@think3d - I was sarcastic.  Every headline in the mainstream press (incl. tech) reads as if they are trying to stifle compeition to Apple, rejoice at Apple's competitors setbacks, etc.  When Apple was on brink of death, I cud understand media's trying to help the underdog to survive, but now the pro-Apple bias is nauseting.

Yes, UEFI mode must be supported by the chipset and enabled in the bios, the WINDOWS boot menu is the only thing changed here in order to speedup things.
@asherpat, it is better to have some fault that so much imposed limitation like osx. I ended up using this macbook pro as an expensive typewriter and my vaio for the serious stuff ^_^

afaik, default shutdown in Windows 8 is actually a hibernate in previous windows.
when i disable hibernate function, to reduce disk usage, my boot time back to like the old time, not a blazing fast anymore.

#2 - your computer has to support UEFI mode which basically skips the traditional DOS-looking screens. Then yes, your computer can boot up very quickly.

Isn't accessing of BIOS controlled by the motherboard? The OS can even affect that now? That would be impossible.... Are you talking about the menu of boot manager?

It's not Apple, so it must have SOME fault.