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Microsoft Considers "Instant On" Windows
Barence writes "In what might be a glimpse of things to come in Windows 7, Microsoft is asking customers whether they would be interested in a new 'Instant-on' version of Windows. 'We would like your feedback on a new concept,' the Microsoft survey states. 'The Instant On experience is different from "Full Windows" because it limits what activities you can do and what applications you can have access to.' Sounds interesting but hardly new: Asus and Dell have produced laptops that provide swift access to apps and data using Linux subsystems."
Now it doesn't even have to boot to bluescreen?
In all honesty, I love the multiple minutes it takes to bring up windows now. Instant on would be a detriment.
ANYTHING that Windows wants to do to improve sucks and linux has already done it, done it better, cured cancer, etc.
/. that isn't a "me too, me too" Microsoft sucks, Linux is good person?
Seriously is there anyone on
Jesus this is like Digg more and more everyday.
OK bitches mod me down now.
...19:21 up 30 days, 20 hrs, 3 users, load averages: 0.52 0.32 0.32
That's a Macbook Air. Why does anybody turn their notebooks off?
Fleur de Sel
The UI for the new "Instant-On Windows" is a black screen with the text "C:\>".
[Insert pithy quote here]
So when it blue-screens you will not have to wait as long, brilliant!
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
MS finally got around to complementing their Instant Off feature!
Kudos to them!
Attention all planets of the Solar Federation! We have assumed control! - Neil Peart
Sounds like a windows terminal to me. You can be instant on, and lease all your applications from microsoft.
Of course, now that we have metered service back, that will again kill the ASP business model off, this time once and for all. ( just in time for us all having enough bandwidth to make it finally work, the rug was pulled out from underneath us )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
That sounds like MinWin, which is a very good thing. I would love to have the option of booting in a very minimal Win32 OS !
"Sockets are the standard networking API, also useful for stopping your eyes from falling onto your cheeks" zeromq.org
Certainly there must be a way to offer these "instant on" apps while the rest of the subsystems load in the background. And if that's true then there's no need for an option, just always do it. It sounds like it's only an all-or-nothing proposition because they're copying the way others are currently doing it.
Developers: We can use your help.
Why is it that Microsoft has no original ideas of their own? Have you ever noticed that whenever Microsoft puts out a new product/service/concept there is substantial proof that it has already been done by someone else? The worse part of this whole thing is, Microsoft convinces the public that their idea is something new!!! Whats wrong with all the Sheeple!!!
Ok, so, you can get Windows instantly, but note that it says you will be limited to the applications and what you can do.
I'm not another "me too, me too" Linux fan, I've been using it as my main desktop for 18 months. And the Linux instant on desktops are fully featured. Not cut down. Sorry Microsoft, you fail.
"...it limits what activities you can do and what applications you can have access to..."
Sort of like Vista, eh?
[hit 'submit' before changing my mind...]
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
Instant on is useless if you can't do everything you want; which is what this is.
How about an don't need to reboot version?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
They can call it DOS.
Can't we have best of both worlds? Perhaps booting instantly a browser and basic apps, and then loading up other stuff in the background?
Or how about it loading up bits that you need, when you need them?
What joke!
We did this with an 68020 Amiga 2000 back in the early ninties. We bought an eeprom board and burned the whole Amiga OS (all 6 880K floppies and the rom image) to eeprom then plugged the board into the rom slot. The Amiga came up within milliseconds with the Workbench screen. Of course if you tried to do this with windows you would need 100 gigbytes of memory to do it...
Ok, next original idea from Microsoft please....
The Truth is a Virus!!!
From the article:
The concept is called 'Instant On'. 'Instant On' takes your computer from being completely powered down or 'turned off' to being usable for a few specific activities in a very short amount of time."
Glad they clarified that powered down and turned off are the same thing. S3, anyone? Small power draw and "instant on" with "full features." I wonder if instant on will be (much) faster than resuming from hibernate. It would be hard to justify an instant on for limited features unless it's a whole lot faster than resuming from hibernate.
"Obviously the systems that are greater than 60 seconds have something we need to dramatically improve- whether these are devices, networking, or software issues."
So, instant on will shave it down to... 30 seconds? Also have to wonder if this will be standard in 7 or something you get to pay extra for.
