Bypass Windows With Fast-Boot Technology

thatnerdguy writes "Phoenix Technologies, a developer of BIOS software, is working on a new technology called Hyperspace that will allow you to instantly load certain applications like email, web browser and media player, without loading windows. It could even lead to tailoring of computers to even more specific demographics, like a student laptop preloaded with word processor, email and an IM all available at the press of a button." Why is this story setting off alarms in my brain?

Comments

Sounds possible

[Anonymous Coward]

Either they have Linux in the ROM or they wrote the complete set from scratch. Have fun.

Re:Sounds possible

[Anonymous Coward]

um, linux, windows and osx aren't the only operating systems out there. i thought you dumbasses should know.

Re:Sounds possible

[Corwn of Amber]

Yes. Amiga had a 32-bit preemptive multitasking OS in ROM in the 80s.

Re:Sounds possible

[Vitriol Angst]

Could it be possible just to take a "snap shot image" of a certain functionality?

Meaning, you would load up windows -- take a snapshot, and then load up just the apps you want and then take another snapshot. The first part could be an exact "picture" in static memory -- the second would be read/write memory. Once it is loaded, it can act like a regular windows application, except nothing outside of the volatile snapshot can really change.

In this way, you are creating sort of a fast-boot, but I don't think it would be susceptible to viruses other than a file stored from the app you are using.

Re:Sounds possible

[Nefarious Wheel]

It's been my experience that most boot delays are waiting for network startup, particularly DHCP broadcast/response. If you take a snapshot of the whole OS state then unless you have a long term IP address lease or a fixed address, you could end up with a duplicate address which could snarf things up a bit. Faster DHCP registration the cure?

Re:Sounds possible

[Vanders]

It's the linear nature of most startup processes that cause the delay. On Syllable for example there is no delay waiting for DHCP, because the DHCP client is left to run on it's own without blocking the rest of the startup. Linux is beginning to move to a more parallel init system too.

Re:Sounds possible

[Nefarious Wheel]

Watching Debian boot on top of VMWare while loading a wiki appliance is a good indicator -- the only real delays (and they are significant) are waiting for response to DHCP broadcast. I don't think boot probs are the fault of the O/S, but rather the fact that many LAN's have a single DHCP server running on a x286 box located on subnet Mars.

Re:Sounds possible

[Fred_A]

It's been my experience that most boot delays are waiting for network startup, particularly DHCP broadcast/response. DNS requests can be killers too. Especially if there has been a network snag somewhere and you have to wait for them to fail.

Re:Sounds possible

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget RISC OS -- a 32 bit OS with very nice intuitive GUI, first version back in 1987 and still going to this day. The OS is stored on ROM chips and boots in a matter of seconds; the CPU is an ARM based chip. In fact, the current day ARM Ltd. is a spinoff from Acorn, a company based in Cambridge (UK) who designed, built, manufactured and wrote the OS and software for RISC OS machines. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC_OS/

Re:Sounds possible

[cheater512]

Or just do it in parallel which is more sensible.

Its dead simple to make Linux do it. Not sure about specific distro's.

Re:Sounds possible

[Sillygates]

um, linux, windows and osx aren't the only operating systems out there. i thought you dumbasses should know.

True, but who is going to be running AIX on their home pc?

anyway, having a subset of features running without windows is likely to be a miserable failure. Most consumers probably turn on their PCs about once per day, and once it is booted, all of their applications are available for use. Why would these people then want to reboot, to get a subset of these applications (or vica versa, rebooting to open some pdf/flash file that the bios rom doesn't have a reader for, etc)?
If these people wanted to be useful, they would push companies like microsoft (or make a driver) to make a ram image of a freshly booted copy of windows xp (or whatever) upon first boot/after hardware changes, and then continue using that image after every boot.(hell, even store that on some solid state memory provided by phoenix, etc)

Sure, there may be drive consistency issues, network state/etc, but issues like that can be fixed. It would probably be a lot simpler than loading a little operating system onto a cmos chip.

Re:Sounds possible

[Anonymous Coward]

I use a router/firewall that's always on, so it deals with any DHCP delays/lease renewals upstream; all I have to do is use static IP's on the local side, and that's that.

I'm not sure what setup you are referring to where DHCP is the main slowdown. On my old dual Athlon MP 2200+ 2GB win2k box, the main slowdown is all the startup crap and "Applying security policy".

I recently did a reinstall of win2k, and it was nice and quick until I did a straight update from release to the latest service pack... then it was significantly slower to boot, even before I put anything in the startup folder.

My new Ubuntu partition is 3x faster to login prompt. Same machine.

Re:Sounds possible

[Glonoinha]

Actually most of the 30-90 second boot process is interrogating the hardware from top to bottom to re-discover all the different pieces of hardware you might have in the system, on a one-by-one basis, then loading the individual sets of drivers for each. Just because you had an nVidia video card, Intel chipset, Creative Labs PCI sound card, six USB ports, and a 100Mb/s Ethernet NIC by SMC in your system when you shut it down last time, that doesn't mean those are the components in your system this time you do a cold boot - so the OS goes through the entire discovery process from top to bottom again, loading the drivers for the hardware it finds after going through the process of discovering each piece of hardware in your system.

That's why my laptop can recovery from 'stand-by' or 'hibernate' modes in almost no-time, but a cold boot still takes a veritable lifetime - approaching two minutes before the system is fully loaded and operational, and why solid state drives only shave 6-8 seconds from boot times while offering nano-second seek times.

Back in the old days you hard-coded the memory addresses, IRQs, DMA addresses, etc of the hardware in the boot files, which is why older (much slower) systems booted so fast. No parsing every IRQ and memory address in the system looking for new hardware, asking each piece of hardware 'what are you, what kind of drivers do you use, which IRQ do you want ... no, that one is used, how about picking a different one...'. If there was a way to code Windows to skip the PnP (Plug and Play) and just tell it what all you had for hardware and where in memory / IRQ / DMAland to put each piece (or just tell it that the hardware it had when it shut down was the same hardware it had the next boot) - I'm guessing that the OS would boot a LOT faster. Like order of magnitude faster.

Re:Sounds possible

[Anonymous Coward]

>Its dead simple to make Linux do it.
Have you seen this somewhere, or do you have the source code open in your editor?

Re:Sounds possible

[SkunkPussy]

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-boot-faster/index.html

Re:Sounds possible

[Mattsson]

If these people wanted to be useful, they would push companies like microsoft (or make a driver) to make a ram image of a freshly booted copy of windows xp (or whatever) upon first boot/after hardware changes, and then continue using that image after every boot.(hell, even store that on some solid state memory provided by phoenix, etc) Every time I've voiced the exact same idea somewhere, people come flying from every direction telling me that this is impossible.
Never been able to get a coherent answer as to why this would be impossible though.
Anyway, nice to see someone else asking for this functionality. =)

Re:Sounds possible

[Nefarious Wheel]

The instance I mentioned was Debian booting on top of VMWare. Watching the scroll, everything rockets past except the DHCP bit. It lives on a laptop at the moment (this will change) but the laptop itself is not the environment being booted. I think the appliance (Deki) is pared down pretty well and has the virtual drivers pretty well sorted would be my guess. I'm beginning to really like VMWare, and Deki.

Re:Sounds possible

[Glonoinha]

Funny - I'm writing this from within openSuSE 10.3 running (you guessed it) in a VMWare session on a WinXP box. Works incredibly well, welcome to the club.
My DHCP is generally pretty quick, but I'm another one of those guys plugged directly into a Linksys firewall/router, which also assigns DHCP addresses inside the firewall. Less than 10 seconds, generally, to get an IP - but as someone else pointed out I could probably hardcode the IP address and skip that step altogether for boot performance.

That said, I leave the SuSE desktop running 24x7 so the boot time isn't that much of an issue.

bare metal spyware

[Anonymous Coward]

this will be done with BIOS, right? so no virus or adware scanners or anything else. How long does it usually take to hack closed systems like XBox, media players, the iphone, etc.?

Re:bare metal spyware

[Storlek]

About ten minutes... but then again, most people with an interest in hacking those systems are doing it to put Linux or something on them.

Re:bare metal spyware

[AvitarX]

How long does it take for a purely software crack to them? It doesn't really ever happen for a lot of things.

Or do you mean how long for an undetectable mod chip? That can take some time.

But you are right, spyware ninjas (or pirates maybe) can indeed mod your computer when you are asleep.

Even better.

[cthulu_mt]

I'd like to bypass Windows completely...thanks Canonical.

Re:Even better.

[Anonymous Coward]

The plan is probably to create a fast-boot computer that runs some motherboard-based mini operating system, connect to the net, and then download applications that will be run inside the browser.

If microslop is involved, the embedded os, browser, and many applications probably will be ms products.

Re:Even better.

[speaker of the truth]

I already bypass Windows. It isn't as fast as this sounds like its going to be, but it is certainly versatile.

Re:Even better.

[Nullav]

I somehow doubt it would be Windows-based. Something like Minix would make a lot more sense for something like this. (Free, open, tiny, efficient.)

Re:Even better.

[Nullav]

Or not. I just R'd TFA and I'm now genuinely frightened by the idea of paying the Windows tax on a board. If I'm going to have an OS crammed down my throat, I'd rather it be free. (Free as in beer. I couldn't give a damn about the source if I'm never going to use it.)

Re:Even better.

[stenWolf]

I'm thinking prism

Whoah

[somersault]

It's like travelling back in time 40 years!

Re:Whoah

[LWATCDR]

Asus already offers this.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=885&num=1
It does use Linux BTW and the Motherboard is very Linux Friendly.

Re:Whoah

[somersault]

That's excellent, thanks for the link even if you were just trying to hijack me thread ;)

I was thinking that building apps directly into the BIOS is just like having single purpose Word Processors back in the day, but the technology in the article does sound excellent, and for example talks about running an antivirus scanner in the BIOS to save on overhead even while you're using another OS for your applications, so it could actually be very handy. I think it makes use of virtualisation to help get around the whole driver thing, not very sure at this point though, as I dont know much about virtualisation, especially on the hardware side.

Re:Whoah

[Robocoastie]

wow! Run one app at a time that boots instantly! Reminds me of my Apple 2, the only technology that 1-12th graders still need.

Re:Whoah

[somersault]

Yep yep - there's actually a video of it running though which shows that you can have multiple apps running (though the only 2 there are firefox and Skype atm!). I'm not sure if you can write to it (presumably you can make your own ROM images though), but if there was a version of it with the adblocking extension of FF then it could be awesome for quick browsing.. and with all the stuff you can do in a browser these days, it's actually very versatile. It will be sad if they keep building on this until it gets bloated again tho, heh.

Re:Whoah

[Kadin2048]

wow! Run one app at a time that boots instantly! Reminds me of my Apple 2, the only technology that 1-12th graders still need. Agreed. I've often felt that, in terms of sheer usability, computers have mostly been downhill from the Apple II.

You put the disk in, you turn it on. When you're done, you save and turn it off. If you want to use a different program, you wait for the light on the disk drive to be out, then you swap disks and give it the three-finger salute.

I've seen kindergarteners and first-graders working Apple IIs without any problems, supervision, or assistance at all. All you have to do is reinforce to them that they're not to take the disk out of the drive when the light is on, and it's pretty tough to mess anything up.

Re:Whoah

[LWATCDR]

Well virtualization will not get around the "Driver issue". It just moves the driver issue from the OS to the VM layer. Moving the antivirus to the Bios would be handy since it would allow you to run the anti virus without booting the infected OS. I have been wondering just how long it will be before AV makers start producing Linux AV programs that run on LiveCDs to scan Windows systems.
The idea of not having to load Windows to surf the net, make a skype call, or check your email is an interesting one.
Another interesting step would be to include an XScale CPU to run linux so that you have a super low power CPU running the applications and let the High speed CPU stay off.

Re:Whoah

[cayenne8]

'As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly."

Hehehe....I have to try to watch that every Thanksgiving. The ultimate Mr Carlson quote.

:-)

Man..I wish somehow, they could just get over the stupid royalties thing, and put out those original shows, complete with original full soundtrack on dvd, but, sigh... I guess we'll likely never see that. WKRP was just one of the best shows of its time, and if it were intact, would be a nice time capsule of that period.

Re:Whoah

[LWATCDR]

Well it is November. I wonder if I should make my December sig "You'll shoot your eye out."

Re:Whoah

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are people so obsessed about running antivirus software?

I haven't had to run such a thing in many years.

The trick is not to use win-dos.

Re:Whoah

[FireFury03]

I'm a bit confused... When I press the power button on my computer, the desktop (and all the apps I had open before I powered off) appears within a couple of seconds. Why would someone want to have another operating system in the BIOS which appears to offer similar (but much less inferior) features?

Rebooting is something you do only after a kernel upgrade...

Re:Whoah

[mad4ngel]

Rebooting is something you do only after a kernel upgrade...

No, here in the third world, we have to switch on our boxen after powercuts, you insensitive clod!. And after watching that Al Gore documentary, don't you feel a little guilty not shutting down your box when not using it - think of the glaciers and the penguins.

Re:Whoah

[FireFury03]

And after watching that Al Gore documentary, don't you feel a little guilty not shutting down your box when not using it - think of the glaciers and the penguins

Maybe you'd care to explain why shutting the machine down is going to save the penguins any more than hibernating it...

Re:Whoah

[ckaminski]

Which isn't that big of a problem now-a-days because cdroms can lock themselves (short of a paperclip in the emergency eject hole...).

Rootkit applications?

[tomkost]

Would this be like some kind of non-malicious root kit?

Re:Rootkit applications?

[vadim_t]

It's sad that when some new tech comes out, there's immediately a comment asking about whether this could be used for terrorism/rootkits/etc.

Re:Rootkit applications?

[EvanED]

No more than a Live CD is a non-malicious rootkit, which is really not at all.

Re:Rootkit applications?

[DaveWick79]

It may be sad, but it's a legitimate concern that has to be addressed before it becomes mainstream technology. The article does not address this concern at all and I would be very interested to hear what Phoenix is doing to ensure the security of this system.

Re:Rootkit applications?

[h4rm0ny]

Well you see, every time we point out something else that can be used for territory, that's another bill that has to go through congress to mandate registration of it. We're hoping that we can get the US government to simply busy itself to death.

Re:Rootkit applications?

[FlameSnyper]

If you really want this to happen, support the Read The Bills Act.

http://www.downsizedc.org/read_the_laws.shtml

Re:Rootkit applications?

[mOdQuArK!]

It's only a "legitimate" concern because people are panicking, which makes it easier for them to manipulate. From a what-are-the-real-odds? viewpoint, people aren't in very much danger from terrorists at all (unless you're living in Iraq).

Re:Rootkit applications?

[nurb432]

Welcome to the new world. Where the bad people see anything new as something to exploit.

Re:Rootkit applications?

[Anonymous Coward]

> unless you're living in Iraq

Or anywhere else the US has stationed troops...

Re:Rootkit applications?

[LordEd]

New technology comes out that can be used for terrorism. How will {celebrity_name} be affected?

