Slashdot Mirror
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."
I think you mean "Microsoft is sleeping", Microsoft can sleep, but I doubt Windows ( an OS ) can sleep. It can be put to sleep though. :p
You could at least read the summary, it's a BIOS that runs Linux without booting windows.
OMG, 1996 called, it wants its story back.
Put microsoft's hand in warm water while they're at it. We'll get the next version of Windows a year early!
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, watch it -- I'm huge!
in my Asus P5E3 motherboard. Now if only I can get the memory issues sorted out...
Gee, thanks Captain Obvious. Anything that's not implemented correctly is a major security issue...
Wake on LAN is ancient.
Dual booting is ancient.
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.
This is retarded and sensational.
In other words, perfect front-page material. You must be new here.
It takes way too many resources. Maybe 3 years down the line, but Microsoft really dropped the ball by ignoring the reality of the fastest growing segment in computer sales.
Because of this, Apple is having great sales on the high/upper-mid-end with it's very nice line notebooks and Linux is getting a start on the lower end.
Without Vista, I don't think it would have been possible for Linux to get a foothold.
The year of Linux on the Desktop is distant, but thanks to Microsoft, the Year of Linux on the notebook looks like it's becoming reality sooner rather than later.
And the way a distro like Ubuntu evolves so quickly from year to year, I think it's a mistake that MS can't afford to do again.
In a few years, we'll see that MS was the one who dropped the ball to allow the competition the elbow room to come in.
It's also making things worse by having so many different versions and while it's debatable that Vista should have been wholly 64bit (definitely by Windows 7), MS doesn't even have the decency to provide 32/64bit on the same disc but is trying to grab every nickel it can from it's customers who chose one or the other (many discs don't qualify from alternative media).
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.
Apple is having decent sales in the overpriced, zealot segment.
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.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
Windows won't wake, because the buggy chipset drivers mean it's now frozen in standby.
"Anonymous could not immediately be reached for further comment." - International Business Times
The second technology enables an Internet-based message to wake a Windows PC from sleep mode.
Intel and Dell declined to discuss a rumored third technology, where by after the second has awakened your PC, an virus is installed.
Generally, bash is superior to python in those environments where python is not installed.
A lot of us thought this years ago when we got sick of trolling our way through MSDN trying to find the magic page that held the answer to the Microsoft bit of hell for the week. That's one reason why Java is the primary language now, like it or not--because it's neutral as to platform. This is merely the market taking over. This is the American way. Goliath who is sitting on his pile of money eventually gets tipped over. Good riddance to Microsoft.
What if ISP decide to boot some users off a internet so their internet enabled base of windows or whatever as Midori OS in future, It cannot be access to internet, Neither booted users will not able to use MS internet based OS.
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!
...the mighty jungle
The Ballmer sleeps tonight...
Somebody continue...
If you quote this signature there'll be 72 copies of Windows ME waiting for you in Heaven.
Perhaps there is a group that would like Microsoft to enter and control the motherboard and hardware markets. Or perhaps someone is just regurgitating anti-MS propaganda in order to feel smart without actually thinking for themselves. I guess that as long as they stay out of political discussions, I can live with it.
PC World has a decent summary of Intel Remote Wake Technology.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/149863/2008/08/.html
Then there's also the actual Intel site
http://www.intel.com/technology/chipset/remotewake.htm
I had that "feature" on my Dell laptop and I had to jump through all sorts of stupid hoops to disable it. It was a minimal Windows install. By default, pressing a certain button would either boot to it or f*** up my non-windows partitions. I don't like hardware vendors telling me what software I'm supposed to run, regardless of whether it's Microslop or somebody else.
seeing as so many people are addicted to email currently i must ask why should email be even more accessible when the computer is off? I mean don't we have enough problems when it is on with it. Some people see a blessing with email - it is nice for quick communication but it spells disaster for productivity.
It's not news, it's fark^H^H^H^Hslashdot.com? Oh, and I know, please tell me about all the things RedHat comes with...except:
1)those extras aren't forced, they're easy to remove (unless they're gnome...), and they're all OSS
2)you're missing the point. The point is that the OS shouldn't be expected to provide EVERYTHING. It's not a problem when IBM modifies RedHat to work with their LPARs, and it's not news when someone makes a Windows appliance without Windows. That's supposed to happen, on a regular basis.
