Spare laptop running windows is just sitting in the corner having been booted two hours ago. The i/O light has been solid ever since.
I moan about this all the time and it still never fails to amaze me that since Vista all MS (including server) do this. I swear they're in league with storage OEMs.
There's a whole generation of users out there that accept having to wait ten minutes after a reboot before they can do anything, that this is the way personal computing should be.
I help researchers with laptops that are brand new and they run like complete dogshit, and epople just accept this is normal; that you pay for an OS and you can't even do any work.