Evolution is a state-sponsored, state-protected religion.
I'm glad we have Microsoft to come up with these innovative ideas, because Linux developers could never come up with something like this on our own! Thanks Microsoft!
After sitting through "Please Wait. Configuring Updates" every time that I would shut down and boot Vista, this would in fact be a welcomed change. Well, I switched to Linux anyway... But okay.
"Why is it that Microsoft has no original ideas of their own?"
One could very well ask FOSS the same question. Any takers?
"The worse part of this whole thing is, Microsoft convinces the public that their idea is something new!!!"
Like Apple?
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
They might as well get to work on an instant-shutdown feature too: Whereas I know the sortof exact time it takes my machine to boot up (to the point where you recognize the beeps and clicks of the HD ;-) ), it's always different in how much time it will take to turn off.
I can't really pinpoint why it sometimes takes ages for it too shut down: I have a habit of closing all my running programs first (not the ones in the trays), so the shutdown times shouldn't be too different.
When you shoot a mime, do you use a silencer?
But I can think of plenty of reasons to turn a notebook off. For example, a kernel update (we get those a lot in Fedora). Or a hardware upgrade. Or a low battery. Or extended storage. Or, if you are using a dual-boot system, to switch OSes.
Palm trees and 8
So maybe it's not the first time it's been done... Speaking as someone whose stuck on Windows in certain regards of his job, I would absolutely be interested in an instant-on subsystem which allows some utility in a standard Windows install without all the overhead that comes along with it.
My needs when running to meetings, on the road, and taking notes in seminars do not call for much more than a pen and paper, but my handwriting sucks. If its packaged into a standard windows install, its more likely that it might see the light of day in my corporate environment - third party options from specific vendors are far less likely to see usage, and they aren't offered by the vendor we go thru.
Overclockers
Thats because you have automatic updates set to download/install... Turn them off and you wont get that message.... just hax0red
or Express Gate ... and it's available now:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131322
Get your game together Microsoft. We seriously need to see some self developed innovation from you soon or people will care even less.
The very fact that Microsoft as an organization cannot see that an "instant on" operating system would be a really, really major boon for them (my god, its so obvious my CAT is nodding) casts the entire company in a very, very bleak light.
Boot the system. Now snapshot a memory image (a'la hybernate).
Now for "instant on", set up the page table and start running, and in the background, lazily swap in the rest of the memory. Anything you need immediately gets paged from disk, and the rest of the state gets swept up over the next 30 seconds.
Also, in the background, do "lazy write" as well: Any page that is stable for >X seconds but the disk is still active, write it out, so that going back to sleep (rehibernating) can be fast as well.
Test your net with Netalyzr
Mod parent up!
How bout an instant off windows. I know I wish for one of these everytime I boot up Vista. I think instant on would just make the pain begin sooner.
"I don't have to think. I only have to do it. The results are always perfect, but that's old news." - Meat Puppets
I'd enjoy an "instant-on" version of Windows if they focused it on productivity software and casual access to the internet. I'd also need to see it improve laptop battery life by a fair amount. Let's speculate: if this version of Windows allowed you to run Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer (with overhead plugins turned off, such as FlashPlayer) and gave you access to file servers (FTP, SSH, etc.) and sported a 50% battery life improvement, I'd use it! This is a perfect setup for what I need from my laptop when I'm going about my day from classes and meetings.
The green os. 12-18% better power savings for 'always-on' desktops. Sell it to the CFO, not the CTO, and leverage half the marketing budget to the Windows Green campaign. Don't bother with other features or capabilities. They are unneeded, and do nothing to drive adoption or deployment. (Sorry, feature teams.)
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Mod parent slanty!
Mod parent left!
Yeah right.
I can attest to the fact that Dell uses XP Embedded for Dell Media Direct, and always has. I don't know about Asus.
Pffft! I had 'instant on' applications with my old VIC-20 computer.
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
"Limited activities"? No. Why not use suspend-to-disk as the default way to power off?
Isn't that what the full Windows does anyway? Oh...they mean without bluescreening.
[Yeah, it's working hard.] 'Course, on that box it takes about four minutes for a reboot. Most of that time is waiting for system BIOS and RAID controllers to start.
instant BSOD!
