Even without all the Sleep stuff, a straight shutdown takes only about five to 10 seconds. That's true of systems that have lots of apps installed on them and also of ones that don't. Microsoft is delivering faster shutdown with Windows Vista. Will everyone's PC shut down that fast? No. Will older Vista installations maintain that level of performance? I doubt it. But it's markedly faster than any previous version of Windows, and a welcome improvement.

Startups from a fully turned-off state are not dramatically faster in Vista Beta 2 than they are in Windows XP. A little faster, yes. Not enough faster to write home about. This is probably why Microsoft is promoting the Sleep state.

3. SuperFetch

How's this for "privacy" invasion, with a twist to the positive. Vista's new SuperFetch feature is a memory-management technology that keeps close track of applications you use the most frequently and preloads them into memory, speeding the start-up time for those applications. SuperFetch is date aware, and is even able to differentiate between programs launched on weekdays or weekends. SuperFetch doesn't result from clean-sheet thinking. The idea has been around for a while, but this level of implementation is definitely new to Windows. On the average Windows system, the advantages of the technology may not be all that noticeable. Mix in the next performance trick in Vista's arsenal, ReadyBoost, and perhaps you'll see a change.

4. ReadyBoost