Why are PPC's so slow to start?

[imported_EricG]

I've been a PPC owner now for about four months and am left wondering why these machines take approx. 30 secs before they go through their start-up routines.

I'm talking about just turning the unit on with no add-ons, (not re-booting).

I have a couple of HP 200LX's that I've been using for 10+ years, and in contrast, they turn on/start up in *less than one second*, literally. They're using 80186 CPUs and so are vastly under-muscled compared to the PPCs of today. Yet their start-up leaves PPCs in the dust.

What's the problem?

[Vance G]

Dunno, but if it's doing it after a hard reset, suspect hardware fault.

NONE of the PPC's I have owned have EVER taken more than 1 sec. to start up, even when loaded up with software...

[imported_EricG]

Originally posted by Vance G
Dunno, but if it's doing it after a hard reset, suspect hardware fault.

NONE of the PPC's I have owned have EVER taken more than 1 sec. to start up, even when loaded up with software...

One second huh?
Mine turns on in one second, but that's about it.
Can you actually selects apps to run after that one second?
Mine's doing 'internal thinking' and won't let you do anything for a while.

I haven't hard-resetted for a while (and don't care to go down that road again if I can help it at all).
As I mentioned, there really aren't any add-ons at the moment (just a tiny one, V-Bar) and no Today plugins at all.

Startup time takes from between 20 - 30 secs at the beginning of the day. Lord only knows what the machine does before you can actually start to use it!
And it's got a 500 Mhz processor too with plenty of RAM space available.

[Vance G]

Yep, can start things as long as they're not dependant on WiFi. That takes about another 5 - 10 sec to start, depending on signal conditions (hX 2755, BTW).

Things that probably affect startup:

CF/SD card in slot
obscenely huge amt. of Contacts/Appointments
Today plugins

I see upon re-reading your post that you may not have tried a hard reset to see if it helps. Have you?

[imported_EricG]

Originally posted by Vance G
Yep, can start things as long as they're not dependant on WiFi. That takes about another 5 - 10 sec to start, depending on signal conditions (hX 2755, BTW).

Things that probably affect startup:

CF/SD card in slot
obscenely huge amt. of Contacts/Appointments
Today plugins

I see upon re-reading your post that you may not have tried a hard reset to see if it helps. Have you?

Yeah I know that WiFi will slow things down, but I'm talking about before starting up the WiFi connection. I'm waiting 30 secs before I can do WiFi.

I _do have two cards permanently in the machine. One SD, one CF. Not many appointments. No contacts.

I will try a fresh reset soon to see if it would help. But I won't get my hopes up too high.

Thanks.

[Wail]

EricG,

In a nut-shell, since your PPC is taking 30 seconds before you tap on any application and you say you have not installed any of your own applications that may cause any issues ... then there is only one explanation, you have a faulty machine.

Just for the records, I currently use iPaq 4700, and an i-mate ? both with over 1,500 contacts; 100s of Tasks; 1,000s of appointments, and 100s of files onboard and on storage (SD & CF) yet I experience no such slow-downs what so ever. As a matter of fact, I have had PDA long before the HX200 was ever out and not a single one of them took this long to allow me to ?use? it.

[Menneisyys]

Originally posted by EricG
I've been a PPC owner now for about four months and am left wondering why these machines take approx. 30 secs before they go through their start-up routines.

All new Pocket PC's are like so, unlike old ones. (For comparison, an E-125 runnning PPC2k needs appr. 6-7 seconds to boot in after a reset; an iPAQ 36xx runnning PPC2k2 about 2-3.) The reason for this is very easy to explain: WM2003+ decompresses/sets up much more stuff in a reserved RAM area than earlier OS versions. This is why it takes much more time to warm restart than old OS'es.

This is definitely not a hardware problem.

[Menneisyys]

Originally posted by Wail
Just for the records, I currently use iPaq 4700, and an i-mate ? both with over 1,500 contacts; 100s of Tasks; 1,000s of appointments, and 100s of files onboard and on storage (SD & CF) yet I experience no such slow-downs what so ever. As a matter of fact, I have had PDA long before the HX200 was ever out and not a single one of them took this long to allow me to ?use? it.

WinCE databases can be extraordinary big in size (housing undreds of tasks/contacts), it won't have a direct effect on the overall speed of the PPC.

The number of mail you store on your PDA, however, does, because of the OS' being highly sensitive to the number of files in RAM - at least in pre-WM5 operating systems. Please see http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/foru...ic.php?t=36376 for some quanetitve benchmarks on this.

[Bogdank]

For the record
Dell Axim x50
with 1gb sd and 512 cf (both full)
start = 1 second or less - how can I judge less?
response of 95 percent of apps - 1 second or less

I have about 25 mb free application space and a about 5 mb free storage space free on the x50 itself.

I did notice that when by mistake the application space was set to less than 5 mb that there was some slow down. Made sure to set it back to 25 mb

Could this be a problem?

[imported_EricG]

Originally posted by Bogdank
For the record
Dell Axim x50
with 1gb sd and 512 cf (both full)
start = 1 second or less - how can I judge less?
response of 95 percent of apps - 1 second or less

I have about 25 mb free application space and a about 5 mb free storage space free on the x50 itself.

I did notice that when by mistake the application space was set to less than 5 mb that there was some slow down. Made sure to set it back to 25 mb

Could this be a problem?

Thanks for your reply BD.
The x50 is a VGA machine right?
On the one hand it's good to hear that such speedy times are obtainable with your machine, which is quite similar to mine in terms of build.

I have a Toshiba e830 (VGA, SD/CF slot, WiFi/Bluetooth, 500 Mhz WM2003SE etc.)

On the other hand, I don't really know what changes I could make to my machine to speed it up. I heard that the x50 is a bit faster to begin with, but such different repsonse times?

I will check my RAM assignments to see how it's positioned now.

Thanks. Eric