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Startup Offers Instant-Boot Windows Alternative
Lucas123 writes "A Silicon Valley startup named Device VM has a product that circumvents the boot-up process, according to a story in MIT's Technology Review. Device VM recently released a tiny piece of software that gives users the option to boot either Windows or a faster, less-complex operating system called Splashtop. The company is partnering with PC OEMs and consumer electronics companies to integrate its core technology into desktops, notebooks, ultra-mobile PCs, and other devices."
How to get slashdot coverage if I have a startup?
You sure you heard that right?
Taking all bets here, folks! How long before Microsoft tries to do something to try to get PC companies to not have this in their systems? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
Living With a Nerd
Umm... ok, so I booted instantly into this thing... now what?
Don't get me wrong, the long boot times of XP annoy me (except when it's freshly installed), but I don't see how this helps, unless it provides for an instant boot INTO XP, I don't see how you'd get regular people interested or how it will help them.
Watch the Teaser Trailer for "The Lightning Thief" Her
TFA is infected with "Vibrant Media IntelliTxt" advertising hotlinks. Mouse carefully or browse with NoScript or something.
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Since I turned off automatic Windows updates I rarely worry about shutting down and rebooting. Of course the 3 or 4 times a year I do have to patch Windows it sucks plutonic balls to have to restart over and over to finalize the patches.
Just wondering which flavor of linux is splashtop based on? (i.e. Distro, Window manager, etc.)
Flexible bare-metal recovery for Linux/UNIX
Calling this "Instant-Boot" is a bit of a stretch. What they are describing is just a dual-boot bootloader that gives the option of booting into Windows or into Linux (Splashtop is a trimmed-down Linux distribution). The 20 second boot time for Splashtop is decently fast, but hardly "instant", especially when you compare it to how fast some computers can recover from sleep or hibernate modes.
It seems moderately interesting, in the sense that some users might suddenly realize that all their computing needs are met by a lightweight (and Free) operating system. They might rarely boot into Windows. On the other hand, for many people this "fast boot" will just make using the computer more frustrating, since they will boot into Splashtop to get something done quickly, but then suddenly realize that they need another application (that they only have on their Windows partition), and then have to endure another, longer, boot (and re-open whatever webpage they were just looking at, etc.).
In short, the interesting thing here is the idea of pushing a dual-boot computer to the masses, and not an "instant on" computer.
You're probably thinking of this article.
:)
Apparently, Device VM hadn't officially announced their technology yet, but now they have. More than enough reason for a dupe
I think you just have to submit a press release as a story.
If you haven't made a developer cry, you've wasted a day.
...Windows SideShow and get true instant on to files, e-mails, appointments, etc. on their PC.
This thing is quite the buzz. It was all-the-rage at CES in a few companies' product, memorably ASUS, which I believe calls it "Express Gate." I think that OEMs could clone this functionality quickly and package it up. It's just a very hardware-specific kernel running with just enough modules and libraries to run the applications. A quick build of the x86 version of Cross-LFS would yield a decent, small OS for a base. But, those Linux users who already tune their kernel generally don't have to wait the two minutes for Vista to start and think it's quick when the computer boots in 20 seconds. We tuners wait 30-40 seconds and we've got a full system. Splashtop users wait 20 seconds and have a reduced system.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
Splashtop sounds good, but TFA portrays it as requiring the user to pick between OSes at boot. That sucks if the user wants a fast boot and eventual access to all their "real" applications. Instead, I see more need for a light weight interim OS (a preOS??) that boots and lets the user do a few things while the main OS continues to boot in the background. Something like Splashtop could boot first, launch a couple of key "first-thing" apps (e.g. web with some morning news or email) and then transfer the session data to the main OS once it's up and running. After a minute (or whatever) Splashtop would crossfade to the main OS and decommission itself.
Of course, the real solution is stable instant-on low power modes (and OSes) that make the morning boot wholly obsolete.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Use the source Luke!
