I am sure that Microsoft Windows 7 is much faster than its predecessors. Recently I realized that my laptop with Windows 7 operating system starts up much faster and available for use instantly, but Apple IPod Touch takes few more seconds to start up. It's definitely a remarkable change from the desktop operating systems.
If I compare Apple IPod Touch with my year old N73 Nokia mobile, definitely IPod is 10 times faster. Yeah N73 takes almost 4 minutes to start up and another 30 seconds to settle down and ready to use, though only 25% of the memory used.