Comments | andrewducker: Interesting Links for 03-05-2016

andrewducker

Interesting Links for 03-05-2016

May 03, 2016 12:00

It's unfair to say Hillsborough police were incompetent - it takes great organisation to tell such shocking lies (tags: football lies death police ) How Windows chooses when startup apps start up (tags: windows computers ) Craig Wright loudly claims “I am Satoshi Nakamoto,” but few believe his “proof” (tags: bitcoin hoax identity ) The 9 Best ( Read more... )

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momentsmusicaux May 3 2016, 11:04:35 UTC

> We’ve found that one of the big frustrations people have with Windows is that after signing in, they can’t use the computer because all of the Startup programs are thrashing the computer.

Fuck yes. This. Every time I boot my gaming PC I am reminded of why I don't want to use Windows.

I don't mind that it takes time to start. But it's frustrating as hell to see the desktop there and not be able to use it. Why not stay on the loading screen until everything is ready? (LIKE A MAC DOES.)

momentsmusicaux May 3 2016, 11:09:09 UTC

In other words, a key rule of UX: 'Don't lie to the user'.

andrewducker May 3 2016, 11:11:51 UTC

Because it's remarkably hard to tell what "everything" is and when it's ready?

These are not part of the OS - they're user applications which are being started up, and many of them start and stay resident. There's no flag for "I have now started up, loaded all of my data, and don't plan to do anything intensive for a while." that applications can set.

And, on a fast machine, you can happily get on with other things while they're doing whatever it is they're doing. Certainly on anything with an SSD and multiple processors it's not an issue.

cartesiandaemon May 3 2016, 11:50:04 UTC

I don't know why this isn't technically more plausible, but you'd think there'd be a way of being responsive to the user running a *new* application, while starting auto-start applications without letting them hog the cpu. I'm not at all surprised it's hard to do that, but I don't know *why*.

andrewducker May 3 2016, 11:53:05 UTC

From the article. Section bolded for relevance:
"There have been a variety of approaches taken to mitigate the impact of auto-start programs. One trick was to run auto-start programs in a box that keeps them at low CPU and disk priority for 60 seconds. In Windows 8, one new trick was to delay launching the next program until the previous one has settled down, where “settled down” means “stopped consuming a lot of CPU and disk I/O bandwidth.” Another trick was simply to wait longer before starting the auto-start programs in the first place."

cartesiandaemon May 3 2016, 11:58:15 UTC

Ah! I did read that, but it sounded like they were throttling them; forcing them to low priority does make more sense. Although I meant more, ideally, whether you're in start-up or not, the user's experience shouldn't all lock up if a program is busy.

andrewducker May 3 2016, 12:02:46 UTC

Windows does that:
http://www.thewindowsclub.com/processor-scheduling-in-windows-7-8

momentsmusicaux May 3 2016, 12:04:38 UTC

> There's no flag for "I have now started up, loaded all of my data, and don't plan to do anything intensive for a while." that applications can set.

So Windows can define one. They're the OS. They define the API.

Mac apps bounce the dock icon while starting up until they're ready.

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