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
More like instant turn-on.
Microsoft, you raise more than just my hopes with your incredible innovation.
Presumably the box and ads would be green, too? Then maybe they could have a color-coded release scheme, instead of the letters and numbers used to date. A green campaign for Windows Verde, followed by a brown campaign for the upgrade to Windows Merde! :D
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
I know my computer's startup far too well as well. It sends me into paranoia overdrive when it's different because it updated at last shutdown.
How much would it take for RAM modules be made such that they persist their state (like flash ram)? Or even have a motherboard that matches the size of RAM with flash and does a "hardware initiated hybernate". Granted, some work would need to be done to speed up the process, but "instant on" seems to be a missing hardware feature that is exacerbated by software using more time than necessary to start up.
Older computers ran fast with simple software and less and slower RAM. Has our capability scaled at the same rate as our system requirements?
DISCLAIMER: This post was not checked for speling and grammar- if you complain- you're a whiner
Normal Windows would be fine if it could sleep/wake up without locking up or losing half the devices and forcing a reboot.
No sig today...
Who reboots their Windows machines more than once a month anymore? Vista's Sleep mode is vastly improved over XP. Just sleep your computer instead of powering it off. A laptop battery will power a laptop for several days in sleep mode. Vista resumes from sleep mode in seconds.
If you throw your computer into suspend-to-disk (Stand-By), it uses no electricity, except for the amount your computer normally uses when it's off, and is essentially "instant-on".
Try it: put your computer into stand-by (suspend-to-disk), and after it turns off, reactivate it (click the mouse or something) and watch how quickly it goes back to how it was before you threw it into standby.
Need an automatic screenshot taker? Try here.
People always claim that FOSS (usually they just mean Linux, and in particular the KDE and GNOME desktops) just copies Microsoft and/or Apple, so "where's the innovation".
Well, this is where. FOSS made it possible for Asus and Dell to think about instant on computing. With Windows, you'd only have it if Microsoft came up with the idea. With Linux, anyone is free to come up with the idea. Even people not associated with Linux development per se.
That's what open source innovation is about. Providing the freedom to innovate. Yes Linux is still playing catchup (to a limited extent these days) in matching mainstream desktop functionality and in keeping up with all the closed de-facto 'standards' that keep appearing due to the fact that the marketplace is still a heavily distorted Monopoly dominated one.
So don't expect a new desktop paradigm (which most people probably don't even want). But expect a host of new devices (EeePC, Android, TiVo, etc) made possible by the true open source innovation - freedom to reuse.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
Let me get this as simple as possible:
1. Having a fast booting OS is good in any case.
2. Having a special fast-boot mode is useless.
Let me give you an example.
Take a normal mobile phone. I can press two buttons and the phone is ready to be used. Does anyone on this planet cares how fast a mobile phone boots its OS? Pretty much nobody cares if the phone boots in 15, 30, or 60 seconds. They boot it once a day at most. I can't even remember when was the last time I rebooted mine.
Can you already see where I'm going with this? I got only few words:
Suspend/hibernation/hybrid sleep.
I already wrote a post similar to this. Take my macbook (or pretty much any other computer) for example. I can't even remember when was the last time I (re)booted it. Consequentially, I don't even care how fast it boots. I just close the lid when I'm done with my work and the computer goes to hybrid sleep. When I want to resume with my work, I just open the lid and the computer is *instantly* ready to accept my input.
This is just like a mobile phone. But even better! As the mobile phone does drain the battery slowly, computer actually doesn't (if it is hibernated).
So to finish with my post. Of course it is good for a OS to boot fast. But in my view this isn't one of it's main features. Instead they should really be working on improving suspend/resume mechanic on desktop and laptop computers. Too many brand new laptops dont' resume when I open their lids. I usually have to press their power button to resume. And sometimes, they don't resume at all. So instead of doing a whole another windows mode, they should instead focusing on better suspend/resume support.
I still can see like 98% of windows users and 90% of mac users regularly shut down their laptops/desktops. One can consider this a bad habit from the "good old times. Modern computer architecture really should be making great suspend/resume architecture.
Trolls are like broken clocks. They show the truth two times a day. The rest of the day they talk nonsense.
