rEFIt menu takes around 10 seconds to even show up I'm using a macbook pro 8,1. I've installed rEFIt so that I can dual boot with Ubuntu. This is all "working" except that each time I turn on my laptop, it takes ten or fifteen seconds to even get to the rEFIt menu for me to select an OS.

At this point, I have done nothing special except to make Ubuntu the default OS and reduce the wait time in the rEFIt menu from 20 to 5 seconds.

How can I reduce this lag between startup and OS selection?
Assuming you have rEFIt installed on one of the partitions on the hard drive, the following steps should remove the delay:


Boot via the Mac OS X Install DVD/USB.
Launch Terminal (Utilities Menu).
Enter diskutil list to list all available disks and partitions.
Looking at the list of partitions for "disk0" (internal drive), identify the partition that contains your rEFIt boot files.
Enter bless --setBoot --device /dev/disk0s2 --legacy assuming that "/dev/disk0s2" was the rEFIt partition.
Enter reboot to reboot your Mac


Your Mac should now boot to rEFIt with a minimal delay.

The same method also works with Windows 7 direct booting (Boot Camp) which can present an extremely long boot delay on MacBook Airs and Minis if Windows 7 is your startup disk and the above steps have not been taken.