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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?
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.
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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.
"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?
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.
I'm sorry, I can't use that word processor. It doesn't support my video card?
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.
which is totally what she said
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)
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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.
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.)
Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
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.
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.
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.
which is totally what she said
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?
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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.
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/