The universe is a figment of its own imagination.
It works really well, much faster boot times.
Though mine has a different name, it is called Kubuntu.
And I am not sure about the cut down part.
Still, it is a great idea, "your OS is slow and crappy, here, install another!"
It will be interesting to see how well this plays, Windows has liked to break dual booting for quite a while.
Zapsavings: Simply calculate how much energy efficient bulb
People with HP laptops incorporating the QuickPlay feature already have something similar, and have since at least 2006. A small partition on the HD holds a linux kernel and various drivers, as well as HP's QuickPlay software. Pop in a DVD, hit the QuickPlay button, and you're watching your media within 20 seconds or so. I fail to see what's new or revolutionary about TFA's product.
You can't have a battle of wits against an unarmed opponent.
It's kind of silly, people moan about their bootup time, meanwhile they have 800,000 apps that all launch at boot and run in the system tray. I've never understood why it's so important to have instantaneous access to Quicktime movies, Word docs, or PDF files that it's worth having something running and sucking up resources all the time. Even OpenOffice is guilty, although their app is easier to get rid of than most. Turn off all that shit except for stuff you genuinely need, make sure you have adequate RAM for the OS you're running, and Windows boots plenty fast.
Excellent! Now I have something to boot to and surf microsoft's tech support site with when my Vista install inevitably goes bad!
EFI and UEFI system will likely start coming out after vista sp1 comes out apple has been useing efi for all of there x86 systems.
What?
Intel's working on making software and hardware advances to cut the boot time. AMD will likely follow suit, as will other BIOS vendors/makers. That can't but HELP be good for Linux.
But, I suppose Linux can boot in under 14 seconds if it's an embedded device doing non-PC work.
Suspend and hibernate are nice, but maybe even this could be good for VirtualBox and other virtual machine environments.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
I can't find anything useful about this product. XP boots quickly on my PC, though it can't match OSX or Debian in my experience. Still, I don't have to go away and put on some tea whilst waiting for it to get to the "Login" screen, and can't imagine why anyone would be so desperate to browse the internet or connect to Skype that they'd find "Splashtop" an interesting prospect.
Maybe you haven't stepped outside the university much, but most users have those apps boot at start-up because they don't know how to disable them (or worry they'll break something if they did).
Couple that with the persistence of certain vendors installing unnecessary applications into their taskbars (and as services) and of course there's a lot of cruft that could be cleaned up.
Quack, quack.
1>Submit a story And that's about it. If it has enough geek appeal, it will get posted. Hell, you could even try submitting it again a couple days later ;)
It's LinuxBios
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Well anytime Windows is acting unstable. Instead of being screwed and dead in the water. You can fire your computer back up this way. Amazingly enough. You could even use it to google out error messages to get Windows going again. Possibly even download a missing or damaged DLL? Or discover since all you do is facebook, hotmail, youtube and myspace. You don't really need Windows.
vi +
I really wish vendors made better use of scheduled tasks for update checking. Java, for instance, installs an at-logon time update checker. There's no reason that they couldn't schedule a task every 3 hours to do the following:
1. Star the updater app.
2. Check lastupdatetime.dat.
3. Has it been more than a week since I checked for updates?
4. Yes it has - check now.
The updater stub can be very lean -- a few dozen KB at most, and launch a heavier-duty updater as needed.
Everyone wins - the system stays up to date and the user doesn't get bogged down with retarded logon applications. Best of all, the user can change update checks - or disable them entirely - from one central scheduled tasks panel.
This has also been installed on the EEE (video). For a PC on the go it is pretty neat, after pressing the "on" button you directly get to choose what to boot, after selecting the Splashtop it directly opens the OS and you can work. Now the EEE is already pretty fast with Xandros, but the Splashtop really makes it close to PDA speed for startup. Even recovering from a hibernate might take normally longer than this. I was quite impressed.
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