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."

Comments

Re:WTF is this shit?

[sexconker]

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.

Re:It's the BIOS, not windows

[BronsCon]

No, New Here already posted...

http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=649601&cid=24653097

Re:Sensationlist much?

[dido]

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.