What's a reasonable Login Time?

[Mr.Ben]

Just wondering what you guys would call a reasonable login time from a cold start.

Currently the School laptops (connecting through an AP) take about 30 seconds to be able to login, and about 2-3mins to actually login and the desktop appear.

In all honesty though some of the machines (the 1.4Ghz celerons etc) are not ready to use until a couple of minutes after that as different settings apply.

I've been trying out different methods (processing all before the login box is available), but this takes a good 8+mins

Any thoughts?

Cheers

[Samson]

There was once (I don't know if its still there now) a league table up in the staff room where staff would put the log on times in much a tongue-in-cheek manner.

The "record" was 18 minutes!

I think a lot of it depends on the machine, network bandwidth (taking into account any bottle necks, Gigabit is useless if a conjoining switch is only running at 10mbps), time of the day (lots of people logging on/off) etc.

It's one of those things people expect to be instant, but rarely is.

Our average is anywhere between 3-10 minutes!

[bizzel]

We average about 2-3 minutes here, which I think is quite reasonable. Of course if there's software installs pending that's a different story altogether!

[witch]

Ours take about 4 minutes which is fine

[Quackers]

Our PC's are 30-40 seconds boot from cold. Then 5-10 seconds to login from login screen to desktop loaded.

Laptop trolleys are just over a minute to login screen (wireless slows down the preparing network connections), then 15-25 seconds to desktop from login screen if its a full class, same as PC's if its just a few using that AP.

[mikeymike]

4 mins that would cause a riot in our place with the type of boys we have. our good pc's take about 1-2 mins and our older ones just a little longer. alot depends on how much rubbish is in each user account as well.

[webman]

About 35 seconds from login to desktop for a new roaming profiles on a particular machine.

[button_ripple]

We aim for a maximum of 1 minute to log in from cold on a wired computer. We have had up to 20 minutes for an entire class to be ready via a wireless coonection. Staff know they are slow and don't take them anymore!!

[jcollings]

I'd love to hear how those people with very short login times achieve it. Our PC's seem to go quite slowly when applying settings etc. and I've tried various ways to speed them up - any suggestions gratefully recieved!

[webman]

Our machines are Intel P4 or C2D, 1GB RAM minimum and we use RM CC3. Network infrastructure is based on Cisco, 1Gbps fibre and Cat6.

[FN-GM]

Just takes a few seconds for us. What type of profiles do you use?

thanks

Z

[Pottsey]

From the logon screen 30 to 40 seconds if the user hasn’t been on that PC before. If they have been on before 10 to 15 seconds for the desktop to load and be responsive.

Some of the older ones take up to 60 seconds for the first time login.

[jsnetman]

I think the places with fast logon times are using local profiles. Here our logon times are about 2-3 mins and we are using a mandatory profile 2mb in size with loads of logon scripts. 2-3 mins nobody should complain about but over 5 people might start asking questions.

[Pottsey]

jcollings said “I'd love to hear how those people with very short login times achieve it. Our PC's seem to go quite slowly when applying settings etc. and I've tried various ways to speed them up - any suggestions gratefully recieved!”
I wouldn’t do this in a large school but my trick to keep as much as possible local. Never install and run programs on the network when you can install the program locally and put the save folder and/or userprofile folder on the network. Don’t use a BMP as the background use a small HTML file, or I guess a small JPG will work. Icons and scripts are when possible stored locally in the all users start-up and desktop folders. I just use \\pc10\c$\ or whatever the PC name is to update scripts form the server. Haveing the profile cached on the local workstation, then set large folders like my Docs with folder redirection and you should be able to get login time down to under 60sceonds.
The less going across the network the better.

[Geoff]

About 2 seconds....on our thin clients...

Fat PC's are around the 2-5minute range depending on their antiquity.