,000 drivers.

It's a real challenge to find hardware that's not supported.
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post #40 of 43
1/27/09 at 12:21am
Just use NetInstall on Leopard Server. As a speed guidline, over Gigabit Ethernet, you can fresh install about 3 machines simultaneously with a 20GB image in about 30 minutes. With the right architecture for corporate setups, NetInstall scales a lot more than just this.
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