One half of Windows 7 users shut down their computers instead of hibernating them or putting them to sleep, according to Microsoft. That’s not a surprising statistic to me -- I personally shut down my Win 7 machines because I’ve had drivers fail to initialize upon wake, as well as the rare blue screen. With Windows 8, though, users may change their mind about hibernation, because of the extreme benefit: in a new video released today on the Building Windows 8 blog (embedded after the break), you can see a full-sized Windows 8 machine boot to the Metro UI in just eight seconds.
Watch Windows 8 boot in eight seconds, thanks to kernel hibernation
is a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.
Apparently, it’s all thanks to a new hybrid shutdown procedure that’s pretty similar to hibernation -- you know, the process where the computer saves the system’s current state to the hard disk, then loads it back at startup. However, this one doesn’t save your open apps, just the Windows 8 kernel session which the OS would typically have to build from scratch. That makes for a much smaller hibernation file (which thereby loads quicker) and the process also takes advantage of multi-core CPUs to speed things further. Of course, on a UEFI rig with a solid state drive, things really scream -- see for yourself after the break!
Source: Building Windows 8
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