Startup Offers Instant-Boot Windows Alternative

Lucas123 writes "A Silicon Valley startup named Device VM has a product that circumvents the boot-up process, according to a story in MIT's Technology Review. Device VM recently released a tiny piece of software that gives users the option to boot either Windows or a faster, less-complex operating system called Splashtop. The company is partnering with PC OEMs and consumer electronics companies to integrate its core technology into desktops, notebooks, ultra-mobile PCs, and other devices."

Hey, anybody knows

[microbee (682094)]

How to get slashdot coverage if I have a startup?

Mod parent up

[Malevolent Tester (1201209)]

I think you just have to submit a press release as a story.

Splashtop?

[boristdog (133725)]

You sure you heard that right?

Re:Splashtop?

[by Anonymous Coward]

In Japan, they call it Bukkaketop.

Really old news?

[bushboy (112290)]

I'm sure this story was reported some months back?

Ahh, wait, I forgot - this is slashdot! ;)

Re:Really old news?

[CarAnalogy (1191053)]

You're probably thinking of this article [slashdot.org].

Apparently, Device VM hadn't officially announced their technology yet, but now they have. More than enough reason for a dupe :)

Taking all bets here!

[Pojut (1027544)]

Taking all bets here, folks! How long before Microsoft tries to do something to try to get PC companies to not have this in their systems? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

Um, this is from ASUS. The company that shipped Linux on 350000 mini-laptops in the last few months. Whatever Microsoft tried must not have been very convincing.

and then what?

[gambit3 (463693)]

Umm... ok, so I booted instantly into this thing... now what?

Don't get me wrong, the long boot times of XP annoy me (except when it's freshly installed), but I don't see how this helps, unless it provides for an instant boot INTO XP, I don't see how you'd get regular people interested or how it will help them.

Re:and then what?

[The Ultimate Fartkno (756456)]

No, no, you're looking at this all wrong! This is SPLASHTOP, man! It's instant, it's hip, it's cool, it's edgy! This isn't your father's bootup, man! This is the future! It's Web 2.0 on RUBY RAILS! Don't believe me? Here's our commercial - would FALLOUT FUCKING BOY be in our commercial if this wasn't the way of tomorrow? For shizzle.

Now, about that startup money we were mentioned earlier...

Re:

[tolan-b (230077)]

Actually it's just a Linux distro.

Re:

[jddj (1085169)]

Highly futuristic - just like my Atari 400 and my Timex-Sinclair 1000. And my Palm T|X, for that matter.

Re:and then what?

[merreborn (853723)]

I don't see how you'd get regular people interested or how it will help them.

If your PC is off, and you want to check movie times on your way out the door, being able to rapidly boot into an environment with a web browser would be appealing.

For the type of user that leaves their PC off most of the time, the ability to accomplish a single task rapidly could be appealing.

Re:and then what?

[no1nose (993082)]

If your PC is "off"? I don't understand.

Re:and then what?

[misleb (129952)]

If your PC is off, and you want to check movie times on your way out the door, being able to rapidly boot into an environment with a web browser would be appealing.

Try using a (web enabled) phone and you can literally do it on your way out the door. Making a PC instantly available is an increasingly disminishing benefit.

For the type of user that leaves their PC off most of the time, the ability to accomplish a single task rapidly could be appealing.

Or they could just try hibernating their existing OS and get the same effect. Seriously, marketing a new OS based on boot time is just stupid.

-matthew

Re:

[justinlindh (1016121)]

Try using a (web enabled) phone and you can literally do it on your way out the door. Making a PC instantly available is an increasingly disminishing benefit.

To expand specifically on this example, you can even send a text message to GOOGL (46645) with the text "showtimes " and you'll get a response text message with movie listings for free. I use this a lot, as I loathe the web interface on my phone.

Re:

[justinlindh (1016121)]

Argh... butchered my example above (that'll learn me to use preview!). The text message body needs to contain "showtimes <zip_code>".

Re:and then what?

[peragrin (659227)]

how about using an OS that has decent hibernate and sleep functions? I know MSFT keeps breaking them so windows users rarely know that joy, but damn. I know Linux can do it, Windows can too.

My two Macs take 10 seconds to load up and are network ready and 5 seconds of that is me typing in my password. REboots should only be used when you need to update the system. If you have so many memory problems that you need to reboot more often than that , then i suggest you upgrade your OS to something that isn't a fisherprice toy.

I can pull out my laptop raise the cover log in, check movie times, and put it back faster than a fresh XP install or hell even a fresh OS X install can boot.

All MSFT has to do is stop screwing around with the ACPI specs and not care if Linux or anyone else can use them. that won't happen so windows users will always get shafted.

Re:

[Kihaji (612640)]

If you are already out the door, you already have plans, and will be out. So you can either:

A) Walk your happy ass by the movie theater and look at the times on the board, picking the most convenient time.
B) Use the cellphone that is invariably melded to the side of your face and call said theater.
C) Pick up that ancient thing called, I think it's Newspaper, and look at the times.

