Startup Smackdown!

Is there no limit to my geekiness? I have been wanting to do this for ages: Race my two fast-starting computers and see who wins. My workhorse is a MacBook Pro that I have had for about a year, and which I dearly love. One reason I like it better than any PC in recent memories is how quickly and cheerfully it starts up or wakes up. She is ready to go so far ahead of my 2 year old Compaq clunker that it is stunning. BUT, right now I am trying out an Asus eee and have noticed that it is quick off the blocks as well. So I whipped out my iPhone, went to Stopwatch, and had a race. I pressed the ON button on my Compaq first, giving it a head start. Then I pushed the Mac and Eee buttons simultaneously. I am a little embarrassed to admit this, but I actually got a bit of an adrenalin thrill from doing this. I was pulling for Mac, because I do love her so much.

And the winner was.....DRUMROLL...Eee with 45 seconds!!!

Mac came in with a respectable 1 minute. Poor Compaq finally got to the login screen at 2 minutes, but after that I know there is another couple of minutes before he actually gets himself ready to go to work. I should add, of course, that the number of apps per machine does enter in, and probably some other stuff that hurts my head to think about. But there you have it, Eee is a fast starter. Next I will get my Eee to race with a new Dell Latitude that is up at my office, thus pairing up a netbook and a very small notebook. This time I am betting on Eee. I do plan to do some more serious comparisons and discussions about new equipment that we are trying out:

• Eee--really cool!
  
• Polariod PoGo Printer--compatibility problems so far
  
• Dell Latitude--love it
  
• Sony eReader--like it
  
• Kindle (not really new but I will be comparing it with the Sony)--love it
  

Here is an aside... Do you have a constant soundtrack running in your head? I do. And it plays, without my summoning, appropriate songs for the moment. As I was doing this little experiment, I noticed a song in my head, and NOT one I would consciously call up. It was that George Jones canard, "The Race is On." And guess what else I learned because of this? There is a MySpace Karaoke Page. It came up when I searched for the song. I think you have to log in and maybe friend the page to hear the whole song but I heard enough to satisfy me and, since I cannot carry a tune, do not feel the need to join. But how cool that MySpace provides karaoke tunes! Who knew?