I am probably the least techincal person on /. But I like geeky girls, so I keep up on the news. I know a lot of you are saying "big deal" or "it's been done before" -- but I respectfully disagree.
.... 15 days...? (Did I do that right?)
This would make me upgrade. I think it would make a lot of businesses upgrade. Especially if it would allow you to write or check email or even browse as the full functionality is loading in the background.
To give you a sense of why I think business would love this: Imagine a law firm with 300 lawyers. Those lawyers probably wastes on average of between 1 to 2 minutes each morning booting Windows.* (Since there are no known lawfirms that use Macs or Linux, it's a moot point whether other systems already do this.)
300 Lawyers * 2 minutes = 600 minutes or 10 hours per day of wasted legal time.
At a low hourly rate of $200 per hour, that is $2,000 per day in lost revenues. Given that a license costs, what -- $100 dollars per attorney? It would pay for itself in
* And note that for me, boot up time probably cost me far more than 2 minutes per day. You sit down at the computer to work, sit while it boots, get distracted, and come back 10 minutes later. I know it's silly -- but when you are in a profession where every six increment is billed, this adds up.
... most computers already show a blue screen when you power them on.
Then they mess it up with that BIOS booting stuff. They just have to disable BIOS and it will be just like instantly booting Windows.
6-7 seconds to the desktop.
One of the reasons I loved Risc OS so much (non-brits may have to google). There's a lot to be said for instant on, especially for creative types (like myself) where inspiration may suddenly appear and the need to save it is urgent.
Waiting for windows to boot (especially an old installation) can take so long you can lose that "spark", so I'm all in favour of this.
Pfft...beat you. I did this with a Sinclair ZX81 in the early eighties. It had BASIC already burned into the main ROM. You turned it on and your entire system was immediately ready to go. Ergo, by your rationale, your idea was a pathetic imitation stolen from Sir Clive Sinclair.
Gee, I remember when /. used to have rational and meaningful dialogue from people who were at least half as intelligent as they thought they were.
I'd say you were beating a dead horse, but the horse has so completely decomposed, even the skeleton has been ground to dust and blown away. You're beating the ground where the dead horse used to be.
We already have hibernation for Windows. What else do you need???
Waste of time....
12 years ago. It certainly isn't a new idea. However, it does require either caching session data out to ROM, Flash, or hard disk (which requires energy and therefore the system isn't "off"). Therefore, I don't know how this isn't that different from their current hibernation technology they've had for years. And honestly, they really should just fix that first.
Can they make it instantly boot into the game in the cdrom tray? That's basically the only reason I start Windows anyway. It would be nice to have Firefox, but if I really needed to do some web browsing I'd just boot back to Linux.
So please, Microsoft, work on load times. This is a real problem for some of us.
Useable for a few specific activities in a very short amount of time
Sounds like certain applications will become active immediatly and the rest will loadup with the rest of the OS. Like being able to use IE to browse while waiting for your desktop to come up.
Looked at in this manner it actually could be considered innovative since this would not be the same as a souped up hibernate or writing the entire OS out to flash. They would have a hit if you could set bejeweled or solitaire to load up and you could play a game while waiting.
...and if you had a dell laptop this would include "instant-on-fire".
How much are you willing to pay for this? I think its stupid, I might consider this useful if it was a full blown OS. In reality I can wait the 55 seconds it takes my laptop to boot. Usually takes me that long to find the power cord anyways.
I loaded Windows on a RAM drive once that was pretty cool and fast.
Now when someone figures out the "instant green" gadget to make red lights turn green so you are never stuck at an intersection I will pay any amount! (Assuming it makes the other lights red and safe of course, oh and I can be the only one who has it or else chaos would occur)...wait what was I talking about? Oh yeah Windows..sucks.
Why not spend the money on developing mram to be used for storage, then you can shutdown and startup really fast. Oh wait Microsoft will find a way to slow that down anyways.
After reading your journal entry, I'm a little confused on how you believe Microsoft "intentionally sabotaged" power management under Linux? Of all the evidence presented in the Iowa case, surely you have something more specific than an email that proves nothing at all other than Bill Gates' reluctance to release something for free?