If I ever see a Slashdot article like this, I quit.

Re:Rootkit applications?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's sad that when some new tech comes out, there's immediately a comment asking about whether this could be used for terrorism

Frankly, that's the first time I've ever seen that. Please spread your FUD elsewhere.

Re:Rootkit applications?

[rkanodia]

From your link:

We hold this truth to be self-evident, that those in Congress who vote on legislation they have not read, have not represented their constituents. They have misrepresented them.

Sadly, I think that signing something they haven't even read is rather strongly representative of their constituents.

Re:Rootkit applications?

[sumdumass]

There are far less people who die from falling off the face of a mountain each year then those who die from car accidents. This is because less people climb the face of mountains.

There is this thing called risk assessment. Most of the people who would fall and die have assessed the risks and decided not to climb the face of a mountain. Just like everyone has the opportunity to vacation in Iraq or and hot spot and the majority or people wouldn't even consider it. So risk assessment has a lot to do with the how likely someone is portion of your comment.

I will admit this is sort of a chicken and the egg concept. The real odds are low because people don't do things considered dangerous. They don't do dangerous things because they think it is dangerous. so if you show that odds say it isn't dangerous, more people do it and therefor more people change the odds. Especially when the dangerous activity has a will of it's (like live terrorist) own and conditions cannot be controlled. So yea, the odds are low because people are guarded against exposing themselves to it. What are the odds of it remaining low if people let down this guard and start exposing themselves to it. Just something to think about.

Re:Rootkit applications?

[Stanza]

There is plenty of mainstream technology that terrorizes just fine, thank you.

I'm not going to hesitate to sell a screwdriver because it might have "terrorism" concerns. Maybe a way of mutating people for cosmetic purposes, I can see the concern. But software?

Re:Rootkit applications?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope you get queasy from indigestion.

Re:Rootkit applications?

[empaler]

What, like Greenland?
Granted, a good reason to fear the American presence now is that they've found oil.

Re:Rootkit applications?

[anthonys_junk]

Ok, how about we take a look at this in your terms of self-exposure to risk. The odds of dying are 1 in 55,000,000 in a terrorist-caused plane disaster assuming one such incident a month and you fly once a month. You may note that the exposure is relatively frequent when compared to rock climbing for your average Joe.

More death related statistics available here http://www.anotherperspective.org/advoc530.html

stop living in fear

Re:Rootkit applications?

[Zathruss]

May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits.

Why?

[AutoTheme]

Why do you have alarms in your brain? Why are they going off?

Re:Why?

[toadlife]

He installed a device into his head which functions as an alarm. It allows him to have an alarm without the need for an external device.

As to why it's going off....maybe he put AM instead of PM?

Re:Why?

[SpaceLifeForm]

Plus, the Daylight Savings Time adjustment could not be changed.

Re:Why?

[ady1]

This is a very well known syndrome. The only solution is to go to the nearest pub and drink 5 pints of whiskey and then go hitchhiking.
Alternately you can put a paper bag on your head.

Re:Why?

[Alsee]

I'd say it's quite appropriate that this story set off alarm bells.

According to Phoenix's Investor Update PDF this "Hyperspace" system runs on top of their Trusted Computing BIOS. And surprise surprise the software is locked against the owner, to be modified only under the strict control of Phoenix.

-

"Technology"

[UbuntuDupe]

That's not "fast-boot technology". It's "just another software program". One with a great purpose, but not worth distinguishing as "technology".

Re:"Technology"

[tlhIngan]

That's not "fast-boot technology". It's "just another software program". One with a great purpose, but not worth distinguishing as "technology".

Not to mention it's not even new technology.

PCs (especially laptops) have long had special "media boot options" for years now. All it does is tell the BIOS to boot into a different partition to run the media player. My palmtop (Toshiba Libretto) has a button on its DVD dock. If it's off, it'll turn on and boot into a special locked partition on the disk that runs the DVD player. It's basically just Linux with LinDVD on it. Goal is to make it come up quick (it does, a minute or two normally) and come up into the app.

The goal being that why go through all the trouble of starting up/shutting down Windows when you really just want to watch a DVD or play a CD or something.

Re:"Technology"

[Anonymous Coward]

Goal is to make it come up quick (it does, a minute or two normally) and come up into the app.

WTF? How long does it take to boot your real OS? My four-year-old desktop running XP boots in about thirty seconds.

Re:"Technology"

[T-Bone-T]

Toshiba laptops have had the capability to play DVDs without booting Windows for years. My laptop from 2003 can play CDs without booting Windows.

Re:"Technology"

[pseudopod]

Um, sounds a lot like my Palm TX, which is perfect for what it's designed for.

Re:"Technology"

[famebait]

Misanthropic principle: Universal improvement is impossible because someone dislikes the satisfaction of others.

You suck.

Hot on the heels of recent bootloader stories

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Wait! Wait! We're still relevant. x86 BIOS is still useful for some things!

Re:Hot on the heels of recent bootloader stories

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, powering on the system is such an irrelevant task nowadays ..

hmm

[rarel]

Media center PCs already can preload apps without booting Windows (usually some form of Linux mini-OS, as far as I knowm, though it probably depends on the manufacturer)
How is that different?

Re:hmm

[Kelbear]

Indeed, my Dell laptop has a button specifically for booting into a mini-OS to directly access files in this manner. Unfortunately, there isn't enough difference between this limited boot and a regular boot to justify its use.

Perhaps their proposal can do a better job, but it doesn't appear to be new ground.

Re:hmm

[Tacvek]

Indeed, my Dell laptop has a button specifically for booting into a mini-OS to directly access files in this manner. Unfortunately, there isn't enough difference between this limited boot and a regular boot to justify its use.

Perhaps their proposal can do a better job, but it doesn't appear to be new ground.

You are talking about the MediaDirect feature. It actually uses Windows XP embeded. The first time its loaded it loads fully. Then it writes what is basically a hibernation file. So all subsequent boots load this hibernation file which brings the system to a fully running state faster than booting Windows XP Embeded, and much faster than booting all of normal Windows from scratch. (But there is not enough difference in loading speed to justify loading MediaDirect instead of hibernated Windows XP.)

The main two complaints I have heard about the system is that it does not have DivX support (This would have been near trivial for dell to add. The technical side could easily be completed in less than one programmer day.) and that it does not support Windows Media DRM files. (This would be harder to support, and to do it reasonably would require support by Microsoft.)

"With the exception of Apple"

[Linker3000]

"Phoenix is currently in talks with most major PC manufacturers, with the notable exception of Apple."

Because (at the risk of being accused of Trolling), Apple will eventually bring out iRightNow which will pretty much do the same thing but in White only and at three times the price?

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[Sfing_ter]

already did, it's called the iPhone :)

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple uses EFI, you twat.

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[Anonymous Coward]

Because Apple uses EFI.

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[mabhatter654]

Apple just makes systems that properly wake up from hibernation/sleep quickly. My Macbook is the first machine that simply just works.. close the lid when you're done, stash the machine.. open the lid and unpause the still open itunes in under 15 seconds! I'd say Apple has already done one better.. implementing a bios CORRECTLY in the first place!

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[TheRaven64]

There are a few reasons why Apple wouldn't be interested in this technology:

• They use EFI with only a BIOS-compat mode for people who want windows.
• Mac users don't want a second, inconsistent UI experience.
• Mac laptops have had 'instant on' for years. Mac laptop users don't shut their machines down, they just close the lid and let it sleep then open the lid and have it resume in a couple of seconds. The problem this solves doesn't exist in the Mac world.

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[p0tat03]

Oh 'tis a beauty. On my old Windows laptop, un-hibernating takes an ungodly amount of time - it's about equivalent to a normal boot, except the added bonus of not losing my work. On a Mac the sleep mode rules - a slight amount of battery usage, but my machine is on (and totally interactive, as opposed to un-hibernation, where between "Desktop displayed" and "machine usable" is a good full minute), within 2-3 seconds of flipping open the lid.

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

"My Macbook is the first machine that simply just works.. close the lid when you're done, stash the machine."

Just make sure you don't do this with your iPhone if you're outside the US.

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[Yetihehe]

Well, how is it new? My asus laptop with xp can do this too. I just close lid and it goes to sleep. I open lid, press any key and 3 seconds later I'm using windows again. I can hibernate too, if I don't want this slight amount of battery usage to happen.

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[JunoonX]

My Vista laptop is no different, press the power button and system sleeps fast (under 5 seconds in most cases), close the lid and when you pop open the lid its back up and running with WMP/Outlook etc within the 10-15 time. Unfortunately, this doesn't work equally across all devices, nor will it. It all boils down to Apple having a limited set of hardware to make this work on, thus, its much easier for them to tweak or modify it across their entire hardware lineup. This same issue plagues Ubuntu as well; on my dell, it works flawlessly, hibernate, stow away, open lid and you're back at using the system within seconds, unfortunately, on an older HP it doesn't. In the end, it all boils down to compatibility of all the devices across your system - Apple just has a better edge on this due to their limited hardware arsenal.

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[MrNemesis]

I'm quite surprised in my new laptop, and HP nx7300 running Kubuntu - it responds spectacularly well to suspend and hibernate; suspending takes about three seconds after closing the lid, and about 2 seconds to resume (not counting the time it takes me to type in my password). Hibernating takes alot longer (compressing and writing 2GB RAM = slow) but still works flawlessly. The machine came with Vista which, surprise surprise, takes longer to do the same thing and occasionally hangs.

Still though, it'd be nice if Kubuntu booted from cold as fast as OSX or XP (yes, I know XP "cheats" but Kubuntu does the same thing, I'm looking at 20s after I login before I get a usable desktop). Is there some inherent limitation in UNIX's runlevel system that makes booting markedly slower than other systems?

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[Khuffie]

I love ignorant Apple fanboys...this has also been available in Windows laptops for years.

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[p0tat03]

Ah yes, eventually I figured out how to do it with my old Toshiba, considering how the default mode was hibernate, and nowhere does it recommend or even mention that an alternate, faster sleep mode was available, and indeed the option was hidden deep within the guts of the OS.

Apple's "it just works" mantra isn't rocket science, among other things it's about being non-stupid with your default settings, and exposing features in a usable, easy to find manner.

Joe user isn't going to know the difference between hibernate and sleep, he just wants his machine to be snappy and work. So while the underlying technology is no different, one machine gets a much more favorable impression.

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[TheRaven64]

It's not new. As I said, Mac laptops have done this for a decade or more. One of the differences is that it's a 'safe sleep.' It effectively hibernates in the background, but only writes out a copy of memory. If the battery goes flat, you can still resume from the state on disk, it just takes a little longer (not too much though, since it demand-pages it back in, rather than loading the whole thing at once, which takes a long time on a laptop with 2GB of RAM and a disk that peaks at 30MB/s).

The big difference, however, is that OS X is heavily tested with every model of Apple laptop to ensure that this works. Windows is not (and, for obvious reasons, can not be) tested as heavily with all PC laptops. For a long time, suspend was horribly broken on a lot of PC laptops because Windows didn't support it well and so manufacturers didn't test it well.

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[WhiteWolf666]

Is there some inherent limitation in UNIX's runlevel system that makes booting markedly slower than other systems?

No. The latest openSuSE's have gotten much, much faster (comparable to OS X or Windows).

The real issue, however, is not having to boot at all. Linux is getting there, but OS X has it spot-on. The new Intel mac's simultaneously suspend to ram and disk, so even if your battery dies, the resume only takes 10 or so seconds, at most (compared to 1-2 seconds for a ram resume).

10 seconds is not bad to wait for your system; particularly if you very rarely have to reboot.

Take a look at http://news.opensuse.org/?p=104 . SuSE is really working on this, and has seen great improvement, and will see greater improvements in the near future.

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[Anonymous Coward]

Except, Apple no longer uses the BIOS on their systems. If you had been paying attention, you'd know all Intel based MACs use EFI.

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[CGDR2]

Well, you need to have 3x the price when you 0.003x the market share. : )

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[0100010001010011]

It's been available but it hasn't "Just Worked". Half the time I try to hibernate with XP I get some driver error message. It'll go through all the steps to hibernate and then within a few seconds after wake itself back up.

If I close the lid and put it away, it's dumb enough to run its battery completely dead. I even have "Critical Battery Alarm" set to Hibernate at 3%. But if I close my lid and put it in my desk drawer, the next morning the battery is completely dead. Even after I plug it back in I have to go through the 'reboot' sequence all over again.

My Macbook pro is the exact opposite. If I forget about it it'll hibernate itself. I don't see why this isn't part of any OS as is. If my battery runs low enough it'll hibernate itself. Next time I plug it in, it automatically comes back from where it was. XP allows me that extra 30 seconds of run time but then again when I do find power I have to start from scratch. My Macbook Pro has an "uptime" of a little over a week (Since the Leopard install) even though I've run the battery 'dead' twice because the OS is smart enough to shut itself down properly

I would be willing to bet that Linux has all of these features too. But I would also be willing to bet that they don't work as seamlessly as OS X.

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[Myopic]

Because (at the risk of being accused of Trolling), Apple will eventually bring out iRightNow which will pretty much do the same thing but in White only and at three times the price?

Close, but not quite. It won't be called iRightNow, it will have a stupid French name. Also, you didn't mention that unlike the competition, Apple's implementation will be useful.

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[neo]

Four times the price and the name is 'kNow'. It actually jumps ahead loading aps *before* you know you want them. Apples been working on psychic computers for years, but this will be the first implementation.

"k" will be the new "i"

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[plague3106]

My Windows laptop can do the same thing. What's your point?

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[Wovel]

On the apple you just close the lid.. Not press the button, wait 5 seconds and close the lid. Most (I am sure there must be one that actually works somewhere) "PC" laptops will stay on if you just close the lid (even with sleep when lid is closed selected in windows) and then get really hot, overheat and shut down.

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[WhiteWolf666]

Well, for starters, its much faster on an Apple than on your Asus. Literally 1-2 seconds for resume.

Also, Apple's now simultaneously suspend to disk and ram. If your battery dies while your suspended to ram, the next time you boot you'll see a progress bar, and presto, your back into your session. No more than 10 seconds or so, which is comparable to the amount of time it takes Windows to S2RAM.

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[Blakey Rat]

Mac laptops have had 'instant on' for years. Mac laptop users don't shut their machines down, they just close the lid and let it sleep then open the lid and have it resume in a couple of seconds. The problem this solves doesn't exist in the Mac world.

To be fair most (not all!) Windows laptops can resume from sleep in 5 seconds. A lot of the reason Windows users always shutdown and start up again is:

1) PC laptops seem to, in general, draw more power in sleep mode than Apple laptops. I've kept my iBook sleeped for 4-5 days before, and when it wakes up it still has 80% battery or more. PC laptops are almost all dead after 3 days of sleep, for some reason.

2) PC users haven't demanded this as a priority when buying a laptop.

3) Habit, "we've always done it that way!" Old laptops didn't work correctly, so people got used to that behavior and now they "play it safe" by shutting down every time.

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[ergean]

I'll have to say bull shit on that.

