Portable Apps startup

In 1.6, it's actually faster to start up than it was with 1.5. However, to some people it may seem slower, for this reason; formerly, the Platform would start but the window would not appear until it had finished loading. Now, it shows the window immediately and gives an indication that it is loading (sometimes people were confused by the fact that they'd started it but couldn't see any indication that it had started). In 1.6, the startup time has been optimised, but sometimes it may feel slower because it shows you that it's searching every time. At the moment, that's the only way to do it. Later, there may be a way to cache things, but from efforts of my own I can say that there is very little performance benefit in caching things in the one file, rather than looking through at lots of files.

Also performance with this searching is highly computer-dependant. One Windows 2000 computer I use mine on, with some 22 or so apps in the menu, takes about a second to load the app list. Other XP machines I use at Uni tend to take three or four seconds. And I've been on a computer (can't remember the OS, but it was still a USB 2.0 connection - in theory) where it took about 10 seconds. But all these figures are a bit faster than it was with 1.5 and earlier.