Also, if your claim that Microsoft somehow crippled ACPI (and/or APM) to hurt Linux... how come ACPI works as well (or as badly, depending on your hardware) as it does on Windows? Specifically, if Microsoft, *BSD and Linux all implement the same open standard, how is that intentional sabotage by "M$"?
And, going back to your journal entry, I see you never did reply to any of the posts that challenge your interpretation of this problem. Why is that?
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Same for instant off (yawn)
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Mobius Mod!
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
This sounds like a standard concept test. I work with market research for a large CPG company. Let me tell you what a concept test is.
Marketing Manager: "We have a bunch of ideas for things we can do in the future. Let's put out a survey and find out how many people like it. Then we'll measure purchase intent and find out what people would pay more for, and measure the costs of doing each concept vs the potential sales and do the one that makes us the most moneys."
Let's be clear: just because someone saw it on a survey from Microsoft, doesn't necessarily mean it will ever see the light of day, let alone be incorporated into Windows 7. They may be using it (along with many other concepts they are likely testing) to try and shape what Windows 8 or 9 might look like. Most concepts I have tested, when weighed with costs, haven't reached the "let's go do this" threshold.
It's not a server, it's a laptop. Uptime is meaningless.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
I'd be interested in what the power consumption would be in this "instant on environment"
no matter how good it is, it is human nature always wants to make things better
The real joke, of course, is that shutdown really should be almost instant.
But MS, and Linux, and everyone else, insists on terminating each and every process for no apparent reason.
Just close the damn open files and turn the power off, you stupid computer.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
FreeBSD's clearly dead: 1 user, load avg 0.00.
I don't remember when was the last VAX/VMS kernel update, ten years ago perhaps? Where I work we have several VAX machines with uptimes around fifteen years. With NO vulnerabilities at al, they are in their own DECnet, no TCP/IP, no connection to the outside world. They run a satellite control system, several million lines of VAX-Fortran source code.
The only problem with this setup is that there is no replacement hardware being fabricated, luckily it's very reliable hardware, but even so we are now upgrading to a completely new system.
Someone with mod points is lacking a sense of humor.
While I have no legal recognition as a Microsoft apologist, through contractual obligations or licensing terms, nevertheless, I would like to apologise on behalf of Microsoft.
Please accept my sincere apologies.
It's good to hear that Microsoft is looking into "instant on" technology. It would be a good complement to their "instant stop" technology.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
I want instant on for my own body. Saves a cup of coffee in the morning.
Do not trust this signature.
You have installed a new 'Instant On'(tm) aware application. Do you want to reboot in order for the change to take effect?
[Reboot Now] [Remind me every 2 minutes] [Go away but reboot without another warning in rand(5,10) minutes]
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Yes, I know there are projects like Splashtop, but each time I've heard about them they seem to only come with the purchase of a particular product (e.g., a motherboard or laptop).
Are there any free linux projects that aim to do this type of thing? Or would even do this type of thing as a side-effect of being really lightweight?
What I'd be looking for as an end user is a graphical environment, in which I can start up a browser and maybe an IM client.
Would an installation of Knoppix fit the bill? I've never tried actually installing it...
I love to wait for my system to boot up. I can have a cup of joe. Eat a bagel. Perhaps even raise a kid or two. What will I do with all of my spare time if they did this?
it comes with my solid state disk.
This is an admission of failure from M$
No, it's not. And you're still Slashdot's biggest troll.
I have a ThinkPad with the exact same thing, and guess how many times I've used it? ZERO (0)!!! This is for a number of reasons, but a big one is how customized my OS and browser is. I open up FF and type in a pwd and immediately Slashdot opens, and logs me in, eBay opens, and logs me in, Gmail opens, and logs in, and Woot! opens up and logs in. It's all automated and quick. Unless I can have FF with noscript running on this "micro windows", and unless it synchronizes with my regular FF, I'm not interested.
Looks like we've pushed all the buttons in this wonkamod except for one.
Stupidity only gets you so far, then you've gotta try
I'd be OK if they could resolve Suspend to disk and suspend to RAM bugs. MY desktop stays on all the time, my laptop goes into suspend all of the time. I typically only restart either when an update requires it. Instant-on should be called something different if what they are doing is providing trimmed down services such as a media player or a web browser
Mode parent independantly.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Hah.. my Amstrad CPC 6128 had instant on already in 1986, that included a full word processor with mail merge, an assembler software, a spell checker and some disc utilities.
