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

Wow! Wake On Lan!

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG, 1996 called, it wants its story back.

Re:Great...

[Anonymous Coward]

Gee, thanks Captain Obvious. Anything that's not implemented correctly is a major security issue...

WTF is this shit?

[sexconker]

Wake on LAN is ancient.
Dual booting is ancient.

Re:WTF is this shit?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know, seeing as how the submitter calls himself "Anti-Globalism" (with a link to his website) and he includes some stupid, Slashdot-pandering quip in the summary about how "Windows is asleep", I'd say this person has engineered this story so kdawson would pick it up (thinking it would be perfect for the Slashdot crowd) and promote his own website.

Slashdot, you have been gamed.

Here's a strategy for Microsoft

[bogaboga]

One strategy for Microsoft in order to counter this trend is to modify its Windows OS license in a way that specifically prohibits this kind of set-up.

This way, a laptop will have to run a non Windows OS in order to be participant in DELL's "DELL Latitude On" or INTEL's "Intel Remote Wake."

I know this is not illegal.

Re:Here's a strategy for Microsoft

[bendodge]

Well yeah, but I'm sure Dell wouldn't just open wide and swallow that. And a licensing clause like that sounds like a good target for more anti-trust lawsuits, which the EU seems to relish.

Re:Here's a strategy for Microsoft

[node 3]

I know this is not illegal.

This is the exact type of behavior MS was convicted of a decade ago.

Three Cheers for Appliance Based Computing

[Proudrooster]

Having the computer work just like a TV, toaster, or microwave is very appealing to many. I don't know MS can't come up with refinements to make the computer "just work", but most of the time email and web are all I need. If someone can make that work at the push of a button, I'll probably use it a lot and so will my parents and grandparents.

Re:Three Cheers for Appliance Based Computing

[pz]

A long time ago, and by internet standards, I mean in pre-historic times, there was a computer called the Lisp Machine, designed and built at MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. We're talking mid-1980s here. That's more than TWO DECADES AGO. Your cell phone would run circles around a LispM.

One of the amazing things about LispMs is that they came up really, really quickly, despite having very large and slow disk drives. They did this by essentially performing a full boot and then saving that precise memory image (including all peripheral state) to a special part of the disk called a band. This is not unlike the modern laptops' suspend-to-disk feature, except that bands were pretty static. The intent was that you set up your machine just so, and then wrote what you felt was the canonical startup state to the band. Then, every time the machine started, the band loaded in from disk, and POOF! was ready to go.

It was a radical departure, and one that, unfortunately, was not learned by the industry. I would *love* to have my laptop use bands. Save-to-disk is nice and all, but since laptop hardware (and Linux support for it) is so f-ing flaky, it's far better to have a feature to boot quickly to a known-good state.

What's the relevance here? LispMs were as fast to boot as you'd expect for a computational appliance. OMFG if I have to boot my current Linux desktop or Windows laptop it takes eons to come up, and that's with hardware that's probably three orders of magnitude faster. Our modern machines should be in a known, operable state in under a second, and the only reason they aren't is poor engineering / pressure from Microsoft.

Re:Great...

[glitch23]

Anything that's not implemented correctly is a major security issue...

Even when implemented correctly it can still be a major security issue, it just becomes an even bigger one when not done correctly. Some ideas (ActiveX?) should just not ever be implemented and implementing them poorly is just asking for trouble.

Re:Vista just isn't good with normal laptops yet

[flyingfsck]

"Without Vista, anti-trust law suits and billions of dollars in fines, I don't think it would have been possible for Linux to get a foothold."

--there, fixed it for you.

Re:It's the BIOS, not windows

[jackchance]

It doesn't matter if it's in the BIOS, or uses a second processor.

It does matter that it uses a 2nd processor that is very power efficient. I haven't used a windows laptop in a while, but if you just wake your computer from sleep how long does it really take?

I think the real advantage of this is battery savings from running on an ARM processor.

From the article:

If you use only the Latitude ON system, battery life lasts not hours but days, according to Dell.

FUD about netbooks

[jmorris42]

> Next month it'll be "Sound would be nice.".
> Then you'll be bitching "Damn we need support for youtube and flickr up in this bitch.".
> Then you'll say "Can we get a fucking IM client and some printer support? It's 2010!".
> Ultra mobile / webtop / nettop / netbook / whatever is retarded.

Helloooo, Mcfly!

This Dell thing is kinda retarded but netbooks aren't. An ASUS EEEPC has sound, it ships with a version of mplayer that looks nice and has pretty broad codec support. Firefox has the flash plugin preloaded so youtube isn't an issue. IM? It's in there. Printing? Browse your Windows or CUPS printers out of the box. Browse SMB or NFS file shares while you are at it if the included SSD is getting a little full.

Of course the "can't add apps" thing Dell if throwing around is just crazy talk. Even if they try to close it down it won't work. If it has a penguin inside somebody will open it up and get Debian on it inside the first month. The drama will be whether one of the BSDs release first.

Re:FUD about netbooks

[jmorris42]

> A long life laptop inside your laptop with Instant on.

That's kinda retarded, and an indication of just how broken x86 is. But now that market forces are demanding lower power/longer battery life this seperate SoC is a stopgap measure at best.

What is needed is for Intel/AMD/Via to start taking power management serious. Give CPU's the ability to completely shutdown unneeded sections, the second core, the SSE, etc. Take clock reduction to the max. Be able to take a clock from 2GHz down to 200MHz with voltage scaling to go with it. Perhaps even power down the FPU when not needed. Power down memory sticks that aren't needed at the moment. Kill the 3D rendering unit and just keep the framebuffer.

