Mavericks Install time

Question

Just so folks have an idea of time necessary for the mavericks upgrade - I downloaded and installed mavericks on its first night of release.  The actual download time wasn't bad - about 10 minutes at 7.2 MBps (or 57.6 Mbps - darned good speed, considering my service tops out at a nominal 50Mbps - but often gets more, closer to 60Mbps).
My computer is a 2009 dual quad core Mac Pro. 2.26 GHz - not blindingly fast, but hanging in there.
After the download, then the long delay - TWO HOURS of number crunching to finish the install.  I was concerned when, with 18 minutes left to complete, my screen went black.  I started worrying about conflicts with the 3rd party peripherals attached - but no need.  I remembered my energy saving settings put my screen (only) to sleep a bit short of 2 hours.  Moving the mouse restored it.  However, it went to sleep several more times before the installation was complete. There was no disruption of the install proces, however.
Pay no attention to the estimated times shown in the "time remaining" windows.  One early estimate was 26 hours.  That finally adjusted - but the times are still wildly inacurate.  Inside 18 minutes remaining for the Mavericks completion, each "minute" took 3 to 4 actual minutes to tick off.  The final "Less than 1 minute" took 10.  But that was no different from earlier OS updates, which were just as bad.
I upgraded iMovie, iPhoto and Aperture after installing Mavericks.  The downloads/installation of just those 3 apps took over 2 hours, with speeds in the range of 60 to 700 KBps, likely becaus the App Store was deluged - thee were Safari and other app upgrades out for Lion and Mountain Lion systems too, plus the 3 needed with Mavericks.
I had expected the first startup after the installation would be slow, and it was.  What was surprising ws how slow the whole computer was - to the point that I shut down and restarted.  It improved, but was still slow.  Too tired and way past my bedtime, I shut it down.  However, on start today, everything was fine.  I don't notice much speed improvement over Mountain Lion - I was looking for some because of Mavericks' allegedly improved memory management.  But, I'm running 12 GB of RAM anyway, and have yet to max it out - so likely that isn't a big factor on this machine.

Answer 1

Since number crunching is involved in the uodate, of course machine speed would be a factor.  That's why I specified which mine was.
My brother's 2012 iMac - I don't recall its specifics, except that it had the fastest processor available for the iMac and the Apple SSD/HD combo unit - and his installation, done midday, took 36 minutes.
I mention the time of day for a reason:  I don't know if additional downloading is done after the OS10.9 Install app is downloaded, once the install begins.  If it is, then load on Apple's servers and you own ISP could be a factor.
Because I used an improper setting in Carbon Copy Cloner when I backed up to my hard drive, not all of the Mavericks files were written properly.  Before I found out what I had done wrong, I decided to simply "restore" 10.9 on that drive using the 10.9 Restore I had made on a thumb drive, via the uodated Lion Diskmaker program (yes, it is updated for Mavericks).  When I tried that, it invoked the OS 10.9 Install App, but also indicated the "additional downloads" were being performed.  That install took about 45 minutes - but it was also unsuccessful.  The install via the "restore" thumb drive operates in conjunction Lion Diskmaker - which I am sure is what provided the "additional downloads" message.
Fortunately, I had also kept a copy of the install software on yet another drive.  I dumped my entire System and Library files on the target backup HD, and did a fresh install from this 3rd drive, using only the Apple OS10.9 Install App - there was no notice of additional meterial, and the install alone took 36 minutes (which again, does not include the time to download the install app).  Including the download time for that from Oct. 22, my total install would likely have taken 46 minutes.
Both of the latter efforts were at midday also - but there is a hint at least that once the download of the Install App is complete, more may still have to be downloaded - and server load on the Apple site could explain the 2 hour time to complete on Oct. 22, despite the very fast initial download of the install app.
The time estimates generated on my machne were still way off.