Now my computer is some 1000 times more powerful, yet it boots up in minutes.
It's a strange world
"The Instant On experience is different from "Full Windows" because it limits what activities you can do and what applications you can have access to"
Every time I boot "Full Windows" on a client's PC, once the desktop comes up I sit there for another thirty seconds to a minute depending on how much crap is loading in the background. So I'd say "Full Windows" limits what activities you can do - for a while at least.
My openSUSE Linux boots faster than Windows XP and has a usable desktop pretty much immediately, minus some slowness as the stuff in the system tray loads - no where near as bad as XP.
Windows is an unmitigated POS.
Moderate me as troll! You can't handle the truth! You're not good enough to beat me! Is that all you got, huh? Are you nuts? Come at me!
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
You're off by one letter
1,$s/V/M/
Grab your French dictionaries for that one, folks, and laugh.
Windows Merde!
There is no mod.
The ACPI Specification defines the requirements for the DSDT (and everything else, for that matter) pretty explicitly. Intel's ASL compiler, iasl, used to compile the DSDT to AML from ASL, will throw errors and warnings if the underlying ASL is buggy. Unfortunately, Microsoft's ASL compiler allows many of these errors and warnings to sneak by. As a result, many OEMs write buggy DSDTs, and it turns out that Windows is very forgiving of bugs in the DSDT that get by Microsoft's compiler (not surprisingly).
One may speculate about intentional crippling of Linux (as was the case with FoxConn mainboard), so the GP's post may be valid given the bad business practices that Microsoft was using all the time (I recall them trying to pay a premium to sysadmins who convince their bosses to buy MS-products).
Because I have a secondary monitor to the left of my Microsoft Windows Vista laptop. Why is that an issue? - Because after undocking, Microsoft Outlook insists on opening on that (non-existent) monitor. - Because after re-docking, Microsoft Windows insists on logically placing my external monitor to the RIGHT of my Laptop, and swapping the screens that the start bar and sidebar show up on. - Because after undocking, carrying my laptop to the conference room and plugging it into the projector, all kinds of weird things happen.
That's why I shutdown daily.
You can undock? My work laptop is infested with XP, and refuses to undock. If I try to undock, Windows informs me that a serial port is in use and prevents the undocking. As far as I know, there are no serial ports in the port replicator, other than USB ports which are not in use. It has always done this, since it arrived out of the box last year.
Uptime: limited by need to shutdown before undocking [stupid bloody Windows], rarely more than 1 day.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Is that where you trace the +1 Funny mod around far enough and it becomes -1 Offtopic?
I put my desktop in Stand By mode when I'm about to leave the office. The next morning when I return, I just tap the spacebar on my keyboard. My desktop powers up and I'm ready to work in less than a minute.
Well, I can answer the reason why ACPI works "so well" on Windows. It "works so well" because the BIOS writers' job isn't done until the computer jumps through all the necessary ACPI hoops -- on the current versions of Windows.
This isn't quite the same as making a standards compliant implementation. It is making an implementation that does everything (or the important things) the standard says should be doable provided you are dealing with on Windows.
Secondly, there's no guarantee that whatever atrocities you commit will work on the next version of Windows. I've seen a number of ACPI DSDTs uncompiled, and they do a lot of version and OS dependent stuff.
You'd think the point of a standard would be to provide a uniform interface, that whatever operating system twiddles some lever gets the same result. However the result is dependent on what the ACPI implementation thinks your OS is. So this makes it possible, indeed very easy, to provide an ACPI implementation that is broken depending on which operating system it believes is running the show. Indeed, sometimes the fix for Linux based ACPI problems is to give a phony identification string to ACPI, to tell ACPI that your Linux kernel is really Windows XP.
Maybe there's some profound reason why the things ACPI are supposed to do in a situation have to be (a) tied a specific operating system and version yet (b) hide the details of the differences from the operating system. Or maybe it's just a crappy standard. The fact that it makes all kinds of wonderful things happen doesn't make it a good standard.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
You guys don't read much, Microsoft couldn't sabotage anything!
Remember, they do have Ethical guidlines
Go go Gadget Nailgun!
