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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."
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.
The government can't save you.
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:
1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144 233 377 610 987 1597 2584 4181 6765
I know this is not illegal.
This is the exact type of behavior MS was convicted of a decade ago.
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!
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.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
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.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
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...
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
Yep, provided they were:
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.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
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!
Puteulanus fenestra mortis