Isn't Sideshow pretty much exactly what ON was supposed to do except it's attached to the main screen?
Where does TFA mention VMs? Quick rant : that's what I hate about way too many Slashdotters. They talk like they know damn well what they're talking about when they have no clue/are assuming things or making stuff up cause they can't be arsed to check.
You just got troll'd!
Bender: black jack... and hookers. In fact - forget the black jack!
And don't get me started on the phrase "do an end run around Windows" when it clearly should be "reach around" - at least that's the only way *I* can enjoy my Microsoft products. :-)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I hate the fact that they always generalize from what one person is doing to all slashdotters...
: P
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
developers, developers
developers, developers
developers, developers
a-wankin' away.
The concept that a vendor could sidestep the restrictions imposed by Windows by using another OS is hardly new.
The idea of running a second OS on a laptop is hardly new. It's two computers in one box - that's not a new technology, that's space efficiency ;-)
Obviously it's far from the first time that I notice this behaviour ;)
You just got troll'd!
Duh, well that's the thing. The novelty isn't that it uses two OSes, it's that it uses two different computers using two different architectures. A sort of siamese computer in a sense..
You just got troll'd!
Somebody send it an Internet-based message to wake it, then.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Macs have shitty battery life... My MBP gets 3 hours tops
No, only I'm New Here
I have an ancient machine that plays CD/DVD in 5 seconds without booting - it's called a DVD player.
Seriously, HP had PCs that can do that 2-3 years ago. Oracle worked on a DB server that can run without booting into Windows OS more than 5 years ago. On new mobile phones you can open up your email within 5 seconds. Stop giving free press to Intel and Dell until they have the real guts to get away from Windows entirely.
we can wake Windows remotely. This seems like a major security issue if not implemented correctly.
No kidding. Waking Windows locally is already a big enough security issue as it is!
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.
> 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.
Democrat delenda est
who reads TFA? i was describing how my own PC achieves the same goals described in the summary. i hate people who say they hate things and generalize. my clue is huge and raging.
No, it's not. Don't just judge by the middling article. This really is new and it's part of a new trend from Intel to focus more on the needs of the person using the gadget, which they've been somewhat disassociated from in the past. It's really cool. Try it and see.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
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!
Oh, so it wasn't clueless of you, it just had nothing to do with anything.
You just got troll'd!
Remote wakeup was standard in every PC last century!
Check your BIOS for "wake-on-ring" for modems.
This is belated equivalent for broadband.
It isnt BSOD but BSOS, Blue Screen Of Sleeping, see? the computer its still breathing, or maybe that was the fan.
Not that MS did anything wrong by not pursuing this -- but they certainly had (and have) the power.
That's a matter of wrapping appropriate security. The Intel solution doesn't wake on calls from just anybody, and an appropriate Microsoft solution wouldn't either. If they didn't take comparable steps, they'd deserve any ribbing they got.
hey, it's new to about 90% of the population and Windows OEMs. When was the LinuxBIOS project started?
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
If it has a penguin inside somebody will open it up and get Debian on it inside the first month.
Not necessarily. Has anybody managed to get Debian on recent TiVo DVRs?
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."
Put microsoft's hand in warm water while they're at it. We'll get the next version of Windows a year early!
I think you might be confusing output ports #1 and #2.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
"Dual booting machine"? It's two bloody machines in one case! I'd hardly call that "dual booting"; to the contrary, it's new and novel (and damned cool).
I agree with the other guy, I don't see it as very novel. Basically they just slapped a SoC in there and made it possible to boot into it. It's really just the next step to what some of the manufacturers have already been doing (i.e. embedded CD/DVD/media players), though it does have a certain coolness factor to it. But let's admit it, the only reason this got any play was because the embedded device runs Linux and it was an easy shot at Windows. Granted Vista is a fucking dog, but last time I checked the latest Linux distro releases aren't exactly instant-on, either. But it wouldn't be funny if you were replacing a full-blown Linux distro with this mini-distro, would it?
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.
If Microsoft were adding features to Windows, like when they added an internet browser and media player, would you be happier?
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Just to point out: I own an IBM z-50 that ran BSD until the day the keyboard stopped working (I may still repair it someday). It ran on a MIPS processor and, while somewhat limited (memory only went to 48 MB, the MIPS processor was slow and parts of the hardware were not supported) it ran for 10 solid hours on one full charge. The machine was built 10 years ago.