Truly, I must be missing something. OS X (the Macintosh operating system) comes on instantly from sleep mode. (In sleep mode on a laptop, battery life is typically several days. However, all Macintoshes have the same sleep mode.)
Actually, in my experience it's as big a crapshoot as it is on Linux. It depends entirely who you purchased your laptop from. IBM Thinkpads seem to work most of the time, Toshiba not so much. Sony Vaios are completely broken under any OS.
It *is* a crappy standard. But that has nothing to do with sabotage or any other conspiracy theories.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
That's what I use my BlackBerry for - I have the Gmail app installed. Instant gratification.
I saw a video a while back for a new laptop made by someone unusual - nVidia maybe? - that came with an instant boot to basic functions like email, with an optional boot into Vista. I thought that sounded great. It also might make users realize that they don't need Vista for a lot of what they do.
My Dell 630 latitude running XP-SP3 is ready to go in 10 seconds from hibernation. From standby it is even faster but in this case the computer is not fully off. Sometimes it may take a few more seconds for the wireless to connect, but this would be the same with any system. I'll take lean and mean over bloated and slow anytime.
Why should people have to choose between instantly on and fully functional? Can't Microsoft be ambitious enough to aim to make windows boot fast? This is like they're giving up on that as if it's just not possible, and instead offer some half-way compromise.
It's a well-known fact that you never use Microsoft's compiler if you need ACPI to work under Linux. That's what the Intel compiler exists for. I will grant you that laptop vendors might simply use Microsoft's compiler because "it works" (barely), but until very recently they had no reason or incentive to cater to Linux. However, had they wished to do so, they had a readily available option. I'm pretty sure Dell is not using it for their Ubuntu laptops.
That's a completely different problem, a vendor specifically excluding power management support for Linux. Once enabled with a simple BIOS hack, everything worked correctly.
I fail to see how that is relevant here at all.
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Screw instant on, Computer should always be on...
This is why hibernate and other state technologies exist. Hibernate your freaking computer, stop shutting it down. Even in a hibernate state, the computer can turn itself on to grab updates or performance maintenance if allowed and then re-hibernate.
(The concept of 'shutdown' for modern computers is something that will die in a few years anyway, like like application states of being off will be a thing of the past before long also.)
Why aren't people better educated about this. Even Vista by default puts itself to sleep and hibernates.
On my work laptop, it has been restarted about once a month for updates. The rest of the time it is either ON, Standy/Sleep, or Hibernated when traveling. I literally wait longer on the 'aged' BIOS than the OS itself.
As for the statement about Linux 'instant on' media features on some laptops... Um, some of the current instant on Media/DVD utilities use a modified form of XP more than I have seen Linux versions, as embedded XP is what was used by some of these companies.
As for Vista, it already supports Media or Hotstart features, that just haven't been used much by the OEMs, because it boots in 15-20 seconds instead of the 2-5 seconds of the embedded XP implementation.
Again, why settle for a single application instant on, when people are getting 15sec boots times on a full Vista boot? (Even the PS3 or XBox 360 take 10seconds to boot) Are people just getting insane about boot times? -And if you want to see a 'real long' boot time, restart your Cable Box or Sat Receiver, yes even the *nix based ones. 5 minutes or more you will be waiting.)
This is crazy on several levels. Especially when several OEM's BIOSes take longer to intialize than the OS itself takes to boot.
Microsoft should:
1) Demand OEM BIOS times are 'instant'.
2) Educate users to use freaking hibernate ALWAYS.
3) Forget the limited feature OS boot (A form of WinPE or an embedded Vista core, like the XP media center instant on features use already).
How hard is it to cache the ram and have it reload on startup if the checksum clears. Microsoft should be able to do this and have everything the same if you are doing a full boot or "instant on".
No response forthcoming from twitter (not as of 8:00 EST anyway). Still waiting...
We need eomthing useful for instant on. A quick web e-mail and IM session - i don't mind the wait to logon if I'm going to be doing that stuff. We need some nice built in utilities for those instant on sessions, something like gparted and other diagnostic utilites, even image making program to back up the hard disk. This would make an instant on pre-OS option much more appealing.
