A suggestion. Change out your HD for an SSD. Then your boot will be back to 15 seconds. I have a macbook pro, and it boots in 11 seconds, current version and I have 3 add-ons in the bootup sequence.
W8 was tested (according to Msoft) and was found to be immune to 85% of the viruses/hacks that W7 was not, so it’s an improvement, but 15% is still a significant exposure.
ALready I have noticed on both W7 and W8 the “install wars” where dueling software companies try to takeover/disable other vendors’ SW. For example, now when I start Lynx (Microsof’ts webex), the Webex app has installed a hack that modifies the Lynx screen to add a tab that says “Start Webex”!
Kind of like the browser wars that kept messing with default browser/setup info.
Face it, Msoft is the trailer trash of IT
My Mac has a SSD. I think what is slowing it down is the printer/scanner/copier driver I downloaded from the printer company. It is set to load at startup and I need to change some settings.