If you setup the system correctly you'll get the same behavior from a windows (xp/vista) machine.

On all the laptop I had my hands on. That behavior was already set.

My current laptop and my workstation are setup to "Suspend To RAM".

And I can get my workstation up faster them my monitor.

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[DocSavage64109]

Yeah same thing here, and that's on a relatively old laptop -- that I installed XP SP2 from scratch on. Maybe it depends on how many spyware, trojan, virus and filesharing apps are installed?

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, another episode of 'bait the fanboy' ends in hilarity, with you looking like a cunt. Excellent

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[adolf]

Most (I am sure there must be one that actually works somewhere) "PC" laptops will stay on if you just close the lid (even with sleep when lid is closed selected in windows) and then get really hot, overheat and shut down.

My Inspiron 6000 actually works, but I've disabled that function -on purpose-. Just because I've closed the lid doesn't mean that I'm done using the computer and want it to immediately go to sleep. When I do want it to sleep, I just mash the power button, close the lid, and put the computer into my backpack. (Why would anyone wait 5 seconds?)

OTOH, with Ubuntu 7.10 on this same machine, it doesn't even properly turn off the display when the lid is closed. It sees the ACPI event just fine, but seemingly does absolutely nothing with that information. Bad, bad, bad behavior. (After more than 12 hours of fucking with it, Ubuntu is almost running as well as Vista on this box.)

So, clearly, while Windows can be ill-behaved, everyone's favorite golden boy Ubuntu is even worse. (That Apple seems to get it right is more an indication of one advantage their closed-loop hardware platform than of any particular hardware or software prowess.)

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[sexconker]

EFI, BIOS.
Same thing, different name.

It's just the low level software, sheesh.

I love (hate) how Apple people think that EFI is something new and great.

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[Anonymous Coward]

The default behavior of Windows XP on a laptop is to "standby" (suspend) if the lid is closed, but you can easily configure it to hybernate or do nothing. Personally, I dislike having it hybernate when I close the lid, since often times the machine is doing work and I just want to close the lid without stopping it.

I run Windows XP x64 Edition on a dual core Turion laptop and have never had a problem with it going into or coming out of standby or hybernate (which it does in seconds). In fact, I can't remember the last time that I actually turned this laptop off, I always just use suspend or hybernate. It's never crashed or anything.

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[rikardos]

you must be kind of iTwat

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[ToasterMonkey]

It all boils down to Apple having a limited set of hardware to make this work on I hear this quite a bit, and I used to believe it a while back also, as an 'excuse' for Apple's integration. Lets put aside custom built PCs for a minute, and very few laptops are custom made anyway... Do major PC manufacturers NOT have the ability to properly integrate their hardware with Windows? Is there some driver framework that Microsoft is lacking?

Apple's hardware lineup isn't any more limited than any other single PC manufacturer... They support Intel & PowerPC architectures, a variety of vendors for graphics, networking, IO, etc. They have low end notebooks, high end notebooks, mini systems, workstations, rack mounted servers, and desktop systems. What exactly is it within Apple that achieves the great SW/HW integration that HP/IBM/DELL/Tohiba, etc. and Microsoft cannot? Too little standardization, lack of OS frameworks, politics, hard work, what?

Blame it on the HW manufacturer, or Microsoft, or both, but there's no good reason they can't achieve the great integration Apple has. Apple really does put a lot of work into it.

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[Abcd1234]

The machine came with Vista which, surprise surprise, takes longer to do the same thing and occasionally hangs.

Weird. I have a T61, and suspend/wakeup absolutely works more or less flawlessly under Ubuntu, but it's definitely a *lot* faster under Vista. Like, sleep in 2-3 seconds tops (Ubuntu is probably closer to 5) and near-instant wakeup (though you have to wiggle the mouse to get the screen to activate... why, I don't know, maybe a screeensaver setting somewhere). 'course, don't get me wrong, Vista is dog slow otherwise (immediately after booting it can take many minutes for the machine to settle down, and it never really does... and this is with 2GB of RAM), but when it comes to suspend/wakeup, it's still significantly quicker and more responsive than Ubuntu.

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[davidsyes]

Say, does this laptop have a chassis-side disk removal, or is it necessary to go underneath the keyboard, or flip it over?

One think I REALLY like about the Dell laptops is the side-removal caddy-based disks. I can NEVER successfully find laptops with such a feature in any of the typical consumer stores like Frys, BestBuy, CompuUSA, MicroCenter... One sales person said it's only on the high-end or non-consumer grade laptops that I'll find this feature because it costs too much, and most consumers don't care.

Well, I *do*, so I wonder if I'm a "prosumer" who needs to order this feature specifically. I'm thinking I may order from EmperorLinux or the others that offer the feature.

Also, is it possible for this laptop (or can you recommend one) to boot from a USB stick or a USB-disk plugged in whether or not the internal disk position is occupied? I'd like to eventually have a laptop that allows me to specify the internal/external boot order.

It would be nice if there is pressure on more of the bigger distros to certify their releases with laptops in circulation so we don't have to keep going to independent compatibility sites. But since it's expensive to acquire laptops every quarter, it would be nice if the hardware makers would anonymously send a unit or two every once in a while (say, every six month...) Heck twenty laptops out of thousands probably can't hurt too much, especially if it is a cool laptop and they want to generate buzz around it.)

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[yankI]

I think this is called safe sleep. OS X writes a memory image to the disk when the lid is closed. If you remove the battery after the sleep, it will just wake-up using the image on the disk.

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[mihaicapota]

I would be willing to bet that Linux has all of these features too. But I would also be willing to bet that they don't work as seamlessly as OS X. You would loose that bet. I run Ubuntu 7.10 on my ThinkPad and I haven't had a single problem with suspending/hibernating. When I go to sleep, I also put it to sleep just by closing the lid. Compiz Fusion is enabled, in case you're wondering. I only reboot when I get a notification from the update manager.

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[0100010001010011]

When you're unplugged and your battery goes empty does it automatically hibernate? As in the next time you find power you resume from exactly where you were? Say you leave it on your kitchen table because you were ./ing at breakfast. You go to work and come home. Battery is 'dead' and it won't wake up, but as soon as you find power it wakes up from where you were.

If you close your lid and leave your laptop for X days, enough for the battery to go dead and it refuses to wake up from sleep. When you plug into power does it reboot or resume from where you slept at?

I'm not asking about what you can configure I'm talking about straight from the install DVD.

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[slapys]

Interesting. On my XP laptop, I went to Start > Control Panel > Power Options > Advanced and set "When I close the lid of my portable computer" to "Stand by." When I close my laptop, it enters standby mode, and starts up again when I open it. I was able to resume iTunes in about eight seconds.

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[cyber-vandal]

Don't talk to me about Ubuntu. Couldn't get the wireless card to work. The instructions give you virtually no clue as to what to do and then say go to the Wiki. Well I would go to the damn Wiki if I could connect to the internet dammit!

After several hours of trying to figure out why a wireless card that can see its access point refuses to talk to it I gave up in disgust.

The network config tool is ridiculously unhelpful and what the hell is wmaster0 and why can't I delete it?

Wireless networking isn't new or different anymore there's no excuse for it not working out of the box and even if there was the sheer unhelpfulness of the GUI just makes it much worse.

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[mihaicapota]

It is set to hibernate (suspend to disk) when the battery reaches a critical level (2%) so if the battery discharges completely, all my programs are still running when I plug it back in.

I couldn't say what the default was because I didn't install Ubuntu 7.10 from scratch, instead I upgraded from Ubuntu 7.04 (where suspending was also working flawlessly).

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows Vista's power button for shutting down is actually a hibernating button. When pressed the laptop can be put away and after a week it still has battery. When pressing the laptop's powerbutton it comes up in less than a minute. Btw 'shutting down' aka hibernate also takes less than a minute.

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[Anonymous Coward]

1) PC laptops seem to, in general, draw more power in sleep mode than Apple laptops. I've kept my iBook sleeped for 4-5 days before, and when it wakes up it still has 80% battery or more. PC laptops are almost all dead after 3 days of sleep, for some reason.

Macbooks and Macbook Pros are essentially "PC laptops" in this respect. The S3 sleep functions responsible for sleep mode are features of the Intel chipset. The technology has gotten better with regards to battery drainage during S3 sleep but I don't think Apple has much to do with it.

XP is indeed smart enough to wake and hibernate the laptop if the battery is running low. My laptops have all done that for years.

Vista has the hybrid sleep mode where it writes the state out to the disk then sleeps, so if the machine requires a restart for some reason it will resume as it would if it had hibernated. The feature makes more sense on desktops that can more readily lose power.

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[Sprite_tm]

You're telling this as a joke, but actually there's caching software available that does exactly that for Linux. According to your previous usage patterns, it'll try to guess what programs you will start up and pre-load them in memory.

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[0100010001010011]

When you're sleeping will it go straight from sleep -> hibernate? I know XP messes this up.

Also, if you set it up, it didn't "Just Work". I'm going to play with Ubuntu tonight (under VMWare) and I'll see what the defaults are.

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[__aaluww2118]

Important exception: on all my Windows based PCs standby instead of hibernate works like you say, but will drain my battery in less than a day. I can put my Macs to sleep and most will last well over a week. Also I have many issues with standby coming back with various devices connected, not an issue on the Mac. So not quite the same.

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[Anonymous Coward]

There is NO BUTTON. What don't people understand about how the MacBooks (and the PowerBooks before them) work. There is no button. There isn't a setting "Hibernate when I press this key command."

I close my laptop lid and I open it. I don't have to find the power settings. I don't have to do anything. I just USE my laptop.

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a couple of issues with sleep on macs that I wish were more intelligent.

For one, the sleep mechanism should be disabled when the user tells the machine to shut down. It's quite annoying to open up my laptop only to see it finish shutting down (and realize that I just wasted half the battery because I closed the lid a few seconds early). The second thing I'd like is a battery threshold or time limit when it would invoke "safe sleep" mode rather than waiting until the battery is almost dead (also annoying to realize you forgot only put the laptop to sleep rather than shutting down and now the battery is almost dead).

Granted this is based on my current PowerBook (I have a MBP ordered that should arrive this week), so I'd be interested to hear if Apple has solved either of these problems.

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[Anonymous Coward]

If you know much about EFI, you'll know you can have this functionality before the bios CSM gets loaded. In fact, I run python scripts and use several applications straight out of firmware when I quickly need to check a web status page or ftp a file without feeling the urge to wait for one of my many installed os's to boot. I'm pretty sure porting this rapid start framework to EFI would be a much simpler task than to bios, since EFI is /made for it/.
Granted, they're not windows apps, they're EFI apps, but if this windows emulation layer can be put in to an x86 bios, it can be put into EFI in even less time given the right motivation to do so. Plus, you could always put it in to the bios CSM if for whatever reason you need it to be loaded after the x86 bios module...

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[wissape]

you must be doing something wrond with your windows hibernate to run your battery. hibernate saves a memory image to disk and then completely shuts the power off. there is no battery usage in hibernate mode. now sleep mode on the otherhand uses energy while it is sleeping because your memory is never written to disk. this probably the setting you are using. I do agree though that there are driver issues when returning from hibernate because most low quality vendors dont give a rats ass about thier products enough to support hibernate mode in their drivers.

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[Anonymous Coward]

When pressing the laptop's powerbutton it comes up in less than a minute.

whoopdy fucking do. my laptop can do a cold boot in little more than that. when I open the lid from sleep the thing is ready to go before I can get my hands on the keyboard. under a minute... pfft! what a joke!

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[SanityInAnarchy]

I would be willing to bet that Linux has all of these features too. But I would also be willing to bet that they don't work as seamlessly as OS X.

For "safe sleep", it's not, simply because it's third-party (on Ubuntu). This means you need to know which package it is, and you probably need to follow a howto online -- one which will take you probably five or ten minutes, even if you know nothing about Linux, but it kind of kills any chance for it being that "seamless".

For everything else, it is. On my Kubuntu, I can choose "Log out..." -- maybe not intuitive, except the icon is a big red power button -- and from that menu, I can choose "Hibernate" or "Standby", or just "Log out", "Restart", and "Turn off". (I think it's standby, maybe it's called suspend.)

What's not seamless? Well, my laptop is a fairly unique setup -- I dual-boot Linux and Windows, and I have a shared, encrypted partition between the two, doesn't really work well on either of them, but it's tolerable. I have a custom hibernate script that makes sure it's unmounted first. But, unless you boot off a USB stick so you can encrypt 75% of your hard drive (the other 25% being an XP install, and XP won't boot from encrypted stuff), chances are it'll work pretty well as-is for you.

It could be a LOT better, though. Windows resumes MUCH faster on the same machine -- it appears to be the bootloader loading that image. Linux doesn't start loading the image until it's been booting for about 5 seconds.

Then again, it's doing crypto and compression, and it's not prompting me for a password -- and I can hibernate one OS, and boot the other. I call it a win.

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the underlying technology is much more clever in the Apple space - for laptops at least.

For Windows, you have the choice of hibernating (store memory to hard drive, then cut power) or sleeping (CPU stops, power is fed to RAM to keep apps in memory). Wake from sleep takes a few seconds, wake from hibernate takes about 30 for me (depends on how much memory you have).

In Mac OS X, there is no need to choose - it does the best of both worlds. When you close the lid, it immediately stores memory to the hard drive (like hibernate would). Then, with data safely stored away, it switches into sleep mode (supplying power to RAM to keep apps in memory). If you open the lid in within a day or two, it wakes up instantly, as if you put it to sleep. But if you leave it sleeping forever and the battery runs out, then when you eventually plug it in and reopen, it wakes from hibernation.

So the PC is offering sleep-vs-hibernate that only tech-saavy people know how to use. But the Mac is offering a fundamentally better option that you can't get in the PC world, and it's available to all users.

I've never been an Apple fanboy, but since I bought a Mac a few months ago features like this continue to impress me.

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest difference between Apple and other vendors is that Apple cares about User Experience (UX). Have you ever noticed how much shovelware comes with computers? Would a vendor that cares about UX put that much obnoxious crap on the user's PC? Some PCs ship with crapware that isn't even compatible with the computer it ships on!

When Apple writes a device driver, they do it correctly. Most vendors ship devices with the drivers written by the device manufacturers. They know that the use expects their computer to go to sleep and wake up correctly no matter what.

A company like Dell probably doesn't write device drivers. They just ship whatever drivers their suppliers ship, possibly with some customizations. However, those device manufacturers don't care about anything but the UX of their particular device. When the device manufacturer doesn't care that the user can only use the device's UI as admin or it doesn't always sleep, they won't test for those things, and the device is likely to have a UI that only works as admin and sometimes make the computer fail to sleep.

So it's really annoying that my CardBus CF card reader makes my laptop fail to sleep when I surprise-remove it. On the other hand, I can't even use the device on a Mac.

