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Vendors Rally While Windows Sleeps
Anti-Globalism sends along a PCWorld article outlining two technologies from Intel and Dell that do an end run around Windows. "Dell, Intel and their partners announced last week new technologies that represent major leaps forward for mobility. The companies seem to have discovered the secret to making such bold leaps: Cut Microsoft out of the deal. One technology involves enabling users to gain instant access to a laptop's e-mail, browser and other basic functionality — without booting Windows at all. The second technology enables an Internet-based message to wake a Windows PC from sleep mode. These new technologies are perfect metaphors for what's happening in the industry... Windows is asleep while Microsoft's own partners give users what they really want."
Fuck it, I'll reply to myself.
"Microsoft has been pushing Remote Desktop and its communications software for years. But apparently it never occurred to anyone in Redmond that people might want to leave their PCs in sleep mode, then have them turn on for remote access or VoIP calls."
Remote Desktop supports wake on LAN.
When you try to connect, it tries to wake the machine up. If the machine has wake on lan enabled, and you don't have any NAT issues, it'll work.
You could at least read the article, it's an ARM SoC that serves as a separate UMPC inside the laptop. Kind of like having a N810 inside your laptop if you will.
You just got troll'd!
Yeah, because it runs of entirely separate hardware, i.e. not the same processor/RAM and doesn't use the hard drive. And the great thing is because it runs off a lower power ARM SoC and doesn't have to power any hard drive the thing can stay on for more than a day instead of a mere few hours. It's really two computers inside of one.
You just got troll'd!
Really? Linux on the laptop is growing? Just based on non scientific study but i'm in a lot of airports across the United States. I can count on the one hand the laptops I've seen that are running Linux this year, 2. I do see a growing a number of Macs, but I am hearing more and more of the Vista startup sound on Laptops as the year goes on.
If this growth in Linux laptops are growing, I haven't seen them
On my old Alienware laptop there was a button you could press that loaded a minimal Linux distro to play DVDs and CDs without loading Windows.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Depends what you mean by a normal laptop. For example, I've got a Toshiba Satellite Pro with a Core2Duo 1.66 GHz, 2 GB RAM and a 250 GB HDD. I'm run both Vista Business and Ubuntu 8.04 on this thing and noticed the following:
* Both systems support standby/hibernation properly, but Vista is quicker to resume from either mode. Ubuntu does hibernate quicker though.
* Vista actually lasts longer on battery than Ubuntu. I don't have values, merely observations based on the same kind of work (eg. browsing, email, etc). Probably helps that Vista fully supports multiple power-saving features that either aren't enabled in Ubuntu or aren't up to the same level of maturity as in Windows.
* Ubuntu suffers from a "bug" whereby many hard drives will spin down after several seconds of non-use, which kinda reduces the lifespan Vista doesn't have this issue, although it's hard to determine if that's only because the drive is always flashing every so often.
* Both systems are zippy enough when configured well, although Vista takes absolutely forever to start from a cold boot which is why standby/hibernation is a must with it.
Because I much prefer the software selection and functionality of most Windows software compared to Linux variants, I'm sticking with Vista as my primary on this machine, but Linux is certainly getting better for laptops.
Dell is the only one who puts an extra CPU in there to run the Linux BIOS image so all that hardware you mentioned, except the hard drive, is fully used by the Linux image on the other systems.
It seems strange that Dell would put in a 2nd CPU but it does make it drop dead easy to design this way. There are tons of ARM based SoCs to pick from and pretty much all of them have Linux BSPs.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
No, New Here already posted...
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=649601&cid=24653097
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Basically it's an instant-boot into something and instant-on can give a laptop some credibility where it didn't before, i.e In A Hurry. (Stop gloating you non-Windows users, this isn't about you!) Drag that work laptop to the airport and check your mail via the web before it's time to show the security guy the holes in your socks. Sometimes the web is all you need, or Skype, and some companies issue laptops for their consultants but not Blackberries or other decent PDA.
This gives you a chance to do something with a company-approved laptop SOE that doesn't involve waking the slow, cranky and belligerant dragon that is Vista or XP Pro. This Is A Good Thing. Oh, and you can push a button on the screen that boots Windows if you need to read the boss' Powerpoint. If you have the time, that is. Takes a while to wake the dragon.
The reason why they can do this is they are a specific hardware company (ASUS the example I know) who don't have to cater to all forms of hardware -- just their own. Full-cut OS' can't be that inflexible. So it's a quick little trip from the BIOS to a v.fast PDA screentop. Most of what I need is on that little thing, for the rest you press your OS button and load your standard desktop.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Where the have you been all these years? Nothing stopping hardware OEMs from selling hardware with non-Windows OSes my ass. Jean-Louis Gassée found that one out when he first began to try pitching BeOS to hardware OEMs. He wrote an article on why PC manufacturers won't sell non-MS products (more info on this here and here). The Windows monopoly is reinforced by anti-competitive agreements that Microsoft has with all of the major hardware OEMs. If one of these OEMs violates the agreement, they lose the OEM discount on all the other Windows PCs they sell, and consequently their Windows-based computers wind up costing much more than those vendors that decided to abide by the agreement. You can guess what that would mean to a major OEM.
In a way, this move by Dell is interesting since it shows to what lengths they've gone to avoid violating the contract. They could have used the same CPU to run the Linux firmware here, but no, they had to include a full ARM SoC to do the same instead. Granted, that has some advantages (given that the x86 CPU is much too overpowered and would eat the battery alive), but perhaps the agreements they have with Microsoft may also have something to do with it.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.