The slowest part of my 'boot' time with 7 on my laptop was typing 'jafo' in the login pass.

It took about 2 seconds.

8 simply 'fakes it'.  It's not a cold boot.....just applies the mobile 'method' to Desktops....along with its interface....

Don't tell Starkers about this thread. He'll flip.

I posted this in an effort to clear up misconceptions of some people thinking their systems "boot up" in 10 seconds or less from a cold full shutdown.

I like my machine to shut down when I tell it to.  Not to "fake it" as Jafo put it.

I am happy with a 45 second cold boot to a useable desktop. My life isn't so important that I'll miss those 45 seconds...hehe...

If it's like mine.....SSD Life says it's been powered up for  1 year 4 months 17 days and 9 hours...and in that time has been shut down 43 times - hardly enough to worry about boot speed.....

Maybe I shouldn't, but I shut mine down every night. 

Does putting the system to sleep every night count as a cold boot when started back up?

Kona, I am so sorry..       ..is there anything I can do to help you? 

Yeah. I need a drink and a thousand bucks. That should do it for some computer upgrades.

As do I!

Sleep/Hibernate is disabled on my machine due to Samsung Magician [the software that comes with my SSD] determining they are not necessary on an SSD drive.

Anyhow, enough about that! 

I have real life [changing] issues and may not be around much.

10 second boot...

install 7/8 (while 8 will be a bit faster)
Shutdown your system.
disable the Bios splash screen or minimize the time for it to be shown to 2 seconds
Pull the PSU plug or switch it off.
- Important steps to accomplish this in less
1. You will need good ram with good timings (when we get to DDR4 this year this should be easy even with ssd)
2. Install a PCI Express SSD with about r/w of 2500/2000 MB/s or higher
3. replug the PSU and hit the power button
4. watch magic happen

I thought this was common knowledge...some of you make it out like this is some big dark secret that somehow undermines the capabilities of W8...I mean, what would you rather have, the ability to cold boot or the ability to cold boot and fast boot?  Seems only like an advantage to me...

If (for whatever reason) you absolutely must have a cold boot but don't want to do a restart, you can change it in control panel under power options (the same place you determine what the power button even does)...I believe you can also hold shift while clicking shut down...

Windows 8 initializes drivers even after a hybrid boot, so it is very rare you'd ever actually need to do a cold boot....certain installations or NSA-induced paranoia are about the only 2 things I can think of....

Here is what I found running my laptop with Windows 8, I7 2.50gh Processor and 8gb ram. When I cold boot it I have a working desktop in 67 seconds which includes typing a 4 digit passcode. With fast boot I have a working desktop in 28 seconds with typing the passcode. Big difference. 

and the fact that a 4 second boot doesn't give you enough time to disable your webcam, which can see you sitting there naked and posts the pics/footage to 'various' websites.

... or that the 2 second boot doesn't give you enough time to prevent Google inserting all sorts of advertising into your emails, both sent and received.

Mark I have yet to see even ONE advert from Google in my Gmail even after using it for years. Do you wear a tin foil hat when you use your computer?