Of course drivers aren't only for hardware. The Cisco VPN client includes a driver that crashes my Windows machine every 10th connect or so. Sometimes when it goes to sleep while connected, it won't reconnect without a reboot. If the Mac version of the software is any better, it's almost certainly a matter of luck.

dom

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[Elladan]

On my laptop, Ubuntu 7.10 did not default to sleeping when the lid was closed. Instead, I had to go to Preferences -> Power Management, and click a button to say I want it to do that. Sleep and hibernate both "just worked" though, if you click the button.

It can't come out of sleep when you open the lid, but this is a hardware limitation. You have to press the power or escape button to wake the hardware.

Since most non-Mac users are probably not used to the whole "sleep on close, wake on open" thing, it's kind of pointless to claim it "just works" or "didn't work out of the box" because of this. If it defaulted Mac-style, people would just claim that it "doesn't work" because it sleeps when they didn't expect it.

One thing that didn't just work out of the box, though, is sleeping when you close the lid at the login screen. The sleep preference is (strangely) per-user, so it only sleeps this way when you're logged in.

On the upside, the hibernate works quite well, unlike any Macs I've used where it's strangely absent.

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[mabhatter654]

wireless under linux is shaky at best. it's technically ILLEGAL to make open source drivers according to the FCC due to radio interference rules, so if the hardware maker doesn't support Linux you're screwed. Try making your wireless work on windows without a driver disk, it's not like Microsoft tries to support it, they expect somebody else to.

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[tengwar]

First? Not by more than ten years. Psions used to start up faster than you could open the lid. I still wonder what Macs and Windows machines are *doing* with all that time.

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[sapphire wyvern]

I don't know about XP, but my Vista laptop has "Hybrid Sleep" as an option. You close the lid, it suspends to RAM. If it's been in Suspend state for too long or the battery is running low, it caches the RAM to HD and goes into Hibernate mode. It seems that once again it's feature *exposure* and usability that forms any difference.

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[sapphire wyvern]

Actually, a caveat: I'm not sure if Vista writes to hard disk at the start of the hybrid sleep, or only if/when the timeouts or battery levels trigger a Hibernation. It could be either way. Anyway, the point stands that hybrid sleep is not a Mac OS specific feature!

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[mpe]

A company like Dell probably doesn't write device drivers. They just ship whatever drivers their suppliers ship, possibly with some customizations. However, those device manufacturers don't care about anything but the UX of their particular device. When the device manufacturer doesn't care that the user can only use the device's UI as admin or it doesn't always sleep, they won't test for those things, and the device is likely to have a UI that only works as admin and sometimes make the computer fail to sleep.

Under Windows you can also find "drivers" which arn't purely drivers. e.g. graphics and sound card drivers installing applets which are often, but not always, pointless.

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[MrNemesis]

Aye, that suspend-to-disk-and-RAM is a very cute idea - can't remember the number of times I've lost my system state due to the battery packing in whilst suspended, and I hope that suspend in Linux adopts it soon.

What does SuSE use as it's init system? IIRC Ubuntu uses upstart I think (not checked that out yet), which is mentioned in the SuSE blog, along with stuff like fcache (block reallocation - only works on ext3 by the sound of it so doesn't hold much attraction to me - I'm generally a JFS man as I work alot with large files and ACL's, and JFS is always faster in this than ext based on my current workloads). Must get bootchart on my laptop and see what the major bottlenecks are...

As another aside, does anyone know if Linux writes the entirity of RAM to disk when hibernating? Seems silly to save things like disk cache if you ask me, but the length of time it takes to write the memory to disk seems too long for just the 3-400MB I'm typically using.

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[MrNemesis]

Nah, disk is via a screw hatch on the bottom (although it slides out sideways) as per usual; it's a standard low-end business oriented model (cheapish, functional and reasonably solid with little in the way of fripperies) and, as you surmise, things like a HDD caddy are definitely not "consumer" oriented; "what? But I'm already holding the hard drive!" ;)

The BIOS in this'll do USB boot, yes. Can't remember if I needed to tweak the BIOS settings or not though, I might have just used the function key option at boot for "which device shall I boot from".

It'd be great for some of the hardware manufacturers to send samples to some bods at distro X, Y and Z for rigourous testing - TBH I bought the HP because I used the previous gen model at work and found it a nice machine to use. At the time I bought it, a few ACPI bugs marred its compatability with Linux but thanks to a mostly-Intel hardware stack it's well supported throughout. Other than that, it was googling for blogs by Linux users with more free time than me who'd bought laptops from the same family.

One thing that would be nice would be if review sites that look at laptops could maybe just try the odd LiveCD (I know some do but they're in the minority) and give a quick check on things like wireless, suspend, screen res and all of the other usual gotchas in the Linux laptop world. But the majority of the enthusiast review world seems more concerned about overclocking this and SLI-ing that to get +5fps in OMGWTFBBQFPS vol. 17 than they do about actually using it for real workloads ;)

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[BlackSnake112]

One can set what happens when the lid is closed. You can have it do nothing (stay on), sleep, shut down, or hibernate (anything else that I am missing?) It is under power settings. Sleep != hibernate. Hibernate write everything to disk then shuts down. You can change the battery if you want to. Then turn the computer back on and all your apps come back (you may have to log in again). Sleep is a very low power state. Change the battery and everything is lost. I don't have a apple notebook to test this but when the apple laptop is sleeping, can the battery be changed and nothing is lost? Most people I know shut down before changing the battery.

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[rtechie]

Hibernate/standby have worked fine in Windows since at least Windows 2000. This isn't 1999.

However if you want to compare the feature sets of MacOS 9.x and Windows 2000 we can.

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[cyber-vandal]

Most of the people in the world aren't under the jurisdiction of the FCC, including the authors of a lot of the wireless software in Linux. That wasn't my only gripe in any case. The lack of feedback from the various tools is another one. I don't want to debug modules just to find out why the GUI tool is crap and seems to change what information it offers randomly. Plus what the fuck is wmaster0 and why can't I delete it?

Re:"With the exception of Apple"

[GWBasic]

Ah yes, eventually I figured out how to do it with my old Toshiba, considering how the default mode was hibernate, and nowhere does it recommend or even mention that an alternate, faster sleep mode was available, and indeed the option was hidden deep within the guts of the OS.

Hibernate used to work perfectly on my old Toshiba. Upon opening the lid, the laptop was fully functional within 20-30 seconds. Frankly, I prefer it to the way my Mac behaves; I'd rather have the extra 5-10 minutes of battery life then instant on.

I wish my Mac had some advanced option that would make it automatically hibernate after having its lid closed for 10 minutes.

nice

[gEvil (beta)]

Sweet. Now I'll be able to brag that my computer has a 256MB BIOS!

Re:nice

[KillerBob]

It can probably be squeezed into less than 10mb... Especially if you don't include things like the ability to write/execute macros or scripts into it. Interpreters like that add a lot of overhead to something that's pretty basic.

Think Pine with a GUI and AbiWord, rather than Outlook/Thunderbird and MS Word/OpenOffice. AbiWord can be installed in 5mb if you don't choose any options, and it's bloated compared to some of the options out there. Pine comes in *well* under 1mb. Add in a couple of MB for the actual *bios* functions and libraries for things like mouse support, and you're off to the races.

Re:nice

[WhiteWolf666]

However, if you consider the cost of modern Flash, it wouldn't really be unrealistic to put in 512MB or 1GB on a Flash, in which you could then you could have a Live-CD kind of thing that is "permanently" hibernated, so it boots in a matter of seconds. Use a nice, light windowing system, and you could have a fairly full-featured Linux distribution with no moving parts, a very quick boot, and all the conveniences of home.

Not to say there isn't some merit in a 10MB ultra-slick, ultra-tight version, but you could easily take this concept in both directions without costing too much.

Re:nice

[KillerBob]

There comes a point when cost isn't the issue, though... the reason that the GUI BIOS idea that Phoenix developped in the mid-90's fell on its face was that the BIOS update download was 5x the size of a normal BIOS update. By modern standards, a 5mb download is nothing. But in the days before 56k dialup Internet, where only the really rich or the really stupid had high speed, and even then it was only a 128k ISDN connection?

It's not about the cost of flash. It's about the size of the download to update it. The bigger it is, the less likely people are to download/install updates. Granted, most users never update their drivers/BIOS anyway, but making it a 1GB download to update your BIOS? nobody's going to do that. Whereas... 10mb? I get e-mails that are bigger than that.

old technology

[Anonymous Coward]

My tandy 1000 used to load BASIC if you didn't insert an OS floppy. How is this any different?

Re:old technology

[Storlek]

Seriously though, it really is old technology.
http://www.linuxbios.org/

Re:old technology

[dosius]

1. IBM computers booted ROM BASIC, Tandys didn't. I did, however, have a Tandy 1000HX that would boot MS-DOS 2.11 with no disk in the drive.

2. Phoenix made the BIOS for Tandy computers. Go fig.

-uso.

Re:old technology

[Anonymous Coward]

My tandy 1000 used to load BASIC if you didn't insert an OS floppy. How is this any different? BASIC was the OS, you student.

Why indeed, cmdr taco?

[EllynGeek]

Why are alarm bells going off in your brain? Is it something about this story? Or maybe you just forgot an important appointment? Perhaps a telepathic reader can find out, since you're not telling.

Re:Why indeed, cmdr taco?

[EllynGeek]

Oh come on, troll? Sheesh, I know that idiot fanboi moderators are among life's lesser annoyances, but really- grow up, already. It's a legitimate question, especially after Taco wrote that idiotic piece on Being A Great Editor or whatever it was called.

Um..

[user24]

Load applications quickly without loading windows?

Isn't this called Linux?

Re:Um..

[Anonymous Coward]

Why was this tagged "Funny"? Seems informative and realistic to me.

Re:Um..

[Volatar]

Because it is funny, not informative.

Re:Um..

[uofitorn]

I bet you're one of those Slashdot readers that pretends to hate MS and love Linux and yet is browsing from a Windows desktop. Sure, the Linux desktop is better than MS (I'm using Ubuntu to write this right now), but it certainly cannot be considered 'instant-on.'

Re:Um..

[strings42]

except for the *quickly* part, but yeah ...

Re:Um..

[ortholattice]

You mean like LinuxBIOS? Boots to a Linux console in 3 seconds.

Re:Um..

[MrShaggy]

No its called OSX!
I love my MAC, I need my windows box for school.

There is no version of Multi-Sim, Not to mention one of my project servers at school suck donkey-nuts, it only allows IE. Grumble.

See the above posts for that whole sleep mode. It rocks. The only time that I was frustrated was because, the wireless needed a moment to re-acquire. I can probably wake up my Imac, do check Slashdot and put it back to sleep in the time it takes for windows to wake.

Re:Um..

[Kjella]

Of all the things valued in Linux, boot time has been one of the least important. If you have a laptop with proper suspend/hibernate functions, hopefully it won't really be important either. A full reboot should only be required on kernel updates and hardware changes, anything else should just cause the machine to store state on disk, that'll be much faster than doing a full probe. That it does a full probe is one of the things I like about Linux, unlike Windows which has a tendency to BSOD when you have new hardware which I assume is some sort of driver loading without checking whether the hardware is still there to get faster bootups. No, "safe" boot also BSOD'd. And it's so easy to uninstall the old drivers when the reason you got new hardware is that your mobo died. On the whole, don't change what works, fix what (on some machines anyway) doesn't, suspend and hibernate.

Re:Um..

[SCHecklerX]

You forgot "and when the cat chews through an attached USB device cord". I was wondering why every time I inserted my USB drive the system would lock.

Re:Um..

[broggyr]

I bet you're one of those Slashdot readers that pretends to hate MS and love Linux and yet is browsing from a Windows desktop

It's possible that (s)he doesn't like MS and loves Linux, but is at work where they only have Windows desktops.

Re:Um..

[ignavus]

Nup, it's called CP/M.

Loaded apps *much* faster than Linux or (*shudder*) Windows.

Re:Um..

[user24]

actually I use and like both, for different purposes.

Re:Um..

[Zoxed]

> You mean like LinuxBIOS? Boots to a Linux console in 3 seconds.

If you are lucky enough to have your mobo supported :-(

I Know Why...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this story setting off alarms in my brain?

Because you've got an alarm implanted in your brain that responds to tech news articles?

The end of dual-booting?

[routerl]

My current Windows XP install is little more than a console (actually, a little less compared to modern consoles; I don't even have a browser installed). If instead of that, I could solely run Linux, and boot directly into Windows games, this technology would be extremely useful.

Re:The end of dual-booting?

[somersault]

When you said console I took it to mean command line interface rather than a 'games console'. Mold your language for the slashdot demographic if you're going to post on slashdot man!

maybe...

[ioshhdflwuegfh]

Why is this story setting off alarms in my brain? Paranoia? Big Brother? Vendor lock-in of BIOS? Vista Forever Everywhere Ultimate Platinum Edition?

Re:maybe...

[Lemmeoutada Collecti]

You forgot to yell GO! at the end, no super powers trigger without the GO!

Vista Forever Everywhere Ultimate Platinum Edition, GO!

And we already have vendor lock in of the BIOS, although that situation is starting to change, I can't just pop an open source BIOS in my PC and expect it to work yet.

Re:maybe...

[broggyr]

Could also recommend "ACTIVATE!", as in the Wonder Twin powers...

"Form of... a bucket of water!"

This may work well especially well with Vista.

Bypass

[Anonymous Coward]

My Macbook by-passes Windows at every boot...right into OS X.

Similar to Virtualization technologies

[DaveWick79]

This sounds very similar to virtualization technologies being developed that allow an application, say a database, to run in a virtual environment on a server without having an underlying OS. Why not virtualize a desktop as well? Why not run a simple OS with networking capabilities?

My concern would be data security, as if you wanted to run a word processor or any app that needs access to your hard drive or thumb drive, you would have to have appropriate security built into the miniOS to handle reading and writing. An option would be to provide some onboard flash storage for Hyperspace to use. How much can you enable the end user to customize the user experience without opening up the system to security risks?

Sounds familiar...

[Otter]

Why is this story setting off alarms in my brain?

Didn't they sell a device like this years ago? It had a stylish design, and a below-cost price with monthly subscriptions, it got hacked almost instantly to run Linux, it prompted a few hundred "Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!" comments and then disappeared...?

Re:Sounds familiar...

[antifoidulus]

A Zune?

Re:Sounds familiar...

[Anonymous Coward]

i-Opener?

No brainer.

[SatanicPuppy]

Why boot up a bloated OS just to check your mail or run instant messenger? Sandbox every application that boots this way, and you increase your security, raise your battery life, whiten your teeth, etc.

People always say, "Well all this person does is check email! Why do they need a fancy computer/operating system/office suite." The real question should be, why do they need an OS at all?

I love my desktop, and I'll probably keep one until they get something that I can wear that does all the same stuff, but I'm fricking sick to death of dealing with people's computer issues, when they only really need a web browser. Handing out knoppix disks works well enough, as a stopgap, but reducing things to a more simple state is highly desirable.

Re:No brainer.

[Anonymous Coward]

People always say, "Well all this person does is check email! Why do they need a fancy computer/operating system/office suite."