Seriously, wasting money to speed up boot times, are we sure this isn't a Gentoo project? Seems like some stupid miniscule optimi

A bit of quick web surfing?

[EmbeddedJanitor (597831)]

If you just wanted to boot up to do some quick web surfing (check /., email, blogs etc) then having a quick boot + web browser etc is great. If you want to run full blown apps like Office etc then you do a full boot.

Warning to readers

[idontgno (624372)]

TFA is infected with "Vibrant Media IntelliTxt" advertising hotlinks. Mouse carefully or browse with NoScript or something.

Re:Warning to readers

[AJWM (19027)]

"Vibrant Media IntelliTxt"

VoMIT, for short?

Re:Warning to readers

[linumax (910946)]

Where exactly does the "o" come from?

Um, from Your mOm?

My desktop machine has been up 700hrs

[gelfling (6534)]

Since I turned off automatic Windows updates I rarely worry about shutting down and rebooting. Of course the 3 or 4 times a year I do have to patch Windows it sucks plutonic balls to have to restart over and over to finalize the patches.

Re:My desktop machine has been up 700hrs

[by Anonymous Coward]

OMG. Does anyone know how to recover a stolen account? I had a really low uid too.

Re:My desktop machine has been up 700hrs

[bcrowell (177657)]

Since I turned off automatic Windows updates I rarely worry about shutting down and rebooting.
I hope it has really good power management, because otherwise that's an extreme waste of energy.

It's funny how many slashdotters are posting to say that Windows sucks and boots slow, and of course the solution is to run Linux. I run Linux, but one of the things I'm least happy about is the horrible support for power management. None of the sleep, hibernate, etc., options work on my machine at all. I don't know the solution to the problem, either, because it sounds like the problem is basically that manufacturers refuse to openly document the registers that need to be saved when their devices go to sleep. If I had working power management, then I wouldn't need to shut down my computer so often, and I wouldn't care much what my boot times were. This is all much bigger issue on laptops, of course.

I believe one of the reasons Linux doesn't boot faster than it does is that there's a kernel feature that, for security, randomizes the addresses at which various code is loaded into memory each time you boot. This is supposed to protect against buffer overflows that jump to a fixed address in memory. The problem is that it means you can't speed up booting by simply caching an image of the initialized state of a lot of your memory in a freshly booted system.

I don't know about other people's Linux boxes, but on mine the time taken to start Gnome is comparable to the time it takes to boot into gdm. That's one of the reasons I run fluxbox rather then Gnome.

Re:My desktop machine has been up 700hrs

[ErroneousBee (611028)]

I run Linux, but one of the things I'm least happy about is the horrible support for power management. None of the sleep, hibernate, etc., options work on my machine at all.

I once had a problem with this, and decided to investigate.

So I went through the forums and found that the problem was that the manufacturer of the laptop supplies a dsdt table [wikipedia.org] that does not follow the published standards for dsdt tables.

So I found a corrected table for my laptop and suspend/resume now works. But I was interested as to why a manufacturer would supply a DSDT that didnt follow the specs. And heres what I found:

1. The ACPI standard is rather complicated, almost as if it was disigned to be hard to implement. Checking to find who the major players in defining the specification, I find my fist clue: "Conceived by Intel, Microsoft and Toshiba" [acpi.info]
2. So why would they create such a complicated specification? My next clue was that Microsoft was the developer of one of two major 3DSDT compilers.
3. It appears that the DSDT compiler Microsoft created is very forgiving of errors [gentoo-wiki.com] that other compilers (such as from Intel) would flag.
4. I don't believe it is coincidence that the parts of the ACPI specification parsed strictly by the Microsoft compiler are those needed by Microsoft operating systems.

So Microsoft create a complicated specification, probably taking care to leave out important implementation details. Then they ship a compiler for the specification that only checks parts of the specification used by their own software. And thats why Linux has issues with suspend/resume on some hardware.

Does any of this sound familiar [wikipedia.org]?

How is windows a problem with a notebook?

[schnikies79 (788746)]

I sleep/hibernate my notebook for months at a time.

I think the last time my e1405 was shut down and cold booted is when I installed a bluetooth module (about 4 months ago).

Which flavor of linux is splashtop based on?

[bigredradio (631970)]

Just wondering which flavor of linux is splashtop based on? (i.e. Distro, Window manager, etc.)

Misnomer

[kebes (861706)]

Calling this "Instant-Boot" is a bit of a stretch. What they are describing is just a dual-boot bootloader that gives the option of booting into Windows or into Linux (Splashtop [wikipedia.org] is a trimmed-down Linux distribution). The 20 second boot time for Splashtop is decently fast, but hardly "instant", especially when you compare it to how fast some computers can recover from sleep or hibernate modes.

It seems moderately interesting, in the sense that some users might suddenly realize that all their computing needs are met by a lightweight (and Free) operating system. They might rarely boot into Windows. On the other hand, for many people this "fast boot" will just make using the computer more frustrating, since they will boot into Splashtop to get something done quickly, but then suddenly realize that they need another application (that they only have on their Windows partition), and then have to endure another, longer, boot (and re-open whatever webpage they were just looking at, etc.).