It should be possible to run Linux on a laptop for a day without having to stuff a whole ARM SoC into the box. Vista probably isn't ever going to do that, but Linux should be able to do it on an x86 if it had the right hardware assist.

And no access to the primary HDD from the ON environment? Yea you don't want the HDD spinning all the time but it should be an option.

When did Microsoft become a hardware company?

[Anonymous Coward]

This posting is amazingly odd. It's claiming that these gigantic hardware companies are somehow magically avoiding Microsoft. But last time I checked... Microsoft was a software company.

MS doesn't put out hardware specs, they don't design laptops (or desktops), they aren't giving these companies dictates from on high, etc. Also... neither OSX nor Teh Lunix are driving this innovation... so how is this "Vendors Rally While Windows Sleeps"? Windows is software. So what does that have to do with somebody making hardware with extra features?

Stupidity like that is exactly why computers are still using the archaic BIOS-based system, rather than making an intelligent and modern hardware platform. HARDWARE platform... meaning it's absurd to think Microsoft needs to hold their weiner while these hardware companies use the bathroom.

This is just symptomatic of the degree to which MS-haters need to stretch to find criticisms. MS hate at any cost, even when the cost is looking and sounding like a complete and total irrational idiot. MS is not daddy. Hardware companies actually CAN figure out how to do hardware stuff, all by themselves!

Re:When did Microsoft become a hardware company?

[weicco]

Drag that work laptop to the airport and check your mail via the web

I don't get it. 99% (everyone except me) in our offices has cell phones capable of reading and writing emails, play WMA/MP3/whatever, surf the web and so on. All this with nice animated GUI. So why on earth would those guys want to take their laptops out of the bag and use it in uncomfortable position on those small airport chairs, when they could just grap their cell phones out of the front pocket? Beats me.

Re:When did Microsoft become a hardware company?

[Awptimus Prime]

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.

Vista, sure it might take a while to get booted up, but XP Pro? Come now, this takes like 10 seconds on a decent machine.

In regards to the "business professional", most of the shops I've worked at require a VPN connection to access the Exchange servers to grab email.

Don't get me wrong, I see this being useful, but not very useful for the vast majority of laptop users who have to utilize a VPN. Blackberries and PDAs are the norm for quick email checks with everyone I know who really has to worry about such things at a moment's notice. For instance, I wouldn't enjoy having to carry around a laptop everywhere to get an email notification of a host being down. I'd much prefer the little box on my hip tell me.

Re:They're missing out on a great opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

We'll get the next version of Windows a year early!

There was a delay in the release of Vista... and look how buggy it is. Now you want them to release it much earlier? I say, let them take all the time they need!

Re:Sensationlist much?

[ozmanjusri]

This is retarded and sensational.

No, this is just another example of how a monopoly impedes progress.

The fact that industry is having to work around Microsoft's stranglehold instead of simply shifting to another vendor is a sad indictment of governments' handling of an abusive monopolist.

Microsoft should have been split at the original DoJ antitrust case. It still should.

Sounds like Asus ExpressGate

[gsarnold]

My new Asus P5Q Pro has a feature called ExpressGate that lets you boot a thin BIOS OS (Linux?) with Firefox, Email, etc. The installer runs from Windows, and it may or may not use data from the hard disk, but you enable/disable the feature in the BIOS.

Re:They're missing out on a great opportunity

[BronsCon]

Oh, come on. It was PERFECT on the original release date; they took those extra years to add all the bugs they could think of! OF COURSE we want the next version early!

Re:Sensationlist much?

[Hal_Porter]

If Microsoft were adding features to Windows, like when they added an internet browser and media player, would you be happier?

"...give users what they really want"?

[Lazy Jones]

I don't think users would like their PCs to be accessible from the 'net while they have switched them off. That's just what all the law enforcement / domestic surveillance agencies want, a perfect way to spy on people ...

Similar technology is already used on mobile phones, they can be remotely reprogrammed to pretend that they're switched off while they're recording and transmitting your conversation.

We don't live in a 1984 world yet, but the usual greedy Megacorps are trying to patent the required technology already...

Re:Sensationlist much?

[ozmanjusri]

If Microsoft were adding features to Windows, like when they added an internet browser and media player, would you be happier?

Yep, provided they were:

1. Easily replaceable by OEMs
2. Easily replaceable by my own choices
3. Coded to follow open standards
4. Costed separately from the core OS (So I could save $10 by deselecting IE or WMP, for example.)

Those constraints would allow fair competition. If Microsoft were then able to produce better browsers and media players than the competition, they'd deserve my money.

New Technology

[DragonWriter]

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.

Uh, my laptop already uses technology that allows this, and it allows more than "basic functionality". This stunning new technology is called "Linux".

Re:Sensationlist much?

[JasterBobaMereel]

More popular does not equal better
More popular does not equal easier
More popular does not equal simpler
More popular does not equal more advanced

A monopoly helps no-one except the company who is the monopoly

People use windows because most people use windows and no other reason!

Re:Slow news day eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have an ancient machine that plays CD/DVD in 5 seconds without booting - it's called a DVD player.

Damn you're lucky. Mine just plays unskippable FBI warnings in 25 languages for 10 minutes whenever I put a disc in :-(

I should have bought the pirate discs instead...