Because that is false... they check their email but want to see the pictures sent to them in it, and follow the links to the websites sent to them, and watch the stupid little youtube movies referenced in the emails, and play the flash games referenced in the same emails.

Keep in mind, that often times a person will make that claim without doing any more investigation then a surface glance.

Re:No brainer.

[div_2n]

In all the years I've been helping people with their home computers, I've only encountered one person that actually "just checked email". The rest _say_ they only check email. Then watch their computer boot. Some random instant messaging client pops up and I get, "oh yeah, I use that to message my friends/book club/church group/whatever". They have a solitaire shortcut on their desktop that they use when they're bored. They have some program they use to edit photos of their grandchildren they receive in the email.

By the time all is said and done, they do a heck of a lot more than just email and more than what probably makes sense for some trimmed down applications.

Re:No brainer.

[TheLink]

Even more so if the computer is shared by more than one person. One person just uses email, and Acrobat reader to read pdfs in the email, then one of the kiddies uses it to play bejewelled 2. Another uses it to play some word scramble thingy. Next thing you know yet another person actually needs to do some word processing, printing and also needs the spreadsheet/powerpoint stuff around to view other things they get emailed from their broker/boss or whoever.

But I suppose if the O/S is not capable enough to support such apps conveniently for some reason, the hardware manufacturers would be happy to sell people more to work around the "problem".

Re:No brainer.

[Solder Fumes]

I guess you could set up a version of Firefox that runs with no OS. Then you can do email, web browsing, maybe even IMs with it. Basically your operating system would BE Firefox, and everything you do would be on Google (email, documents, photos, etc). However, I don't see much advantage to this unless you provide a machine that only runs Firefox...once you try to make Firefox work with a billion different hardware configurations, or set up some kind of virtualization environment, you're right back to the complexity and overhead of a normal OS.

Re:No brainer.

[eth1]

Well, if this thing loads applications, doesn't that MAKE it an OS in some respects?

Your "real question" should be why do we need a *bloated* OS? The answer, of course, is that we've never needed it, and would probably be better off without it...

Re:No brainer.

[vertinox]

All you need would be an ASUS Eee.

I'm tempted to get one myself.

Re:No brainer.

[westlake]

they do a heck of a lot more than just email

and this is why whenever the geek's "net appliance" re-enters the market it sinks like a rock.

Re:No brainer.

[smellsofbikes]

It's some sort of sad, ironic commentary on my way of doing things that my 'fast' computer -- a 500MHz AMD -- does, indeed, just get used to check email/browse the web. That's *it*. In contrast, two of my 'slow' computers -- a P166 and another, maybe 266, have all the heavy stuff: relays sticking out the back that are interfacing with stepper motors, serial-port-attached one-wire thermometers, lots of custom programming to implement PID controllers, software to talk via GPIB to my oscilloscope and function generators. I guess it's kind of like keeping the '65 Jag for special occasions and using the dump truck for a daily driver.

Re:No brainer.

[maestroX]

In all the years I've been helping people with their home computers, I've only encountered one person that actually "just checked email".

I've encountered none.

In any case, IF email was the only thing most people used, computer appliances wouldn't be that huge a market.

Re:No brainer.

[Anonymous Coward]

Go outside.

Bypassing Windows and...

[onion2k]

Windows is an OS (I'm being kind), that means there's all sorts of things that run on top of it behind the scenes most users neither know nor care about. Things like a firewall and anti-virus. Quite necessary if Phoenix are suggesting you might run an email client on this thing.

Similarly I don't think there's ever a time when I want to run just a word processor. I want an MP3 player for some tunes. I want a web browser for fact checking. I want Freecell because I'm lazy and rarely do any actual word processing.

Basically what I'm saying is that I want a proper OS, not something that runs one app at a time. I doubt I'm alone in that. Now, give me a decent OS that runs lots of things loaded into an area of Flash memory so it starts up quickly and I'm yours.

Re:Bypassing Windows and...

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, why would you need a firewall and antivirus if the only thing that can be compromised is your email program, and even that is reset if you just reboot?

Oh noes, they will get your email! It's not like email is private anyway. If you're reading encrypted stuff, stop, reboot, start reading it (to make sure you didn't pick anything up). It'll take like five seconds at most.

Re:Bypassing Windows and...

[Endo13]

Things like a firewall and anti-virus. Quite necessary if Phoenix are suggesting you might run an email client on this thing. Really? Why? The article doesn't give many specifics. It's possible that this "new technology" won't even have access to the hard drive. If it's limited to ROM and RAM, is there really anything a hacker or a virus could do, even if they somehow managed to get in? Reboot and you're back to normal.

Similarly I don't think there's ever a time when I want to run just a word processor. I want an MP3 player for some tunes. I want a web browser for fact checking. I want Freecell because I'm lazy and rarely do any actual word processing.

Basically what I'm saying is that I want a proper OS, not something that runs one app at a time. I doubt I'm alone in that. Now, give me a decent OS that runs lots of things loaded into an area of Flash memory so it starts up quickly and I'm yours. Then clearly this stuff is not for you. I'd gladly take it, until we get a full-blown OS that loads quickly or instantly. Remember, this is being designed with portable laptops in mind. The kind of thing they expect you'll do with it is turn on your laptop and browse the web for a bit while waiting on your flight at the airport, or other similar scenarios. For those situations where you have a few minutes of wait time, but you're not sure how much... and you don't want to sit around doing nothing.

Re:Bypassing Windows and...

[Mr.Intel]

Basically what I'm saying is that I want a proper OS, not something that runs one app at a time. I doubt I'm alone in that. Now, give me a decent OS that runs lots of things loaded into an area of Flash memory so it starts up quickly and I'm yours.

It's things listed in your post that popular OS vendors have forgotten about... We need to be pandered to. There's a reason that Vista sales are in the toilet, Linux hasn't been able to break into the market in a decade and why Apple is a cool, but small niche vendor. They need to create an OS based on what their customers want, not based on a list of features Jobs or Gates thinks is cool. Aero was written to be as slick as a Mac, and Macs have taken repeated steps to become more like PCs (close case to open case, adopting Intel architecture, etc.) Linux isn't exempt from the imitate success bandwagon. By trying to replace windows instead of doing what it does best, run apps, no distribution has been able to be both slim and fully functional. It's going to take someone thinking outside the box (pun intended) to get an OS that meets the needs of an increasingly tech-savvy and tech-reliant society to abandon windows. If that means revolutionizing the hardware and dumping the entrenched OS companies at the same time, I say bring it on.

Re:Bypassing Windows and...

[Ephemeriis]

Things like a firewall and anti-virus. Quite necessary if Phoenix are suggesting you might run an email client on this thing.

Actually... If I understand what this thing is doing correctly... I don't think you'd really need a firewall. The idea is that it would run just the email client, nothing else. Not even the OS. There would be literally nothing listening for incoming connections. Just the occasional outgoing connection on 110 or 25 to send/receive mail. This could actually dramatically increase the security and stability of some people's home computers.

Similarly I don't think there's ever a time when I want to run just a word processor. I want an MP3 player for some tunes. I want a web browser for fact checking. I want Freecell because I'm lazy and rarely do any actual word processing.

And there's the real problem with the whole thing. We've had simplified devices like this before... I remember WebTV, and an assortment of "email machines" that just plugged into bandwidth and let you send/receive email. They aren't around now, or at least aren't in widespread use - because folks need a machine that does more than that. Sure, it'd be nice to have a simple device that only checks email, that's as reliable as a toaster, that doesn't crash or get viruses or anything like that. It sounds wonderful. But then you'd need a similar device that only does web... And another device that only does MP3s... And another device that only does word processing... And another device that only does PhotoShop... And before too long you've filled up your house with dozens of these simple devices that only do one thing.

It works in the kitchen, more or less. You've got different tools that do basically one thing. But those tools are all very simple, intuitive, and small. We aren't there yet with computer technology. We can't simplify all our tools down to that level, so we need an all-in-one device.

Re:Bypassing Windows and...

[Myopic]

close case to open case

What does this mean?

Re:Bypassing Windows and...

[dedazo]

There's a reason that Vista sales are in the toilet

Ah-HAH! So that's why Microsoft had it's best Q1 in eight years and the stock is up 10%. It all makes sense now.

Let me guess - you get your news about Microsoft from Slashdot?

Re:Bypassing Windows and...

[Mr.Intel]

There should be a 'd' on the end of "close". It means that Macs were once unable to be internally modified without voiding the warranty. Now you can change the video card, add RAM, and do other things that PC's were known for when Macs were gaining their initial popularity.

Re:Bypassing Windows and...

[Mr.Intel]

And you must get your news on Microsoft from Microsoft.

Re:Bypassing Windows and...

[Cal Paterson]

Rebooting once your mailbox has been wiped is not a good way of undeleting.

Re:Bypassing Windows and...

[greed]

That may have been true for the all-in-ones, but the NuBus machines were very upgradeable. NuBus was fast enough for video cards; and the Toolbox ROM knew how to negotiate with the cards to determine if onboard video or slot video was connected, and cards could store their own settings in system PRAM. (Parameter RAM; like the "CMOS RAM" on PCs. Apple generally labels things by function, not technology. Most of the time. Sort of.)

They just happened to use SIMM memory when PCs were still using socketed DIP chips. "Processor Direct" slots for accelerators were common; they were basically the 68000 or 68020 bus exposed in a special slot connector.

Original iMac sales said, "we don't want to mess with it, we want it to work." But even those had accessible DIMM slots; you needed a nickel to get at the slots, though.

Linux

[Hayden Panettiere]

Does anyone know if this HyperSpace technology uses Linux or other GPL'ed software? The Wired article is not very specific. I hope if Phoenix is using Free Software for its HyperSpace technology, that they respect their obligations under the GPL.

Re:Linux

[KillerBob]

Might make more sense to use BSD software then, don't you think? Or perhaps roll their own? They have a rather long history of doing stuff like that.

Re:Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

http://investor.phoenix.com/en/about+phoenix/investors/news+releases/ReleaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=273083&Year=2007

This is so cool

[Arthur B.]

But the problem is that application would need to talk to the hardware and they don't know how to do that, so we should bundle it with a piece of software that provides an abstraction... and actually that piece of software could be used to launch other applications without the need for rebooting, it could even manage to juggle multiple application at the same time, while protecting memory and and and we'd call it an OS !!!111

Troll!

[cromar]

That is utterly ridiculous!!11!! We can get them in black now too.

Bypass Windows boot-up...

[ZonkerWilliam]

...and get to the BSOD a lot quicker!

Great Idea

[bperkins]

I'm so sick of all this OS stuff.

Really, all we users want are day to day applications.

It's high time we got rid of all of this unnecessary bloat, like VM systems and network protocols. What did they ever do for us anyway?

Re:Great Idea

[JasterBobaMereel]

If the OS is working properly then you should not be aware of it's existence?

Windows has sold us on the GUI is the OS - It isn't

Linux has the right idea - Linux is a kernel... that apps like XWindows, KDE etc.. can run on ... But you can run an XWindows app on a 286 and it can be fast if it's a small app and you don't load all the desktop cruft you get with distros, and all the services that are loaded as standard

A pared down disto (Like DamnSmallLinux) shows what can be done but this can be taken even further .. desktop could consist of three buttons (email, web, Write?) preconfigured for the hardware you actually have, no extra programs/services, would fit in a tiny footprint, and if its on ROM is totally immune from viruses and malware

Sleep works for me

[End Us3r]

"There's absolutely no reason you should be waiting the three-plus minutes it takes your computer to boot up Windows, says Woody Hobbs, CEO of Phoenix Technologies."

Sleep mode takes care of this while preserving the full functionality of your setup. Why have a hobbled OS?

Re:Sleep works for me

[calebt3]

Sleep is not a viable option for laptop users who depend on a battery.

Re:Sleep works for me

[End Us3r]

Sure it is. My MBP is rarely powered off. If I'm not using it or if I am on the road (locally) it is asleep. I carry up to two spare batteries with me and I can, thanks to Apple, swap batteries without having to power off the unit. For longer trips I do turn it off. Fortunately it only takes 95 seconds to boot back up to the desktop.

Re:Sleep works for me

[Anonymous Coward]

>> Why have a hobbled OS?

something vista users have been asking for months now...

Re:Sleep works for me

[Solder Fumes]

I use standby mode pretty often, but my home computer boots to an idle, ready desktop in about 18 to 22 seconds. I don't see how people are getting three minute boot times with a properly configured computer purchased within the last three years. I guess that's the problem...most people buy a Dell and never do anything about the huge pile of junkware that runs at boot time. The software loadout is shipped already broken. If someone is actually still using a P3-500 as a desktop, they really should upgrade...the wasted time in 2-3 second increments over the course of a day really adds up. That goes for people who use Linux too, if you're running a GUI any more complex than Ion.

Re:Sleep works for me

[aviators99]

Sleep is also not an option for people flying on airlines.

My cheap Dell box boots in under 40 seconds

[Com2Kid]

That is from a complete shutdown. From hibernate it boots in under 25 (under 20 sometimes, depends on how much crap I was doing before I went away ;) ), and restores from standby almost instantly.

3+ minutes to boot a computer? What sort of mandatory crap-ware does that guy's company require? Granted I have seen companies get overzealous with security (or rather "over-stupid" in some instances...) and install 10+ background apps, but it isn't any given OSs fault if a company's IT department stinks!

Re:My cheap Dell box boots in under 40 seconds

[Wolvie MkM]

Hear Hear...

Me thinks the Pheonix CEO has to quit running XP on his 486...

Tag this:

[LuckyStarr]

"!generalpurpose"

In BIOS? What the...?

This is a way to undermine the most useful feature of todays PCs that is, they can be used for almost anything.

Toy

[zlogic]

I think this will be no more than toy - BIOS manufacturers often introduce neat features that are dropped and forgotten.
For example:
- Ancient versions of AMIBIOS had a Windows 3.11-like mouse-operated GUI (I had one on a 486 PC purchased in 1995). It was a lot easier to use than "modern" text-based BIOSes in 2007. And if the computer had no mouse, you could use the keyboard for navigation.
- I bought an ASUS motherboard about six years ago and it had a feature that spoke about any failures, e.g. no video card or bad memory, instead cryptic beeps that are common today.

Besides, phones and PDAs are "boot" faster not because the initialization procedure is faster (my PDA boots in about 30 seconds) but because they sleep instead of powering off.

Re:Toy

[KillerBob]

Besides, phones and PDAs are "boot" faster not because the initialization procedure is faster (my PDA boots in about 30 seconds) but because they sleep instead of powering off.

My laptop boots from cold in about 25 seconds. It's running Vista Home Premium edition on it. (yah, yah, I know. call me when the ALSA driver supports my sound card. I have tried repeatedly, with multiple distros and multiple kernel versions. Every time it identifies/loads the driver, then the driver crashes claiming there's no codec and there's no sound.)

Instant on would be nice. But I'm not holding my breath on it. 30s from pushing the button to desktop is pretty respectable.

Re:Toy

[B3ryllium]

I've used that particular AMIBIOS. In my opinion, it is *NOT* easier to use than today's text only BIOS standards.

