September 22, 1998
Shareware Fee: $20
Marc Moini Shareware
Startup Doubler
Download
Pros: faster startups, no configuration required
Cons: large files created in system folder; questions about speed increase with faster systems, Mac OS 8.5
Startup Doubler is a control panel an innovative piece of software which speeds up your Mac's booting process. It analyzes all the extensions and control panels you load at startup, how your computer loads them, and then figures out how to load them faster at startup by caching the files. Startup Doubler creates one big "data" file, which it loads at startup and stores in the Preferences folder in your System Folder.
For an analogy, measure the difference between how long it takes to copy 50 little files totaling 10MB, from one folder to another, and the time needed for a single 10MB file from one folder to another. The latter always finishes first because the Finder doesn't need to spend time opening and closing a number of files.
That same analogy also holds true for just how much of a speed gain you'll experience, though. If you compare the copying speed on a computer running Mac OS 7.6 to a computer running Mac OS 8.1, Mac OS 8.1 is faster due to improvements in the system-level file-copying routines. Simiarly, the booting process is always speedier under 8.1. Likewise, the faster you Macintosh and hard drive, the less performance gain you'll notice.
But don't be worried by that too much. You'll still see gains on most Power Macs running Mac OS 8.0 and 8.1, just not as substantial as those made under Mac OS 7.6 or on an 040.
| System |
RAM |
Disk Cache |
Startup Savings |
| 601 @ 90 MHz |
84 MB |
2048k |
65 sec. vs. 54 sec. - 11 sec. |
| 604 @ 150 MHz |
128 MB |
4096k |
59 sec. vs. 54 sec. - 5 sec. |
| G3 @ 266 MHz |
64 MB |
1024k |
41 sec. vs. 40 sec. - 1 sec. |
Startup Doubler's $20 price tag will ultimately be determined by how precious those seconds that you save during a startup really are. -MJH
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