There is a huge advantage going without Intel. Software stacks like Linux/Gnome/OpenOffice/Firefox go great lengths into marrying a fully functional desktop environment with x86-independence for any company willing to take the plunge.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
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)
I'm left asking, "What's the windows processor for, once I have a low power, light Linux system which boots in a flash?" I know I'm not currently the norm, but I think I'm more and more the norm. You don't have to add much to the system they're describing to make it everything I want in a laptop. (Not a desktop replacement laptop, but an ultra-portable take-with-me device.)
A question, why would a user want internet to be able to wake a computer up?
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
I realize that I am probably just beating a dead horse here but most modern OSes simply boot too many services and other infrastructure (drivers, programs, libraries, or whatever else, etc) which most users simply are not going to use in an average desktop login session. It would be nice if the boot sequences in various OSes could be more configurable (Linux is better on this count than Windows) as to what needs to be loaded during boot and what can wait to be loaded as needed on demand. There is also the issue of what does and does not belong in the kernel (aka the Mach vs Monolithic kernel debate), but that is a separate (albeit related) problem. The other technology that would go a long way towards rendering the boot issues moot is the solid state hard drive, but that too still has a ways to go before it can match the number of write/rewrites before failure of the good old mechanical magnetic drives that most of us are still using right now. One solution, which could be interesting, would to have a solid state memory for the core OS so that the boot times are fast, but then load programs from the larger (and slower but cheaper and reliable) magnetic disk until solid state discs are roughly equal or superior to mechanical magnetic drives in expected service lifetime.
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."
Even without using the EEPROMs, loading a couple of MB of kernel/OS image from a hard disk drive should take less than a second on modern hardware.
You cannot really blame Microsoft's pressure for the FOSS community's weird priorities (it's odd that they are trying to squeeze the last bit of performance out of a kernel, which is then used in an OS that takes 30+ seconds to boot and 10+ minutes to configure/install the new kernel). Another reason is probably that much of the work on "modern" systems is done by people who are reinventing wheels because they've never seen/read about the decades of great engineering work that went into earlier systems. They grew up with bloated APIs on fast computers and will just produce more bloated and badly engineered stuff that - in their experience - the typical user finds perfectly acceptable.
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
This article failed to mention Asus, and their embedded chips... that allow you to use applications like Skype and Firefox.. without a hard drive or having to use MS as your OS.
Redundant
Hee hee hee...Not in this thread it isn't. Get 'im in metamod, boys...
What?
Uh, my laptop already uses technology that allows this, and it allows more than "basic functionality". This stunning new technology is called "Linux".
The last couple of decades have been a bit of a blur to you, haven't they?
it's the same deal as the nintendo wii wiiconnect24, when enabled it turns everything including the main ppc cpu off, and runs from a tiny arm core the basics.
Linux is known to be more power-hungry than Windows; I noticed the same on my computers.
Windows XP works about 40min longer than openSuse11 on the same machine, using default settings.
Here is some reading material:
- http://www.lesswatts.org/projects/powertop/
- there was a white paper written by folk from Intel, I don't remember where I found it, but it could be somewhere here: http://oss.intel.com/en-us/casestudies/
You need to switch to a tickless kernel, and tinker with powertop - that should improve things.
Note that in my case, none of the powertop tricks had any impact - I was surprised to see that no matter what I did, the estimated time would always be 1h45min. This is still an experiment in progress, so don't count this feedback as 100% certain.
The saddest poem
Against a free market, eh? You're not a communist, are you?
I don't understand what the point is here.
Do you mean you can replace easily replace Safari and iTunes in OSX? If so, why is that anti-competitive?
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Drop memory from 2GB down to say 512. See how Vista works out for ya. Watching your battery voltage should be fun too.
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
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.
Before Latitude ON, there was Dell MediaDirect, a Windows XP Embedded partition that booted in about 10 seconds.
The only user focused difference between the 2 that I see, is that MediaDirect is/was positioned as a way to access your files - and Latitude ON is positioned as a way to access the Internet.
Technically, the whole "embed an ARM PC into an x86 PC" may be a better idea than the convoluted MBR and partitioning schemes MediaDirect employed - but it's certainly more expensive as well.
