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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.
The UI for the new "Instant-On Windows" is a black screen with the text "C:\>".
[Insert pithy quote here]
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
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!!!
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
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.
System Up Time: 0 Days, 21 Hours, 32 Minutes, 58 Seconds
Windows Update :( Not "off" but restart.
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
"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"
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
Right, because this was all about Microsoft claiming a new idea. Slashdot retards attack!!!
I know this is Slashdot, but you could at least try to RTFA:
We would like your feedback on a new concept...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.
Quick! Slashdot Microsoft apologists to the rescue!
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
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!
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.
Yeah right.
The only practical way this will ever work is coercing hardware manufacturers to stick to more specific standards. In practice, ACPI hasn't solved it.
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."
System Up Time: 0 Days, 21 Hours, 32 Minutes, 58 Seconds
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.
Try end it all. It doesnt affect boot time, you do a normal boot and then run end-it-all, but its great for games, you get more fps and, more important, less crashes.
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...
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...
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.
Ehm, people will just slack off those 2 minutes in other ways. For example by chatting around the coffee-maker.
Boosting productivity by shaving *minutes* off of a workflow (especially a once-a-day one) is a myth.
Premature optimization in business processes is just as harmful as it is in computing.
Try to optimize tasks that amount to hours of overhead each day first - then look after the 2 minute thingies.
The most common sources of overhead in modern organizations are, still, unclear communication-paths and dependencies.
Those imaginary 10 hours are very likely wasted in *your* company every day (or even every hour in big companies) only because processes are not properly decoupled. You know, A is waiting for B and C is waiting for A. People just love excuses and "I'm waiting for X" is so much better of an excuse for not getting shit done than "I had to wait for computer to boot".
Also see: Chain of Blame and The mythical man month
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
Speaking of external monitor issues, let's not leave Vista our all by it's lonesome. My Macbook Pro consistently looses it's ability to keep my external monitor on. I have it running through a KVM switch but it wasn't a problem until after the 10.5.2 update. Before that it worked perfectly. Now, I have to reset it by turning off the machine and removing the battery and holding down the power button. It is quite annoying.
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
I really love Ubuntu updates for that reason. Their update service is like that colonial england servant you dreamed of having but could never afford. Even if it updated the kernel, it humbly suggests a restart, serves earl grey and quietly retreats.
Do not trust this signature.
Yeah, now in every update pack only 2 out of 10 updates require restart.
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
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!
It's already been done, and use of one of those gadgets by civilians was made a federal crime over three years ago. Sorry.
~Philly
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
You know that you can still get VMS systems from HP right?
The Vax was a great machine and VMS is a great OS. Too bad that didn't get open sourced.
Probably would have been an even better platform than Unix.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
You're off by one letter
1,$s/V/M/
Grab your French dictionaries for that one, folks, and laugh.
Windows Merde!
You guys don't read much, Microsoft couldn't sabotage anything!
Remember, they do have Ethical guidlines
Go go Gadget Nailgun!
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.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo