Windows 8 is fast on an SSD drive - installation, boot time, start time, shutdown time (OCZ Vertex 4)

So I bought myself an early Christmas present. I got a great Black Friday deal on an OCZ Vertex 4 512GB SSD (solid state drive). One of the top rated SSD's at the moment.  This was going into my laptop - a 3 year old HP Pavilion DV7 - Core i7 with 8GB of RAM.

I then installed a fresh build of Windows 8 Enterprise as part of this project. I had the Windows 8 ISO file extracted to a USB stick for installation to help speed up the process.

I know SSD's are blazing fast and I know Windows 8 has a ton of performance enhancements so I was really anxious to see how the pair would perform together. I was not disappointed!

It look less than 5 minutes to install Windows 8!!   I still had some setup questions to answer - selection of my wifi network, etc but the actually installation part was already done.  Wow!

Here are some other numbers for you...

Start up time to login screen - 15 seconds
Full reboot to login screen - 25 seconds
Shutdown time - 8 seconds
Sleep - 3 seconds
Wake - 1 second!

Fix "No Program Name" with FIOS DVR STB channel guide when channel information is missing. Especially in a bridged configuration.

This isn't really "IT" related but I thought I'd post this here anyway in case it might help someone out of a jam.  I'm a FIOS customer and my setup is slightly unusual in that I have a "bridged" network setup - meaning I have my standard FIOS router/cable modem as well as a Linksys Wireless N router bridged together.

As a result, about once a month or so, I lose my channel guide on my FIOS cable boxes for some reason. The title of all of the shows says "No Program Name".  So what I need to do is login to my FIOS router and restart a particular network connection.  This always fixes it in MY case, your mileage my vary. I'd suggest first simply rebooting your FIOS router to see if that helps. If not, give these steps a try...

1. Enter the IP address of your FIOS router into your web browser and then login with your username and password.

2. Click on the "My Network" icon at the top of the page.

3. Click on "Network Connections" on the menu on the left side

4. Scroll down to underneath of the "Bridge" section and click on "Broadband Connection (Ethernet)"

5. On the next page, I always see a button at the top that says "Enable" (because mine has been disconnected or disabled) so click on that button if you see it.

6. Click "Apply" on the bottom of the page.

7. Wait maybe 20-30 minutes and your channel guide should be populated again.

Let me know if this works for you.