User manual

Computing at Entropy House

AppleSauce November 2003

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Every time you shut down your Mac it goes through

some routines to make sure that all files are closed prop-

erly and everything is tidy. Takes time.

Every time you start the Mac up again it runs some rou-

tines that check that everything is, in fact, as it should be.

(If it isn’t, you’ll get a message.) Takes more time.

A group at Stanford University in the US has come to the

conclusion that the shutdown and startup routines

duplicate their efforts, and that the shutdown routines

could be eliminated. Their tests show that it’s quicker to

simply turn the computer off, or crash it.

For Red Hat Linux a proper shutdown and restart takes

105 seconds, a crash and restart 75 seconds. For Win-

dows XP the figures are 62 and 48 seconds. (The reader

is invited to experiment with Mac OS 9 and OS X.)

Saving a few seconds at shutdown and restart may not

sound like much, but accepting crashes as normal can

actually save time with critical systems. Rather than hav-

ing fault detection code that shuts things down carefully

and restarts, simply allowing a program to crash and

then restarting has things working again more quickly.

(And after a Word .doc that came by e-mail crashed

Word twice one gave up on it, and told the sender so.)

Had occasion to plug flash drive into client’s Windows

XP PC to collect some files for their publication. Usual

person wasn’t in, and other person wasn’t sure what was

where on the machine. Eventually transferred the files,

but might have been easier to key cd xxx a few times

and then copy merchandise.txt e:. That Windows

GUI just gets in the way at times.

When the job was finished put it on CD and took it to the

printer. Phone call came later in the morning: both PCs

refused to read it (Even though worked OK on both

machines here). Went home, made another, and took

that in. Second one worked.

MacSkate is a device made by Marathon Computer

<www.marathoncomputer.com/macskate.html>

to put wheels under Macs: ‘The four full-swiveling cast-

ers let it slip around corners as agile and sure-footed as a

cat.’

Hmm... Cat and mouse around the monitor? They’ll need

to redesign it for the G5.