How long is 3 and a half _dillion_ minutes in old money?

A dillion is roughly equivalent to a bazillion gazillion. :)

bazillion gazillion = pi * 1 squillion

Now my brain hurts, thanks. ;)

Are we getting close to a google or even a googleplex of minutes for Winblows to boot?

Blimey, if my Windoze Xtreme Pain took just 28 seconds to boot I'd be happy! Are they using a PC with just the slimmest of OS installs and nothing else? What with the AV having to start, all the little update tools that have to run and check on the web (still better than leaving them and then getting an app virus), and then Messenger oozing slowly into life, even my fastest box takes close to a minute before I can actually do anything. I don't think a hybrid drive will make any difference, TBH.

My dual boot XP / Fedora7+KDE box boots either operating system in roughly the same time. This was true when I had SuSE 9/10 instead of Fedora. KDE takes about as long as Gnome to start. It was less true when I was using Slackware (Slackware is pretty fast to start but it loads less crap at startup).

However, I am aggressive about removing the myriad of little helper app cruft that get run at Windows boot/login: messenger, ATI/Nvidia helper apps, Creative Labs help apps, Steam, pick-yer-cd-r helper app, MS Office Helper (I don't know what the MS Office startup tool is called). And under KDE: exactly wtf needs Klipper?

If you remove all the vendor-ware, then XP and Linux boot in about the same amount of time.

For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about: under Windows look in "Start Menu | Startup Items", and in the registry "HKLM/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Current Version/Run" and "HKCU/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Current Version/Run" after you install new hardware or Office or CD-R/DVD-R software or what-have-you.

And, FWIW, all that crap that gets loaded when XP starts does save some time when you start Office or the CD/DVD software or whatever. All the people who's PCs I take care of insist they need these helpers, but they all whine about how long Windows takes to start.