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Leading software vendor in Korea

Word processor developer with over 70% market share (The only country in the world where Microsoft failed to dominate)

Over 10 million copies sold and 20 million estimated users

Strong brand identity - Recognized as a national icon - 1 from http://72.14.235.104/search?q=cache:1VZmxhjiJjkJ:www.haansoft.com/hnc4_0/haansoft/haancom_ir/200405IR_Presentation.pdf+haansoft+office+market+share&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2

Why would you change though? Bioses are only used for booting these days

http://www.missl.cs.umd.edu/winint/index2.html

A few equipment query functions and a lot of INT 13 calls to read sectors off the disk. And INT 13 supports 64 bit LBAs which will last essentially forever - drives of upto 8 Zetabytes ( 8*(2^70) bytes ) are possible.

The original reason for EFI was because Itaniums needed a firmware standard because the Bios is x86 only. Macs use it mostly to stop people booting OSX on normal PC hardware as far as I can see.

There's a good reason for not using EFI too. EFI graphics cards need to have EFI byte code in Flash along with a normal x86 Bios unless they want to only work on EFI systems. That means more flash memory. Or the installation utility could copy the EFI driver into a FAT formatted EFI system partition, but that means if something corrupts it the card will stop working on a legacy free EFI system.

Actually, come to think of it, video bioses are a special case. On Windows XP, the driver can use Int 10 to call the video bios.

Hmm, it seems that this is disabled on Vista -

http://72.14.235.104/search?q=cache:URuKNsrXQDAJ:d ownload.microsoft.com/download/9/c/5/9c5b2167-8017 -4bae-9fde-d599bac8184a/WDDM_BIOS.doc+int+10+windo ws+vista+driver&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us

So it seems like the Bios is used so little and is so futureproof that it doesn't do any harm to keep it. It's also small and simple and can run purely from Rom, whereas EFI needs a special partition which could be corrupted.

For those harboring poisonous grudges against PDFs, the Googlerised HTML version is here.

All I can say is that things have changed quite a bit from the 1980's. I was recently reading in the Pakistani press that Pakistan was placing an embargo on importing phones manufactured in India, and how that would increase the prices of telephones out there. Which, of course, let me wonder as to why the Pakistanis would be interested in importing those electrical bricks I remember from my childhood, those (cant remember the brand names) PSU-churned sets they used to hand out with every new line.

They weren't. They were talking about Nokia handsets.

Now, you might rightfully argue that Nokia, as a brand, isn't Indian, but look at it this way:- close to 25% of all the Nokia phones manufactured in India are exported. This in a country that's already the third largest market for Nokia.

In short, we've lost Indian brand-names, but have gained some world-class production capabilities.

How bad can the HRD funk up things? Well, there's some serious cause for optimism:- the PSU (public sector undertaking, for non-Indians) the article talks about, Semiconductor Complex, is owned by India's space agency, ISRO. Which may or may not mean much, but I wouldn't be too hasty in writing them off.

We need a soletta.

If Dell is truly serious about recalling dangerous batteries, they can do the same thing. If not, the least they can do is buy national TV ad spots encouraging customers to check their laptops at Dell's web site.