The verbal POST sounds both amusing and useful, though :)

Re:Toy

[Rtech]

Verbal POST is overrated. I used it for about a week before I got tired of it telling me the system POSTed successfully, now booting from operating system. It used the system speaker, of course. Very irritating. Not to mention tinny. Indeed amusing at first, but useful, I'm not so sure.

Re:Toy

[B3ryllium]

Useful in the context of having experienced a failure, I meant.

No one really needs an everything-is-OK alarm. It's silly if they didn't have a feature to be silent on success :)

~ EVERYTHING IS OK! EVERYTHING IS OK! BEEEEP BEEEP BEEEP!! ~

Re:Toy

[dlZ]

Off Topic

Just out of curiosity, what kind of sound card is it? I haven't had an issue in years with Linux when it comes to sound card support, so I'm just curious what type or if it's maybe a higher end card meant for editing or whatever? I'm not here to bash, I'm seriously curious because it's one problem I haven't seen on anyone's system in quite some time (in Windows 2000/XP/Vista or Linux.)

Re:Toy

[Anonymous Coward]

AMIBIOS was a nightmare if you didn't have a mouse attached (or it didn't work with it)

Re:Toy

[KillerBob]

It's branded as an "Intel High Definition Audio". Near as I can tell, the actual chipset is a SigmaTel 9205. The intel_hda driver is the one that Alsa tries to load, but it simply doesn't work with my card. I've tried every piece of information I could find about it on the Internet, and had absolutely no success. :( (the laptop is a Dell Inpsiron 1520)

And you're right. If anything, I was expecting to have to fight with the WLAN or Bluetooth to get 'em working, but the bluetooth worked out of the box, and the WLAN is an Intel card and I had zero problems getting it to work once I downloaded the firmware. (well, that's an exaggeration. but ultimately i was able to get it working without what I'd call a lot of hassle) I went out of my way to make sure everything in it was Intel hardware because they support Linux better (well, except the video card. that's a 256MB NVidia GeForce 8600 GT)... ironically, if I had spent an extra $20 on it and gotten the Audigy sound card, I don't think I would have had nearly as many problems.

Re:Toy

[Mad Merlin]

Hmm, that's interesting. I've got one of these:

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 02)

...and its worked flawlessly with snd_hda_intel since I got the machine about a year ago.

Re:Toy

[KillerBob]

Yeah... it's a different controller. Apparently, IBM/Lenovo, HP/Compaq, Dell, Acer, etc... all have *different* sound cards that are branded the same way. Mine is not an Intel chipset, it's a SigmaTel, though it was branded as Intel High Definition Audio.

Supposedly, you can make it work by adding a line "option hda_intel model=Dell" to a file in /etc/modprobe.d/ and it'll be detected, but that didn't work for me. :(

Re:Toy

[davidsyes]

"Besides, phones and PDAs are "boot" faster not because the initialization procedure is faster (my PDA boots in about 30 seconds) but because they sleep instead of powering off."

And, (off topic) they beep your location, too. In some models, even removing the battery is pointless, as a miniature, hidden batter is there, too. Ostensibly, this is to preserve custom setting. But, there are some who believe it is a feature well-liked by some 3-letter surveillance agencies.

Re:Toy

[dlZ]

It sounds like it should have been all hardware that works. I've had machines with the "Intel High Definition Audio" setup with Ubuntu and Slackware before without an issue, but never a Dell branded machine. I just tossed Windows XP back on the last Dell I had been using (Inspiron 600M,) installed Quickbooks, and use it as my POS at work. It never functioned properly, wireless was completely flaky under Ubuntu (7.04) yet the same exact card works fine in my Acer (and I mean the same card, it was a better one than the Acer had so I swapped. It did work fine under Windows XP, though.) I've never had good luck with Dell laptops running Linux. I run Ubuntu 7.10 on 3 machines right now, a homebrew desktop and two Acer Aspires (one is a 3620, not sure about the other one at home) and Slackware or some variation on a few older IBM Thinkpads I have, and none have ever given me a problem like that Dell did.

I'm using an Intel WLAN card, too, and the last few versions of Ubuntu worked more or less out of the box with it (had to tell it to allow the restricted driver and I was off to the races.) I can't even compare my current experience with Linux to what it was 12 or so years ago with Slack or RH.

What is this 'booting'?

[victim]

Oh right, the thing you do when you buy the computer and then after each OS upgrade. I never shut off a laptop from the day I buy it until I dispose of it so boot time is irrelevant. I think if boot time is a problem for some machines then the hardware vendors should address sleep time power consumption instead of creating a new user environment.

Nasty issues to be handled in embedded BIOS applications:

1. Enter all my wifi access data again.
   
2. Configure all my email accounts again.
   
3. Can it get to my authentication keychain?
   
4. Can it sync my browser bookmarks?
   
5. Can it get to my address book?
   
6. If my wifi world uses MAC filtering or the BIOS remembers wap/wep keys, does it take authentication to get these apps up or can Bob the cleaning guy activate them?
   
7. Can I securely disable it?
   
8. The user interface is identical to my existing apps so I don't have to learn one more damn environment, right?
   

I guess you can cram this in 4M of flash if you are top notch programmer, 128M if you are not. Either way the hardware won't add more than $20 to the cost of the laptop, so I suppose it is a good thing, as long as you can disable it.

It does open an interesting option: If a user only needs email and web access, they don't need to install an OS at all.

Re:What is this 'booting'?

[Hadlock]

I wish I could mod you above 5. I'm not sure if you were hinting at macs, or maybe window's sleep function has improved finally after 5-10 years, but the only time my laptop reboots is insane system crash (every 6 months), or a major security release (usually done immediately after system crash. 6.5 years and running on one laptop, and I've probably only rebooted it less than 20 times total.

Re:What is this 'booting'?

[Anonymous Coward]

This can definitely work well, if we can segregate data and applications it can work even better.

The main issue should not be at the driver level since the same engineers who made the hardware work for the company that is writing the software. By having a clear and distinct line between 'A' companies applications and 'YOUR' data would be like having a universal bookmark file located separately from FireFox. This way regardless of how a developer wrote their application it would always know your sites, rather than a bookmark file for FireFox, konquer(sp?), IE, etc...

As applications conform to this type of model we can benchmark and design hardware independent of specific OS features. For example if a modular FireFox on its own takes X amount of cycles on its own with no other processing taken into consideration for other code then we could establish that FireFox takes x amount of resource to preform to y spec (#of tabs open, rendered tags per page, etc).

From this would stem the ability for you to determine your use of an application and compare that to what the hardware can provide. As a further example if my FireFox performance index is a 300 then provided I can acquire hardware using the VM as a reference to quite precisely determine how the program will perform.

Re:What is this 'booting'?

[hey!]

Well, right off the bat, I'd say it's a pipe dream to have modern applications without an operating system -- unless you load a big hunk of the OS into the application code.

The stuff you're talking about is nothing. How about a file system? Or a network sttack? A GUI?

And -- this is the kicker -- how do you keep your monolithic app from trashing your "for real" operating system? If it doesn't have an OS, it has access direct to the hardware, and it can do ANYTHING.

No, I expect when the details come out, we'll have the following elements: (1) a lightweight hypervisor that boots up quickly, (2) a more or less standard OS that is stripped down to eseentials and given only a limited amount of virtual memory to play with, (3) some kind of scheme where the hypervisor boots up and restores the stripped down OS from hibernation. Since you will be making the sucker run with, say, 64MB of virutal memory, it will unhibernate a lot faster than your "for real" operating system with its 2GB of VM.

It's not so far fetched. I was looking over an old Apple "Blackbird" 540c the other day. That was a great laptop, probably my favorite ever. It came standard with 4MB of RAM: easily enough to run an operating system and a word processor in those days. I actually had one of them, and except for massive compiles and running a modern web browser, there's nothing I use a computer these days for I could not have done on it.

Virtualization and Applications

[xzvf]

Already being done on some level with servers, this is similar to putting a minimal OS and VM in BIOS and booting an application image. With a little effort this can be simulated with a USB key. Put a minimal bootable OS (Linux) with virtualization built (Xen or KVM) on a USB key. Create VM's with single applications that start automatically. The base OS boots to a menu of VMed applications. Phoenix sees the writing on the wall in the server market. We are not that far away from having OS/VM combinations embedded in firmware that will boot write once/run anywhere applications. We wouldn't have to rely on games for windows anymore....

No OS?

[WPIDalamar]

I'm sorry, I can't use that word processor. It doesn't support my video card?

Re:No OS?

[et764]

I'm sorry, I can't use that word processor. It doesn't support my video card?

That's the issue of I was thinking about this. It sounds an awful lot like the old DOS days, where every application or game had to include its own drivers for whatever hardware it was going to use. Luckily, these days real operating systems abstract all this so there can be one driver that works for all applications that run on that OS. How is this OS-less computer dealing with these issues?

Balmer is throwing chairs right now...

[HW_Hack]

Havng "worked" wth the fine folks at M$ I can say that they are not pleased with this .... any technology that takes the spot light off their precious OS - or usurps any control of the "user experience" does not sit well with these guys. ....... a non OS controlled application writing to FAT32 or NTFS disk space ??? Well thats just not done in a modern PC .... thats like taking a huge step backwards .....

evolution

[Anonymous Coward]

All programs evolve until they can send email.
INCLUDING your BIOS!

it's called a dedicated-function system

[swschrad]

like the game box that, if you hink around with a bootable CD long enough, you can boot into Linux

Yeah, and setop boxes will replace PCs

[MeditationSensation]

We've been hearing this junk for years and years. Face it: a general purpose computer is far to flexible and useful to go away.

Re:Yeah, and setop boxes will replace PCs

[basiles]

The good point of this is that it could show to some (non-technophile) people that 1. Windows exist, and 2. their PC can be used without Windows.

Later on, some (small) fraction of these users might consider switching to some other operating system (which could be good for Linux & opensource).

At last, I think it opens a very interesting can of worms: finally the BIOS is evolving (yes I do know about EFI for Apple, OpenFirmware for some old Suns, OpenBIOS or LinuxBIOS for some happy few motherboards).

What surprises me is that the BIOS are not evolving these days (with the exception of useless gadgets). In particular (even if Microsoft don't care yet) a better BIOS with a better loading procedure (imagine a BIOS containing the GRUB loader!) could be welcome.

AFAIK, current BIOSes are not something of importance when choosing hardware (e.g. a motherboard), except perhaps for overclocking.

Could be firmware, too

[krog]

A combination of persistent RAM with a firmware-based OS/app suite could get us there. By the time the OS gets big enough to be very useful, though, we will begin to see the cracks with this approach too.

Re:Could be firmware, too

[peragrin]

It's been something I have dreamed of. the OS stores itself on a compact flash card, leaving the Hard drive for applications and data only. In fact updating said card should be a royal pain by default as the OS should load it only read only.

advantages you get are speed in loading, and increased security. software hacking it becomes difficult as a reboot would wipe the memory.

OS X, linux, and other *nixes can do this today with little to no modification.

Re:Could be firmware, too

[644bd346996]

Hmmmm.... Sounds a lot like what RISC OS was doing circa 1989. (Although it used ROM instead of flash.)

Re:Could be firmware, too

[cloricus]

I have to ask, as I was very young at the time, why did the generation that could have picked up RISC and ran with it drop the ball and leave us with x86?

I say that owning a PPC chip and understanding how current x86 chips are made, but seriously, why were you so cruel to my generation?

Re:Could be firmware, too

[644bd346996]

Hey, don't blame me! I'm part of your generation!

But the IBM PC came out in 1981, well before the ARM was created. And ARM was never a really good architecture for desktops anyways. By the time really good RISC chips were coming out (PPC, Alpha, etc.), the Wintel monopoly was cemented. And x86 chips have long been RISC under the hood, so the only real downside of x86 affects only low-level programming.

Re:Could be firmware, too

[Nefarious Wheel]

x86 happened because Apple was trying to sell Apple ///'s with clock chips that didn't work. Supplier chip source problem. I was there. Pity, because otherwise the /// was quite competitive. All Apple ][ computers were burned in in a hot room for a few days before shipment -- 100% test rate, which is why the original ]['s were so reliable. The clock problem on the threes changed all that.

Re:Could be firmware, too

[eggstasy]

Because the world has always been made up of 90% blingtards who make decisions based on aesthetics, "me too" and commercials?
And your average corporate decision-maker is hardly ever more informed about technological issues than the average blingtard?

Re:Could be firmware, too

[Anonymous Coward]

This dream was true back in the days when Commodore 64s and Atari 800s were cool. But then again you only had 64 to 128 K to work with too.

Re:Could be firmware, too

[Fred_A]

I have to ask, as I was very young at the time, why did the generation that could have picked up RISC and ran with it drop the ball and leave us with x86? Do you write that much assembly code that you care what CPU is inside your machine ?
As long as it's affordable and it has software (preferably open) available for it, my computer could run on pixie dust for all I care.

Re:Could be firmware, too

[dunng808]

Apple did that. The Newton. I still use mine, every day, for writing, shopping lists, sending mail, address book and appointments. It can even be made to work as a web browser, although that is pushing it. There has never been anything like it. Not even close.

see Newton Newbie Guide.

Followup

[zlogic]

Here's a screenshot of AMI's WinBios: http://www.pucpr.edu/facultad/apagan/images/BIOS8.GIF
And besides, it seems that BIOS is going to be replaced with EFI.

Where BIOS == OpenBoot PROM

[sczimme]

Wait! Wait! We're still relevant. x86 BIOS is still useful for some things!

The Sun 4[c,m,u] workstations had a very useful OpenBoot PROM. I've not seen the same sort of functionality in an X86 BIOS, even in machines from the last year or two. I haven't tried any of the X86 Apple hardware, though.

Re:Where BIOS == OpenBoot PROM

[workdeville]

Apple used Open Firmware as well (Open Firmware is OpenBoot's IEEE name). They're using EFI now, which I'm sure is capable. I'm not familiar with the environment at all though.

run Linux

[m2943]

Properly configured, a Linux system can boot in a few seconds on reasonable hardware. The reason it takes so much longer right now is just because of all the configuration crap that gets read and servers that get started.

off topic alternative

[FudRucker]

i did a clean install of Slackware-12 without debus, without HAL and without udev, and built a custom kernel (2.6.23) trimming the fat (removing unneeded features & removing unneeded hardware support) and built most of it as modules except for filesystem support (ext3) which was built in to the kernel itself making an initrd unnecessary, and my system boots up in about 10 to 12 seconds, i did not time it with a fancy chronograph but i did watch it boot while keeping a close eye on a large wallclock...

the only thing i have to do without debus, hal & udev is mount removable drives manually (the old fashioned way)

Seems more retro than advanced

[WebCowboy]

It could even lead to tailoring of computers to even more specific demographics, like a student laptop preloaded with word processor, email and an IM all available at the press of a button.

