Suddenly Speed Dominates (look at the initials, you'll work it out)

So, with some of the money from the Great Decluttering I am doing, I bought an SSD and a 1TB hard disk for my big desktop-replacement laptop. It's a big beast & takes 2 x 2.5" hard disks.

I've put my root folder on the SSD and /home on the HD, and merged all the stuff from my Windows home directory and data directory and Linux' /home into one big shared NTFS partition.

For Ubuntu, all I had to do was boot off a recent CD and reinstall GRUB and everything worked. (OK, I had to manually point it at my new swap partition.) These UUID things are excellent.

Windows required finding an install DVD, starting off it and doing a "Startup Repair" but then it was happy.

With Win7 the difference is not all that dramatic. It's quicker, sure, but still takes tens of seconds.

But Ubuntu... *wow*. From GRUB menu to login screen in about 2-3 seconds. From there to desktop in ~1 sec.

Stunning. I had heard it was good, but those poor Windows users just have no idea.