I'm wondering what startup crap he has in his Windows system that makes the AMD computer take 63 seconds to boot. My one-year-old Dell Xeon takes 13 seconds to boot XP. I have a Mac II at home, from around 1986. Its OS came on a single floppy. Startup is fast because most of the OS is in 4MB or so of ROM. But the OS is basically just a directory browser; I think it didn't even come with a text editor. For the $100 or so you pay for OSs today, you get a lot more stuff.
the greatest leap in productivity has come from internet connection speed. anyone remember trying to surf the web at 28kbs