We all seem to be running an OS that is some degreee of Unix derivitave today. Linux, obviously. OS X, yes. It has long been rumored that there is a hacked up copy of Unix at the core of NT, the precursor to the current Windows distributions. In fact, if you boot Windows into Safe Mode, you can see a Unix-like scroll of device drivers and system services loading. At the very least, Windows could be considered a Unix clone, albeit a poorly implemented one.
One of the big problems with Windows, outside of the fact that it is way too slow and bloated, is that on startup it hands control of the system to the user way too soon, while the system is still loading. This makes it possible for the user to attempt to load programs before the system is prepared to accept them, further jamming things up and slowing down the system load process. The user can even attempt a system shutdown while the system is still loading, which can lead to quite interesting resutlts if initiated early enough.
The question then is, wouldn’t it be advantageous for Microsoft to use the Safe Mode type scroll while Windows is booting into Normal mode, rather than simply displaying the back-and-forth graphic? This would have the advantage of entertaining users, and possibly even educating them. Defering hand off of control to the end of the system load process would prevent users from jamming things up by attempting to load five occurrences of Outlook or IE simply because the system doesn’t appear to be responding. You could even implement a boot: prompt, allowing savy users to enter something like “windows noscsi nopcmcia acpi=off” to further speed the boot process. Or would this educate the user to a point where Microsoft doesn’t want them to go?