It was commonplace for early home computers to come with applications in firmware. BASIC programming was provided in ROM on all Commodore coputers except their IBM compatibles, Apple II series did as well as did many Radio Shack models and the Atari XL and XE 8-bit computers. Even the original IBM PC had BASIC in the firmware. Early 16-bits like the Atari ST had a highly modified variant of CP/M ported to the 68000 architecture upon which the GEM graphical interface resided--and on all but the earliest models it was all resident in ROM (can you imagine trying to get Vista on firmware cost-effectively?).

The example you give is even more ironic because the Coleco ADAM our family bought in 1984 had--you guessed it--a word processor preloaded in ROM (it bank-switched between the BIOS it had called "EOS" and the "SmartWriter" word processor depending on whether a bootable cassette or floppy was found in any of the drives). The idea is not new at all--it is a very OLD idea being resurrected because for end users it WAS a good idea to put the software you used the most to get you going faster, especially given that hard drives were rare on home computers and slower floppies and even slowere cassettes were the only practical alternative.

The biggest disadvantage was that firmware was not easily updatable. When software was simpler people just lived with the bugs until an updated hardware revision was out but with todays complex software (in some cases poorly written and poorly architectd at that) requires frequent updates as bugs are more numerous and more dangerous to your data (since we now have to deal with the internet). Now with flash memory technology having matured the updating problem is gone...the only thing left to contend with is cost (much more than a hard drive, plus software is so bloated).

There is another factor too--hardware has become more intelligent, as have operating systems and over time the traditional BIOS in the PC platform has become almost irrelevant beyond reverse compatibility. New hardware and current OSes use next to nothing in the BIOS anymore. So, creating applications in the "BIOS" is the way these companies try to stay relevant. It's important to note, however, that BIOSes are mostly proprietary to the point that it could be difficult to write Free software on the platform, and in juristictions with DMCA-like copyright regulations even illegal (as the DMCA is often used to restrict the ability to reverse-engineer). That's why Free software BIOS projects are important, and why Free hardware is something that must get more attention, because the parts of the BIOS that remain relevant happen to be the parts that make the wide variety of motherboards out there software-compatible with each other.

Re:Seems more retro than advanced

[Dogtanian]

Funny that you should mention Commodore... I was thinking of the Plus/4, their infamous flop machine that came with four applications built in. They were as crude as hell, not to mention very restricted. (As one of the few differences between the C16 and the far more expensive Plus/4, you'd have thought they'd have put some effort into it).

As someone commented on the Wired page, waking up from sleep or even hibernation modes doesn't take long, and even ignoring that I remain to be convinced that this is a big deal- slap a very cut-down Linux and some apps on a ROM and you could do the same thing. Of course, it could be argued that however it's done, this is more than enough functionality for some people, but then we're getting into the different field of bare bones computers.

You're 100% correct that this is the BIOS companies attempt to stay relevant. It's a solution in search of a problem.

Fast

[dlhm]

First, I want a Microwave that can cook my food instantly.. I mean who has time to wait 10 seconds for a hot pocket? :)

Re:Fast

[davidsyes]

What's next?

-- An "eject button" for defecating? DefEject?

-- Instant-open eyelids? None of this blinking or focusing business! Just SEE

-- Fluidic Breathing? No more in and out. Just BE, goddammit.

-- BO BGone? No more showers? Just a squilgee and a dry rag and showers/baths are obsolete

-- No more funk in work toilet rooms? Just snap two finger and the air is recycled-- INSTANTLY.

-- He who blows it knows it? No more or THAT shit. FartDiFusion. Now everyone's a culprit.

It must have been tough...

[recoiledsnake]

...to write a entire article about a technology while carefully sidestepping what it fudging actually is.

How much of the OS goes in BIOS?

[dbuttric]

The BIOS is meant to handle the bare metal parts of the IO of the machine.
There are now efforts to put applications in the BIOS - MCE machines, faststart, etc.

But to launch an application, the faststart (or whatever) needs to know what filesystem is in use, and what libraries the application relies upon... Oh yeah, theres not even the video subsystem - lets assume that we can load that part, then you've got GUI presentation layer to deal with... The App does not draw its own screens, I hope...

I just see this as being fraught with problems.

At the same time, what if you did incrementally put services in the BIOS, like what if you put 3 different schedulers in the BIOS, and gave the user the choice which one to use. Then the OS would have to detect whether or not the BIOS implemented this, and use it if there, and if not, fallback to whatever is configured in the OS.

The more I think about doing this, the more frought with problems it seems to be. I'm not so sure that a bare metal scheduler is what you want in the OS, you might want to register software services to use it, and perhaps a BIOS scheduler would not be as flexible as the one in the OS...

I applaud the IDEA of taking more functions from the OS. But the how is not so clear to me yet.

your sig

[CrazedWalrus]

As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.

Wild turkeys can fly. Domestic turkeys are too fat.

http://www.kidzone.ws/animals/turkey.htm
(search for "unable to fly")

As someone who's had flocks of wild turkeys fly over his head, I can attest to their ability to fly first hand. I've also seen them fly away after being shot. That's why you always aim for the head; their feathers are too tough for shotgun pellets.

Re:your sig

[mikael]

That's why you always aim for the head; their feathers are too tough for shotgun pellets.

Wow! A new material to replace Kevlar - turkey feathered body armor.

Re:your sig

[operagost]

That's why you always aim for the head; their feathers are too tough for shotgun pellets.

Turkey meat is also tastier without the lead.

Re:your sig

[LWATCDR]

I suggest that you Google Turkey drop. Yes I know wild turkey's can fly, but why ruin a cultural reference in a sig with facts?

Re:your sig

[Waffle Iron]

In the WKRP episode that the quote comes from, the turkeys they dropped from the helicopter were definitely domestic.

Re:your sig

[Hijacked Public]

That's why you always aim for the head; their feathers are too tough for shotgun pellets.

Not really, pellets will penerate their feather just fine. The problem is that their vital organs are both well padded by non-vital tissue and they are fairly small. Their head and neck offer much more direct routes to inflict fatal damage. A gut shot wild turkey can run for miles before expiring and bleed very little in the process, rendering it untrackable.

As for their ability to fly it is limited. In the sig joke you reply to the turkeys were a) domestic, and b) dropped from a helicopter. I'm not sure that even widl turkey would have been able to maintain flight long enough keep from hitting the ground with terminal (for them) velocity.

Re:your sig

[sumdumass]

Didn't some real radio station attempt something like that with processes turkey and end up doing a lot of property damage as well as hurting a few people? I seem to remeber something about that unless it was a take off from WKRP in Cincinnati.

Re:your sig

[sumdumass]

well, not only that, but it sucks to be chomping in on some delicious game bird and end up biting a steel or lead pellet that you missed when cleaning.

Re:your sig

[jbeaupre]

Depends on if you like meat a bit sweeter. Lead oxide is famously sweet, which is why little kids love to eat paint chips.

Re:your sig

[JCSoRocks]

Yeah... Dick Cheney's friend's always wear it when they go hunting with him. It saved one lawyers life!

Re:your sig

[treeves]

Lead acetate is sweeter. The Romans used to put it in their wine, by boiling grape must in lead pots and making a syrup they would add to wine.

Re:your sig

[Khyber]

Shotgun pellets? Someone hasn't been turkey hunting before. Use a .370 Winchester, hit just below the neck, and it will upon impact shatter most of their cartilage in that region and paralyze them, leaving you (or your dog) able to finish the job with relative ease.

Re:your sig

[Anonymous Coward]

.370 Winchester?

Re:your sig

[CrazedWalrus]

Mod me -3 Culturally Inept. I had no idea where this came from!

Re:your sig

[CrazedWalrus]

It probably depends on the range too. Shotguns lost their knockdown power very quickly, and I was always a little afraid to spook the damn things. Their eyes are so keen, it's amazing. What you say makes sense too, and I never really thought about it. I just know that I was amazed to see the thing go over, get back up, and fly away. I just seemed to me that most of those pellets couldn't possibly have gotten through. Either way, wow. Tough birds.

Re:your sig

[slap20]

Ha ha, Yes, as someone who is an avid hunter, shooter, and cartridge reloader, I have never heard of a .370 winchester. I think he might mean a .270 rifle cartridge, or creatively throwing numbers out there hoping that it exists.

-Eric-

Re:your sig

[CrazedWalrus]

Wasn't the Winchester 370 a single-shot shotgun? From the context I assumed you're talking about a rifle (.270, maybe?). I don't know, I never really thought about using anything other than my Mossberg for turkey. I haven't been hunting for ten years or so now, since I was a teenager, but if I decided to go back, I'd probably consider a medium caliber rifle, maybe my 6mm.

Re:your sig

[LWATCDR]

No problem http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4o5L9jiIfbY if you want to see it :)

Re:your sig

[CrazedWalrus]

Hah! That was great. Thanks! I think I'm off to find more WKRP clips now. :)

Re:your sig

[Anonymous Coward]

Please - learn how to spell. friends != friend's.

Re:your sig

[dacaldar]

Best sig in years. I'm only 31, but my Dad used to watch when I was growing up, and I remember that episode. Just sent him the youtube link - thanks!

(p.s. It didn't have the actual quote in it. Is it Les who makes the actual quote? I can't remember - no, he seemed surprised when something was coming out of the plane.)

Re:your sig

[LWATCDR]

It was Mr. Carlson. It was the last line of the show if I remember correctly.

Re:your sig

[BoothbyTCD]

Or hit them center mass with a 30/30, like my friend did one time... The resulting pieces made good soup though.

Re:your sig

[AP31R0N]

[OT]
Informative, sure. But also Off Topic and sick in the head.
[/OT]

Re:your sig

[gunnk]

The sig is a quote from WKRP in Cincinnati. As a promotion, the station dropped live turkeys onto a crowd of Thanksgiving shoppers. They were supposed to drift down using their wings to slow their descent. Instead, well, let's just say the promo "bombed"...

Afterwards, Mr. Carlson said "As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly."

Re:your sig

[CrazedWalrus]

Nice troll. I assume you're a vegetarian? Otherwise I fail to see the difference between someone else killing your meat and killing it yourself. Frankly, the wild game is probably better for you, since you can be reasonably sure it was never shot up with steroids.

Linux

[bigdavex]

Yeah, but but does it not run Linux?

Technology like that is already used

[Boron55]

Technology like that is already used now. I see some Dell laptops have WiFi hotspot finder integrated into BIOS, and it displays results without booting your OS.

Also I believe I've seen some email apps integrated into BIOS that flash a light on your computer when your email arrives without booting Windows. I do not remember exactly, so I may be mistaken about email, but WiFi hotspot finders in BIOS - this feature is on Dell laptops for sure.

Latency

[conureman]

Viable OS in BIOS, minimum OS on top, only open the apps you want.
  I have seen the promised land.

MacIntels use OpenBIOS?

[CarpetShark]

I'd say Apple has already done one better.. implementing a bios CORRECTLY in the first place!

MacIntels don't use OpenBIOS, do they?

Re:MacIntels use OpenBIOS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Open fimware

http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/osx/arch_boot.html

Re:MacIntels use OpenBIOS?

[644bd346996]

That page applies only to the PPC Macs, not the Intel Macs. Intel Macs use EFI, and I would bet that this Phoenix stuff does too, with a BIOS compatibility module.

Re:MacIntels use OpenBIOS?

[CarpetShark]

Of course. I had a feeling I'd got the name wrong after posting that :)

I already have one of these...

[Anonymous Coward]

in the trunk of my car, heading for the dumpster. It's a Brother "laptop" with a word processor, calculator, spreadsheet and terminal application. It goes from power on to application instantly!

I love all this new stuff!

Great!

[Locklin]

Now the OEM's can load crapware directly into the BIOS!

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:"Brillant use of Technology"

[Anonymous Coward]

Call it what you will. It is brillinat!!!

If they can really:
    1. deliver instant ON capability,
    2. lock up the software in a read only static device,
    3. provide plugin USB memory

then they will soon be much richer than the silly pedants
who can't see beyond their concerns over nomenclature.

All I need

[Kylere]

Outside of gaming, 90% of my needed functions can be performed within a web browser, add this app and I can drop windows AND 'nix. Sounds like a good plan for Google.

Back in the 1980's

[Beached]

This sounds remarkably like DOS. With the virus scanner in Hyperspace it sounds like DOS with Windows 3, just more advanced.

Great

[nih]

So now when i press the windows key i end up in another part of the building?

The "OS" concept is so arbitrary, anyway

[dpbsmith]

It's a good example of something that's gotten ingrained through familiarity. Any textbook will tell you what an OS is. Except... when you start to think about it, there aren't any terribly good reasons behind the structure and organization of traditional OSes.

The name "operating system" was invented by IBM for a software system that would automate the tasks of the human operator that preceded it: loading programs, killing programs that got caught in loops, directing device 6 output to the printer if appropriate or to a magnetic tape to be printed later on an offline 1401 if appropriate, etc. Because of IBM's dominance, "operating system" basically got defined to mean "that glop of stuff IBM thought was appropriate to bundle with their processors circa 1960."

Well, due to IBM's market dominance a generation of programmers grew up with the idea that that was the right way, the real way, the grown-up way to do things. Early microcomputers, programmed by engineers that didn't know any better--or were constrained by limited hardware resources--did "OS-like" tasks in all sorts of ways. But as the hardware became more and more capable, and in particular as disk drives became common, the cultural expectation was "let's write a real OS." Patterned basically on imitating the customary practices in the IBM or Digital Equipment Corporation or, later, UNIX worlds, depending mostly on the acculturation of the people doing the work.

There have been some innovative attempts to rethink the process; FORTH, I think (not my world, don't really know); whatever it was the Newton ran; the Canon Cat; etc. Most have gotten about as far as the Dvorak keyboard.

What seems to be happening is that the OS meme is just permanently ingrained now. Who knows what's happening in an iPod or Zune or something like that when you turn it on? I imagine these days it's a trimmed-down, fast-booting OS that doesn't take time to load and start all the stuff it doesn't use, has no general-purpose file-manipulating "shell," and boots right into a dedicated full-screen application...

Re:The "OS" concept is so arbitrary, anyway

[Myopic]

what's happening in an iPod or Zune or something like that when you turn it on? I imagine these days it's a trimmed-down, fast-booting OS that doesn't take time to load and start all the stuff it doesn't use

Yeah, except for the "fast" party. My iPod "boots" in, shit, almost a whole minute. That's not fast at all. Furthermore, PowerBooks in 2001 would wake from sleep in under one second; today my MacBook Pro takes five or ten seconds. What the heck is that about? Is the MacBook ten times slower than an old PowerBook? They claim it's way faster, but that hasn't been my experience. Truthfully, I think the speed of computers has been a gigantic letdown this decade.

Maybe we'll get lucky

[Anonymous Coward]

And people will figure out how to load games using this. Maybe then we can max out our hardware performance like consoles do...

