The starch that instructions say to rinse off is good.  Don't rinse it at all.

Add only as much cold water to dry pasta as you think it will completely absorb.  Don't add any salt, either.

Put the pot on the burner.  You can go max-on for quickest, or medium for safest.  Don't boil it.  It will foam-over easily if boiled, and not-boiling keeps it from sticking.  Stirring is optional.  When you can hear that the water is now darn good 'n hot, turn the heat off and let it coast.  

It takes no longer overall than the 'regulation' method - likely a little less.

I rarely make 'pure' pasta.  I add chopped broccoli, carrot, celery, onion, a clove of garlic, half a can tomato paste, boned chicken or minced roast, etc.  The amendments are endlessly variable.

Do it in the crock pot, too.  Cook the beans & veggies & meats (if wanted) overnight or through the day (leaving enough water-volume for the intend pasta-component), then just dump in the pasta and other 'short-cook' amendments, and in 10 minutes you're up-town - right at home.  

Heat the water, unsalted, in a COVERED pot.  Amazing how few people cover the pot. When water reaches a boil, add salt and pasta (in that order -- I don't know why, but it definitely affects the outcome!).  Cover the pot.  When it reaches a boil again, turn off the flame.  Keep the pot COVERED.  Stir only occasionally and test for readiness whenever you feel you must.  In roughly the same amount of time it takes with the flame on under an uncovered pot of boiling pasta, you'll have delicious pasta.

As long as you are willing to stir, you can use very little water to boil pasta.  If it's in hot water, it's being cooked.

Obviously, keeping the cover on heats the water faster, so do that.

Salt has almost no effect on the TASTE of pasta (try doubling or even tripling the amount of salt you put in and tasting the pasta raw some time..it takes a lot more salt in the water to make pasta taste salty than we are talking about here.) However, salt does make the water boil hotter, and thus cooks the pasta faster.  Remember back to high school chemistry - a mixture always boils at higher temperature than pure water.  Thus more salt is usually better since it shortens cooking time (the extra time to reach slightly higher boiling point is negligible by comparison).  This means also that you should put the salt in before the water boils, and wait for it to boil at the new higher temp (or, put it in at boiling, but hold off adding the pasta for a bit until the new temperature is achieved).  Whether you add the salt when the water is cold or hot makes no difference.

hmmm... pasta! I just love it. I just hope I could cook pasta better. Looks like I'm gonna have to read Hazan too. Italian dishes are the best!

Be MEAN but keep it green

Assuming you have an electric stovetop, would boiling the water in a microwave use less energy?

PGB