diff --git a/Documentation/config.txt b/Documentation/config.txt
index 20cb3a25bc6..9f467d3820a 100644
--- a/Documentation/config.txt
+++ b/Documentation/config.txt
@@ -621,9 +621,9 @@ core.preloadindex::
 +
 This can speed up operations like 'git diff' and 'git status' especially
 on filesystems like NFS that have weak caching semantics and thus
-relatively high IO latencies.  With this set to 'true', Git will do the
+relatively high IO latencies.  When enabled, Git will do the
 index comparison to the filesystem data in parallel, allowing
-overlapping IO's.
+overlapping IO's.  Defaults to true.
 
 core.createObject::
 	You can set this to 'link', in which case a hardlink followed by
diff --git a/environment.c b/environment.c
index c648ac3d3af..4dac5e9edd7 100644
--- a/environment.c
+++ b/environment.c
@@ -72,7 +72,7 @@ char comment_line_char = '#';
 int auto_comment_line_char;
 
 /* Parallel index stat data preload? */
-int core_preload_index = 0;
+int core_preload_index = 1;
 
 /* This is set by setup_git_dir_gently() and/or git_default_config() */
 char *git_work_tree_cfg;