It seems traditional around this time in every Windows upgrade cycle that Microsoft muses about adding "Instant On".

It was talked about for Windows 95, Me, Millennium, XP and Vista. Now, as we await Windows 7's alpha debut October 27, true to form, the dream of "Instant On" is again held tantilisingly before us.

It would be nice to think such a feature would ship with Windows 7.

A new Microsoft-issued user-survey, posted to Engaget, suggests a new Instant On feature is in the works. The survey asks if people would like an 8-second start-up time.

Microsoft, trust me, you don't need a survey to answer that.

Nobody likes to wait 30 seconds for their PC to start up (or up to two minutes after a few months of ownership, once it's become weighed down with start-up kludge added by various add-ons and apps that have inveigled their way into the boot process, wittingly or unwittingly on your part). 

Any PC maker can cheat, of course, with a suspend/resume function that mimics the process of starting up, or shutting down, in an instant, or gives you access only to a limited features, like playing DVDs. Yet only a hard reboot can free all the memory that many programs slowly hog to themselves over time. And only full restart – and the foot-tapping it entails – can install a program update, such as those so frequently delivered by Microsoft itself for IE, Office, Windows and other apps.

There's the rub. I'd like to think that Windows 7 will offer a genuine, system-cleansing hard reboot in a finger-snap. But it's more likely its Instant On will be some kind of cheat (the survey indicates only certain features would be accessible instantly, which is definitely a kludge) or feature derailed by Windows updates that become more frequent than ever before (which seems a safe bet).