Here's what I suspect this'll REALLY be. Microsoft will but on a show about how they came up with a brand new windows product, etc. etc. It will be Windows CE I bet -- there IS an x86 port of it, boots fast, and can run out of a ROM.
It would be better to have a message box to tell you when it's done loading. Even after you log in it sits there for a few minutes doing things. I would like to know when it's done without using task manager
Agreed, 110%: As long as it improves something, then it's a good thing! However, the originators OUGHT to be credited (those that came up with an idea, that is).
You did mention Gate's insensitive to prevent Linux from being able to use ACPI. I see this being accomplished by Microsoft's compiler. I don't say that every vendor is in bed with MS (although we don't know their contracts), I say that Microsoft has fulfilled the will of Bill Gates by developing this forgiving compiler and knowing that vendor would test Windows only. I see the connection, you don't, that's what opinions are for. Given Microsoft's shady behavior in the past I know about, I think they are more than capable of doing such a thing.
As for Foxconn -- there was a case of a vendor explicitly enabling crippled support for Linux, not excluding it. Malice or carelessness -- we'll never know. They have fixed the issue nonetheless, yet I doubt that I'll buy their products.
...be for Ubuntu? :)
just because it'll boot instantly doesn't mean it won't still take 5 minutes to load the desktop. startup programs start when you log in, not during boot. this is a pointless feature.
phil, your computer does turn on instantly. that's why all those fans start whirring away whenever you hit that button on your tower.
It's not so much Windows instant-on that people care about, it's something better than the same-day service currently offered by Vista after you hit the power switch. If you could tune the OS to boot in 10-20s (or even 5s like the Linux Plumbers did recently this wouldn't even be something you'd need to ask users about.
'The Instant On experience is different from "Full Windows" because it limits what activities you can do and what applications you can have access to.'
Sounds like they're rebranding the mighty combination of DRM & UAC to me.
More seriously though it would be good if they partition things nicely so you don't have instant on then have to choose to boot into a full Windows. Instead if you could use the work that has already be done (by presumably just loading a small kernal with minimal services), and then just load the remaining pieces that would be better. My understanding, please correct me if I'm wrong but the Instant On linux is actually a firmware linux on the Asus and Dell products so when you click to go to full OS it has to load everything as if the feature didn't exist. Having an OS kernel in firmware that was used when live would be really cool.
Instant Off? Hardly. My BSOD takes between 2 to 5 minutes to complete on Windows XP. Does anyone has any advice to speed it up?
Thanks.
My experience :
On my intel (ich9r / q6600 / 4gb) rig, the longest at boot is the BIOS POST screens, followed by the Intel RAID BIOS. the vista boot time (until usability) is very tolerable (30 seconds including account selection screen and password entry).
Then again, I seldom run complete boot cycles for Vista as STR sleep is perfectly reliable and wakes the Pc in 2-3 seconds, tops.
YMMV.
--- Back to the trees, back to the trees !
I recently tried a version of Windows XP that I received from a friend. It resides in a USB flash drive, takes about 30 seconds to be completely operational, takes up around 160MB of total storage space, runs all my portable apps(from http://portableapps.comand/ it takes around 3 to 4 seconds to shutdown. I know it's not "instant on" but around 30 seconds after pressing the power button, I am able to browse the hard disks of computers which have been damaged by viruses or other causes (and recover data that would be lost to reformatting). Perfect in my opinion.
I understand what you're saying, but think about it a bit more and it makes no sense whatsoever. Remember where desktop Linux was back when ACPI was first released. Do you think Microsoft felt threatened by that?
Microsoft may be guilty of caring only about their platform, but that in and of itself does not make them guilty of trying to "sabotage" others. At least not in this particular context.
But like you say, that's just my opinion :)
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Well, in Iowa case documents there was an analysis of Linux and Open Source: http://antitrust.slated.org/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/6000/PX06501.pdf
It is a 70-page document and it is well made. I'll quote from the summary:
Consequently, OSS poses a direct, short-term revenue and platform threat to Microsoft - particuiady in the server
space. Additionally, the intrinsic parallelism and free idea exchange in OSS has benerifs that are not replicabie with our current licensing model arand therefore present a long term developer mindshare threat.
A very good analysis though, one of the best I've actually seen.
So they did care back then.