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Microsoft Considers "Instant On" Windows

Posted by timothy on from the catch-up dept.

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."

9 of 440 comments (clear)

  1. Easy Lazy Instant-On/Off... by nweaver · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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
    1. Re:Easy Lazy Instant-On/Off... by DavidTC · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Of course, if Windows hibernation operated anything like Linux hibernation, it would work a lot better.

      For reference, Linux hibernation doesn't bother writing non-writable memory pages to the hibernation file. So the hibernation file is much smaller compared to Windows. (Which is why Linux can hibernate to a swap file.)

      But this is because Linux can 'swap' from the original executable file into memory. So when it unhibernates, it 'unswaps' most of the programs from their original location, only loading the data segments from the swap file.

      Of course, a good portion of the program is already in swap, so what actually happens is that all data segments not in the swap file are written to it, with as much executable segments overwritten as needed to fit those in. It is very very fast.

      As opposed to Windows, which sits down and writes out all of physical memory to another file, and then has to load it all back in.(It might even write out 'clean' memory pages that are already in the swap file and unchanged since they were loaded back in memory, but I bet MS is smarter than that.)

      Granted, Linux still has to, eventually, load all the programs into memory too, but it can load them in via 'swap', which is fairly invisible to the end user.

      --
      If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
  2. Next Windows should be Windows Verde by Jeremiah+Cornelius · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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..."
    1. Re:Next Windows should be Windows Verde by Missing_dc · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You are forgetting the benefits of instant login machines. Instant on and instant login saves 5-15 minutes per day of user time. GEICO used to insist that their employees were logged in and ready to take calls when their shifts started. This got them a class-action lawsuit over the non-paid work and overtime accrued by their phone reps. (are your company's practices as unfair?)

      --
      How amazed would you be to suddenly find that you just forgot what I wrote and you needed to reread my post.... again.
  3. Re:Uptime... by FrankSchwab · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    --
    And the worms ate into his brain.
  4. Re:If you wanted an uptime contest... by JustinOpinion · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Uptime contests are fun and all. But I'm always suspicious of systems with very long uptimes: they probably haven't had a kernel update since that last reboot... meaning that they are a highly vulnerable box.

    My Ubuntu machine has uptimes that are about 30-90 days, which is entirely based on new kernel releases. I've never had an unintended reboot (e.g. from a freeze or crash).

    (Yes, there are methods of updating the kernel without rebooting... but most people with massive uptimes seem to achieve it not by using these tricks but rather by not touching the box.)

  5. Re:Uptime... by Jake73 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    System Up Time: 0 Days, 21 Hours, 32 Minutes, 58 Seconds

    Why does anybody turn their notebooks off?

    Windows Update :( Not "off" but restart.

    Hm. I run both Windows and Mac. I can't remember the last time I did any update to a Mac that didn't require a restart. It's really pretty annoying.

    Windows has gotten much better about not requiring restarts for updates. A huge change from its Windows 95/98 and NT days.

  6. Re:My opinion by JCSoRocks · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I realize you're being sarcastic but I don't know who all these people are that are waiting 5 minutes for Windows to start. I've got both Vista and XP and neither takes more than a minute to boot, tops. If it's taking longer than that... maybe it's time for you to clean out some of the crapware you've got on there.

    --
    You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
  7. Re:My opinion by divisionbyzero · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Funny but true. I turn on my computer. Go start a cup of coffee in the brew machine. Come back and type in my password. Go finish making my coffee. Chit-chat with some of my co-workers. When I return to my desk the Windows desktop is finally responsive even though it appeared about 2 minutes previously. Finally I load Outlook and that takes another two minutes.

    So, 5-10 minutes of my day every day is spent waiting for Windows. That's 40 hours a year. Microsoft owes my company 1 week of my salary. If they were forced to pay, they'd have to raise their prices for windows and office a whole hell of a lot to be profitable.

    Granted some of this is a function of hardware, login scripts that MS has no control over, etc, etc, etc, but it is a fun thought experiment.