Boottimes

[LambdaCalculus]

This is why you're the man, Llorean.   I'm going to give it the old whirly tonight.

[pixelma]

Yowza! That's even better than a flashed Archos device!

Not better than every flashed Archos device. As Llorean mentioned, the disk spinup time is also important... I get about the same boot time  (2-3 seconds) on my flashed OndioFM with default settings.

[Llorean]

I'd say my Sansa takes ~8 seconds to boot, but a good 5 or so of them are that stupid Sandisk animated bootscreen thingy.

[Mikerman]

Just timed my iRiver H-140 and yep, 10 seconds from on press to menu screen.

[bascule]

Gigabeat F20 (very slightly different from BigBambi's)

3s until Gigabeat splash appears
5.5-6s until Gigabeat splash disappears
7.5-8s until RB menu appears

If only the Gigabeat could be flashed and with instantaneous power-on like my H120, boot times could be in the 2-3 second range; how cool would that be?   8-)

Markun, anyone? I seem to recall that someone was working on flashing the GB...

[Llorean]

It'll be a bit longer than that. I'd predict 4-6 for the Gigabeat if we could flash the bootloader, and still about 3-4 if we chose to flash Rockbox directly.. Your disk is already spun up by the time it least the Gigabeat splash, and when the Gigabeat splash disappears, the Rockbox bootloader has already run (the RB bootloader doesn't update the screen, so the splash won't vanish until you pass it into Rockbox, if I understand correctly).

[bascule]

Llorean, I'm sure you're correct, but it would still be quicker and best of all it would avoid the need to hold the power button for 2-3 secs, which really annoys me, currently.

[Llorean]

Oh, absolutely, I'm just pointing out the gains are still going to be a couple seconds less than you expect.

There's benefits for having Rockbox's bootloader in-flash on pretty much every player anyway.