Over a year ago, Microsoft revealed that it considered 15 seconds the ideal startup time for Windows 7 under laboratory conditions. While 15 seconds was half the time it took Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) to boot, some critics pointed that the 15-second boot was a pipe dream. Well, Windows 7 did manage to provide its fair share of surprises when it comes down to boot performance, and the latest involves a startup that takes just 10 seconds. Just watch the video embedded bellow in order to get an idea of just what is involved in getting from a cold boot to a fully functional Windows 7 desktop in just 10 seconds.

“At (…) Intel Developer Forum, a company called Phoenix debuted new BIOS technology that allows Windows 7 to boot up from black screen to desktop in only 10 seconds. Called "Instant Boot BIOS," the Phoenix BIOS uses new UEFI technology to power on several system devices at once instead of one-by-one. It also runs only those processes that are necessary to hand control over from BIOS to OS,” revealed Channel 10’s Sarah Perez (initially reported by LaptopMag).

The boot speed improvements over Windows Vista became clear very early on in the development process of Windows 7, via the now famous boot drag race. Still, in combination with top of the line and innovative technology, Windows 7 truly shines. Earlier this year, Microsoft itself demonstrated a Windows 7 boot that took only 11 seconds. Curious to find out more about it, I contacted the company and found out what was the configuration of the machine they used.

Phoenix “demoed the boot up process at the conference where they showed a 20-second boot on a retrofitted Dell Adamo as well as a 10-second boot on a Lenovo T400 with an SSD drive. The company’s Chief Scientist Steve Jones also produced a report from performance logging tool Microsoft Velocity that showed how the BIOS only took 1.37 seconds to hand over control to the OS. He said that future optimizations on netbooks could even lower that time,” Perez added.