Then, as mentioned, there's Windows Sideshow, which even Dell is prototyping. SideShow is more ambitious than Latitude ON, encompassing everything from sinlge line text displays to show system stats, to ARM based Windows Mobile devices to check email, play media files, etc. So far, it's failed to gain much traction in the marketplace - but, I think that it's still too early to call it dead.
If you take a look at some of the prototype developments in the SideShow remote computer spaces, I think you'll agree that all the functionality of Latitude ON is there - it's just a seperate device instead of being housed in the same case as a laptop.
So - it's not like Microsoft isn't aware or working on this market, Dell and Co. just decided to go their own way. Big deal - happens all the time. While MediaDirect used XP Embedded, other manafacturers were using Linux based OS's. Wake me up in 2 or 3+ years when the market has settled down, and we can declare a winner.
I noticed the "If you use only the Latitude ON system, battery life lasts not hours but days, according to Dell." too, I can't see how it could possibly last days with the full sized backlit screen running constantly (probably not a huge amount longer then any other OS running on it). Maybe if you kept the lid down or plugged it into a separate monitor it could go for that long but it's a pretty misleading statement
Will these machines be counted as running Linux, running Windows or running both?
I would say they should be counted as running both.
Also it would mean that the numbers will differ greatly. And as it already runs SLED, why would I need to boot into Windows at all, except for specific tasks?
I also sure hope that they will go with SLED 11 and not with 10 which is expected (or so I heard) first quarter of 2009.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
My Macbook Pro goes to sleep when I close the lid, it can stay asleep without being charged for at least 4 days (haven't tried any longer, yet) and if the battery is about to die while its sleeping it automatically hibernates. This means for day to day use, starting up my notebook is as simple as opening the lid and waiting 2 or 3 seconds-- and I have a fully operational OS. Last time I owned a windows notebook (its been a few years) sleep/suspend in windows was a shot in the dark. Windows hasn't gotten suspend/sleep working right yet?
Microsoft should have been split at the original DoJ antitrust case. It still should.
There was no need for Microsoft to split. This is the market working itself. When you have a monopoly which does nothing, market forces will bring it down - simple economics.
Help a man when he is in trouble and he will remember you when he is in trouble again.
Damn right.
If you don't know what you're doing, you can't make mistakes.
Careful who you call a whipper-snapper, someone with a really low UID will pop out an any moment and teach you how the cow eats the cabbage!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Don't Linux distros boot up on UMPCs in 10 to 20 seconds?
You just got troll'd!
Yeah, I was wondering the same thing about the screen. However I have no clue how much such a screen drains nor even how many mAh are most modern laptop batteries rated.
You just got troll'd!
or Wake-On-Lan which can be done providing you can send a udp packet to a mac address (so i can wake up machines on the other side of my firewall/router by ssh'ing into that and sending the packet from there)
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
Have the same problem on my Ubuntu laptop. You can fix it with "sudo hdparm -B 192 /dev/sda" but this has several problems: first it completely disables the head parking. Second is that, despite trying to follow the instructions, I cannot get it to automatically run this when woken from sleep, I have to manually type it (I made a button do it). This is not good, Ubuntu.
More interesting is that somebody *finally* did some research to find out what Windows was doing. Apparently it is not doing a secret handshake to tell the disk to act right, nor changing it from it's default setting. What actually happens is that Windows (both XP and Vista) continuously access the disk all the time as long as it has not entered sleep mode. What the disk manufacturers have done is adjust the head-park time as tiny as possible so that it is the most efficient "detect if Windows is sleeping" algorithim. I'm not sure if there is any fix other than to duplicate the Windows bug in Ubuntu.
What gives? I have been remote waking my computers for 2 years and I was late to the game.
http://www.depicus.com/wake-on-lan/woli.aspx
If you got a router that forwards broadcast traffic & you know the MAC of your WOL enabled NIC it's easy to do.
-Joe
I agree it can increase funding to interesting research ....(Unix is not a good example, unless I am mistaken it was written and improved despite AT&T not because of them) ..but look at all the new innovative research Microsoft has done and innovative products it has produced ... err ...?
(Please don't say C# or .NET it was written mostly by Anders Hejlsberg's team poached from Borland and not by the innovators at Microsoft)
Puteulanus fenestra mortis