It's depend on the installed Application which will start up while boot to Windows. As more of them you have running, as longer the boot time! Also the whole boot process are depend on the BIOS of the MB as well. As more drives etc. are connected, as longer it will need to pass the BIOS and come to the Windows boot. If you're MB has an UEFI Bios and you've set to start with UEFI, it's just a matter of a few seconds to pass by the BIOS. Also to keep your Registry clean, could speed up the boot process of Windows. That applies to any version of Windows OS's!
@xDownSetx @pisthai when the start screen appears after a cold boot -> desktop -> try to launch any applications - the system is still loading, some notification area icons are not even loaded yet - everything is just slow for a quite a few seconds until the system has fully booted! been the same on every flavor of Windoze 8 on different machines. my system has an i7 @ 4.3ghz + 16gb ram + sata 3 SSD + tweaked for speed - the start screen appears very fast BUT as stated above you have to wait before using any applications = the same as Windows 7 speed ready to use the same application!
I have zero lag launching applications when I hit the Desktop. From a cold boot I just launched Steam, Chrome, TeamSpeak3, and HexChat with zero lag on any but Steam(as usual). I've never had it with W7 either, it's the most prevalent change I noted when I bought this drive. Asus G73JH, Agility 3 ssd.
You could tweak your system for to load only what's directly needed, all other Apps you could set to Manual boot. Again, as more apps would be loaded and start automatically while boot Windows, as more the real speed goes down because of the need running processes of loading those apps. In reality I don't mind to wait a minute or two! Speed must be OK while working on the computer! Loading speed is just that: Speed of loading! Why some should bother about some seconds or even a minute if everything is Ok after all is loaded?
Wow, all that development time wasted on one thing I do maybe twice a day. Booting. I wish M$ would use the time to reduce bugs and potential exploits which meant we had to have such lovely things as UAC and Internet Enhanced Security. I'm sure W8 is riddled with exploitable bugs.
What platform is Windows 8 designed for? Mobile, and I'm sure that you leave your laptop or tablet on 24/7 eh? Wasted development time? Not if you look at it within context.