Bypass Windows, run a browser, load Google-Office

[AppleTwoGuru]

This will only speed the retirement of Bill Gates, with Steve Ballmer throwing chairs all by himself. This could be the end of Microsoft as we know it in this generation, for sure, unless Microsoft can get their monopoly conviction appealed and buy and purchase all related intellectual property to a BIOS system. This could get better than Super Bowl Sunday! Microsoft will be filing lawsuits for sure just to be come the next Super-SCO. To see if this will pan out, look for the signs of trouble, particularly coming from Microsoft. They have a hefty burden of profit to generate and they can't let their investors down.

nasty issues to be handled ..

[rs232]

'I never shut off a laptop from the day I buy it until I dispose of it'

Do you mind informing the rest of the IT world as to what secret sause you use, an OS that never requires a reboot during the lifetime of the laptop. The world would beat a path to your door .. :)

'# Enter all my wifi access data again' etc ...

Well if the app runs identically to a version running on the harddrive then that should be no problem. All the harddrive would be used for is storing data and none of those nasty virus type programs that are rampant on Windows..

Maybe if the BIOS did all this at boot time, then you wouldn't need a bloated OS just to email, browse or play media ..

was: What is this 'booting'? (Score:5, Insightful)

Re:nasty issues to be handled ..

[Ant P.]

He didn't say that he never reboots the OS, just that he never cold-boots it or powers it off when it's not in use. I do the same with my desktop, but then it's running several web-facing services so I've got an excuse.

Hardware/Software Profit margins

[bubbaD]

I think Phoenix is just creating FUD, so they won't be totally squeezed out as Windoze migrates to 64bit EFI-booting boxes.

Its easy to forget that PCs are "universal" computers, and the PC software market is unique in this regard. There are plenty of hardware manufacturers who sell (or want to sell) limited purpose devices. PC software (and firmware) companies cannot compete directly (unless they also sell the Operating System) If you want to access email, or chat, or use a word processor without waiting for the OS to boot, some company is surely selling non-PC to do this, probably with extra bells and whistles, too.(cell phones/iPhone being the latest and most obvious) Although many office drones would find it convenient and cheaper not to have to buy and carry yet another palm/blackberry/organizer/kitchen sink, the market won't let it happen.
Phoenix can't make money off bypassing the OS. Even if Microsoft didn't block them somehow, they couldn't compete against terminals, internet clients, and various non-PC devices.

x86 BIOS

[KiloByte]

NO ROM BASIC - SYSTEM HALTED

Re:Fast And Furious

[Provocateur]

More importantly, and I believe I can speak for the majority of us caffeine-dependent posters here, I would like a coffee maker that doesn't drip or trickle the coffee, it just whooshes the whole chunk o' java goodness right into the pot in one fell swoop.

Where is that seedless watermelon guy? What has he been working on lately?

How would that be different

[blueZ3]

than the old world?

Re:How would that be different

[hedwards]

That's pre 9/11 thinking, this is post 9/11. Seriously, try and keep up.

Re:How would that be different

[Anonymous Coward]

It is always pre-9/11, just as it is always post-9/11. The calendar tends to repeat itself about every 12 months or so...

Re:How would that be different

[nurb432]

The percentage of bad people and the ease at which they can practice their profession.

In the old days, you had to work to be a successful criminal. Now its prety much handed on a platter.

Everyone Wannabe Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet again, we see someone trying to make something which is a "Windows alternative".

It's too bad they aren't a large company: I could make a ton of money by short selling their stock.

Re:Everyone Wannabe Microsoft

[somersault]

Not exactly a Windows alternative.. more akin to that little external display thing that you can do with Vista. This would be really cool for times when you just want to check a map or the cinema schedule or whatever and dont have any other method of accessing the web close at hand - though once the standard resolution for phone displays a bit better then this kind of thing will be unecessary.

Bypassing Windows and... you get this.

[NekoYasha]

OLPC + Linux + Sugar UI.

Light, cheap, sturdy, always connected, loaded applications and doubles as a 300-dpi digital book. The only caveat is that it's a bit slow for a flash-drive-based computer.

In the words of..

[f8l_0e]

Chaka Luther King. "I think George Lucas is gonna sue somebody!"

Cartridges?

[Gothmolly]

Maybe we could have a ruggedized plastic case, which contains a RAM image and interface circuitry, which you could plug into the computer - pick 1 for email, another for web, another for a game, etc.

Then, to keep the cost of the 'computer' part down, you come up with a simplified input mechanism, and connect it to a TV instead of a monitor. Perhaps when you turn the TV to channel 3 or 4.

Amazing !!

Dumb question...

[MikeUW]

Doesn't a solid state drive already get us halfway there? Maybe instant-on would be nice, but having little or no room to customize/make changes to the software I run would be unbearable for me, and many others I imagine.

Great to have on my phone

[ACMENEWSLLC]

My phone runs Windows Mobile, and so it takes a full minute to boot. I would be excellent to be able to bypass Windows and go right to my e-mail/web browser in my phone, saving me that minute.

The real solution is to trim down Windows into a small core (like what VMWare has done with ESX) and put that on a chip for immediate boot. I think they mentioned they are working on that at Microsoft. We went away from OS on chip due to costs. My C64/128 Timex et al had boot on Chip. Some DOS machines did (Tandy.) The costs are no longer an issue. Let us get back to that.

Windows XP can't even run on OLPC effectively

[AppleTwoGuru]

Microsoft is still trying. Linux is there and it (and other OSes) can be embedded on one chip.

What if there were a "Disk Operating System"?

[malevolentjelly]

What if we created a super fast bootloader like operating system that ran with almost no memory, in real mode, with a nano-pseudo-kernel. We should make some sort of "Disk Operating System" that can run applications straight on the PC's hardware using basic standardized drivers and direct system resources. We could even save on fooling around with needless multi-tasking and mouse-hockey.

Consider making a Disk Operating System, Microsoft- it could be what's next...

Re:What if there were a "Disk Operating System"?

[badpazzword]

What if [Microsoft] created [...] some sort of "Disk Operating System" They could turn Windows into a Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System while they are at it.

What an innovation!

[damburger]

A simple yet functional OS and applications on a chip! Why didn't someone think of doing this before!?

OH WAIT, THEY DID AND MICROSOFT PUSHED THEM OUT OF THEIR MARKET AND SENT THEM OUT OF BUSINESS

Why Windows?

[grahamd0]

Why is the headline of the story, "Bypass Windows..."?

Wouldn't this same technology allow you to bypass Linux, BSD, OS X or any other OS out there? Wouldn't it offer you same or more utility in any case?

How about this one: "Bypass Linux With Fast-Boot Technology" - Don't have time/patience/technical aptitude to learn Linux? Easy, just bypass Linux and learn Firefox and OpenOffice.

Or maybe longer DHCP terms??

[hummassa]

I have tought it another day when I was having some trouble with the wifi networking at home (many concrete walls across the office and the TV room) that the AppleTV sometimes got its DHCP address (and worked OK) and sometimes at boot it could not get the address (but WPA supplicant WAS CONNECTED to the router) and if I ifconfig'd the last lease address, it started working again... why doesn't the DHCP server give a longer term and why doesn't the DHCP client just keep his last address at boot? I could look up the RFC's, but asking here is more fun...

It's a hypervisor called HyperCore

[Animats]

Phoenix is putting a hypervisor in ROM. The hypervisor is called HyperCore, and not much information is available on it yet. It does assume virtualization hardware, like Xen, rather than patching code like VMware.

This raises many big questions:

• Does Windows run under the hypervisor? (Side issues include Vista TPM validation and Microsoft license provisions against running consumer Vista on a virtual machine.)
• What's the hypervisor's interface? How do we program an app that runs on the hypervisor?
• What does this mean for drivers? Do drivers still talk to the real hardware, or just to the hypervisor?
• How does the hypervisor manage GPUs? (Minor issue for servers, but a really tough question on the desktop.)
• How does CPU scheduling work?

This is why Firefox had to change its name

[goodben]

This is why Firefox had to change its name from Phoenix to Firebird (where it ran into issues with an Open Source database program) around version 0.5. Phoenix BIOS people had already applied for a trademark for a Phoenix web browser. This has been in the works for years.

You must be Steve Balmer

[Anonymous Coward]

No one else would be upset about bypassing Windows

Re:"Brillant use of Technology"

[janrinok]

From your description, I can see why you think it is 'brillinat'. I agree, and think that it is also supreb, useluf and long overude....

Re:Fast And Furious

[banzaikai]

Then, my friend, you'll be wanting the Bunn-o-matic® Home Brew System http://www.bunnomatic.com/retail/products/products_index.html!

It keeps the water hot in a tank (like your water heater), and is pushed through the basket (grounds) when cold water is added (like your water heater). One full pot in about two minutes.

They cost a bit more (the last one I picked up was just under $100), but are well worth it.

banzai

Anyone else...

[StupiderThanYou]

...read the headline and think it was a story about burglary?

your brain

[anwyn]

Why is this story setting off alarms in my brain?

Because your cerebellum is misaligned setting up harmonic oscillations in your prefrontal cortex that threaten to overwhelm your structural integrity field. You've been playing with the matter / anti-matter inducer again haven't you?

15 seconds?!?!?!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Jeez that seems like a long time. When I open my laptop with XP Pro on it, the login prompt is there in 3 seconds flat.

Two steps forward...

[Epsillon]

Rant ahead and I'm not in the best of moods. Please have NaCl on standby.

BBC Model B, 2MHz 6502A processor, DFS and BASIC in ROM, 5.25" floppy, circa 1984 (and still working):
[CTRL][Break]
Brrr-beep.
Ready.
>_

AMD Athlon 64 *mumble* GHz (given up caring), 1GB RAM, Super-mega graphics card GTi (with sunroof and DVI connectors), hard disk the size of a small planet, etc:
[CTRL][ALT][Delete]
Faff about for ten minutes (alright, you lot, I know. It SEEMS like ten minutes) while the disk syncs, wait until the screen goes blank, hit [CTRL][Break] on the Beeb and by the time the Beeb has booted, the PC is still sat there loading the video BIOS with its high-performance electronic finger up its arse. By the time the PC has got to the point of actually being ready for instructions (from the disk), the Beeb has already loaded ViewSheet from an EPROM and is doing useful stuff. I'm assuming this latest huge breakthrough in user-friendliness and convenience also has to wait for the POST procedure. Yep, two steps forward, three back.

So tell me again, how exactly is this concept new? All I really need to make my day complete is to hear that Phoenix (I could have sworn they had been Borged by Award, BICBW) are trying to patent it.

Oh, and "Invalid partition type detected (0xa5). Please wait while I load a web browser so you can buy a copy of Windows. You don't seem to have one and I'd really like you to consider getting one. No, really, I must insist, since you didn't even pay your $699 SCOsource licence, you cock-smoking teabagger."

Re:Two steps forward...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, I don't know why this comes to mind, I really don't... In a way, I mean no offense.
However, based on the way you talk I can surmise that you are very likely the fattest man on slashdot.

No small accomplishment.

15 seconds? Are you joking?

[HEbGb]

5 seconds, tops, for XP to return from standby on my generic laptop. What's the big deal?

Re:15 seconds? Are you joking?

[Anonymous Coward]

15-20 seconds is about how long it takes for my MacBook with 2 GB of RAM to resume from "Safe sleep", which is to say "Hibernation". I first saw the system on IBM's laptops. Basically, it both hibernates the system and puts it to sleep. If you lose power, it resumes from the hard drive. If you didn't lose power, then it's awake in about a second and fully responsive within 3.

I'll beleive it when I see it.

[cdn-programmer]

This idea has merit. Most people only use a handful of applications and they simply don't understand the bloat ware that they have been sold. It was only last week that a friend asked for some advise on what to do with regard to a "new" computer. After speaking with him for only a few minutes it became clear he doesn't know what a CPU is. He doesn't know about memory speeds and swapping. He's going to spend his hard earned cash on faith. I told him where he can get a gigahertz range machine for in the $100 range. I doubt he will do this. To me it makes more sense to spend under $100 and see if the machine does the job rather than spending in the $1000's.

People just don't know. So they get taken advantage of. What we have now is worse than the worst used car salesmen have been accused of.

Maybe its time for a light weight instant boot applications loader. Maybe a through house cleaning is in order.

Its going to be really interesting seeing if this idea comes to pass and if so how successful it is.

representative of their constituents...

[Miykayl]

No, they may -resemble- their constituents by signing what they have not read, but they are still misrepresenting them. ;-)

Perhaps if we were not so conditioned to skip the fine print... The EULA effect...

Software *and* Hardware

[xixax]

I have a MacBook for the same reason I used to have a Sun desktop. Steve owns the OS and the hardware and they are designed to work. It's an engineered solution. Windows OTOH needs to try work with all kinds of scenarios and a much wider range of hardware. No surprise that it's less reliable. This is also the same reason why I haven't bothered putting Linux on a laptop, my laptop needs to "Just work", I'll stick Debian in a VM for tinkering and development.

I wouldn't have minded paying 3x for my MacBook. Because it just works. As it was, it was price comparable to similar laptops anyway and I don't have the fiddle of removing Windows.

Decide on a name already!

[Tekoneiric]

They still working on that??? Sounds like the Firstware/CME stuff they were working on years ago. Back then they had a Linux based OS in an ImageCast disk image tucked away in protected space on the hard drive with various apps installed and a custom boot loader. Sounds like the same thing.

Hell yeah!!

[madbawa]

I'd love to give Windows a fast, heavy, military boot straight up its arse.

Never trust a computer with a Phoenix BIOS

[Anonymous Coward]

EVER!

NSA -> Phoenix BIOS

Its looks good on the surface

[Frozen Void]

And may be useful in single-task envirompent(though with new internet appliances its less of value).The big problem is vendor lock-in and no one here thinks deeply enough to discern where the BIOS apps lead.Imagine Phoenix as another Apple,with limited upgrade possibility.
Eventually these BIOS app layers,evolves into a small os(e.g. LinuxBIOS) though ti will be closed source,proprietary and incompatible with normal software.

BIOS following Stephenson?

[midgley]

The BIOS could become a built-in operating system, as in Snowcrash.

reboot vs cold-boot ..

[rs232]

"He didn't say that he never reboots the OS, just that he never cold-boots it or powers it off when it's not in use"

No, fuddie, he didn't say he never reboots, what he actually said was "I never shut off a laptop from the day I buy it until I dispose of it". Besides which what is the difference to the OS between a reboot and a cold-boot.

" I do the same with my desktop, but then it's running several web-facing services so I've got an excuse"

The same applies as to this magic machine that never needs rebooting, sorry cold-booting. Does cold-booting instead of re-booting mean I have to let the computer get cold between installing service packs .. :)

Sounds just like my ...

[RockDoctor]

thatnerdguy writes

"Phoenix Technologies, a developer of BIOS software, is working on a new technology called Hyperspace that will allow you to instantly load certain applications like email, web browser and media player, without loading windows.

Well, whoopy-doo. That sounds so much like the Psion in my pocket, that it's even more incredible that they stopped producing the platform ... what was it - 8 years ago now?
I'm trying to get something that approaches this level of functionality, and I have been looking for that mythical device all millennium. And the best I've found is still this 2xAA-powered grey-scale machine. As long as I remember a spare pair of batteries, I'm set for the next month.