In short, the interesting thing here is the idea of pushing a dual-boot computer to the masses, and not an "instant on" computer.

Re:

[MBCook (132727)]

No kidding. "Look, we invented booting from ROM, only slower".

Windows is slow to boot. OS X is pretty good, but it's no speed demon. But I just close the lid on my MacBook Pro and it goes to sleep. It actually seems to take 10-20 seconds to do this, but it's reliable so in reality I don't have to worry about it. Resuming is done as fast as the display can come up, if not faster. It is, for all practical purposes, instant.

Hibernating in Windows is much slower every time I've seen it, ranging from relativel

Re:

[ColdWetDog (752185)]

In short, the interesting thing here is the idea of pushing a dual-boot computer to the masses, and not an "instant on" computer

Most of the computers that would benefit from this - business computers networked to applications or security routines / login scripts / cruft cleaners - would be the ones most likely to have it disabled. I'm not sure I want another network-capable application running under the radar, even if it is Linux.

Besides, who wants to get started any faster in the morning.? Long coffe

Re:

[Bob-taro (996889)]

In short, the interesting thing here is the idea of pushing a dual-boot computer to the masses, and not an "instant on" computer.

To me, the interesting thing was embedding the OS in the BIOS.

Re:Misnomer

[pilgrim23 (716938)]

I know what instant boot is: I used to use a Compact Macintosh SE running System 6. I defy ANY modern opsys to go from power off to up and I can click an app as quickly as that system. Funny thing: A document created on that system, with gee whiz wow fonts and spiffy graphs on a 8.5 X 11 paper sheet, looks just like a modern machine creates. decades later I still get a sheet of paper

Re:

[Zantetsuken (935350)]

Not only that, but this story was covered back in October [slashdot.org]. In fact, the old one was even better, since it was more descriptive and not misleading in the title or description...

At least the old article mentioned that it was Asus to be first making these boards (the dupe only has a screenshot of the bootloader having an Asus logo. Or that it would first be available on Asus's Intel X38 motherboards...

I think along with myself, a lot of people are getting tired of dupes on stories from months ago, with "

or on could always use...

[stubear (130454)]

...Windows SideShow [wikipedia.org] and get true instant on to files, e-mails, appointments, etc. on their PC.

Re:

[markdavis (642305)]

From what I see of that technology, it just drives external, autonymous display devices and such WHEN THE COMPUTER IS ON. It can transfer files to a smaller integrated computer, for example, to display appointment or somthing. It would not be useful for web browsing, live file access, etc.

Good for Windows users

[Rinisari (521266)]

This thing is quite the buzz. It was all-the-rage at CES in a few companies' product, memorably ASUS, which I believe calls it "Express Gate." I think that OEMs could clone this functionality quickly and package it up. It's just a very hardware-specific kernel running with just enough modules and libraries to run the applications. A quick build of the x86 version of Cross-LFS would yield a decent, small OS for a base. But, those Linux users who already tune their kernel generally don't have to wait the two minutes for Vista to start and think it's quick when the computer boots in 20 seconds. We tuners wait 30-40 seconds and we've got a full system. Splashtop users wait 20 seconds and have a reduced system.

Also on the EEE: 2 second boot!

[pimpimpim (811140)]

This has also been installed on the EEE (video) [blogeee.net]. For a PC on the go it is pretty neat, after pressing the "on" button you directly get to choose what to boot, after selecting the Splashtop it directly opens the OS and you can work. Now the EEE is already pretty fast with Xandros, but the Splashtop really makes it close to PDA speed for startup. Even recovering from a hibernate might take normally longer than this. I was quite impressed.

real solution: interim "preOS"

[G4from128k (686170)]

Splashtop sounds good, but TFA portrays it as requiring the user to pick between OSes at boot. That sucks if the user wants a fast boot and eventual access to all their "real" applications. Instead, I see more need for a light weight interim OS (a preOS??) that boots and lets the user do a few things while the main OS continues to boot in the background. Something like Splashtop could boot first, launch a couple of key "first-thing" apps (e.g. web with some morning news or email) and then transfer the session data to the main OS once it's up and running. After a minute (or whatever) Splashtop would crossfade to the main OS and decommission itself.

Of course, the real solution is stable instant-on low power modes (and OSes) that make the morning boot wholly obsolete.

I have this installed

[pcgc1xn (922943)]

It works really well, much faster boot times.

Though mine has a different name, it is called Kubuntu.

And I am not sure about the cut down part.

Still, it is a great idea, "your OS is slow and crappy, here, install another!"

It will be interesting to see how well this plays, Windows has liked to break dual booting for quite a while.

Brilliant!

[Foddz (1181575)]

Excellent! Now I have something to boot to and surf microsoft's tech support site with when my Vista install inevitably goes bad!

Dose this work with EFI / UEFI?

[Joe The Dragon (967727)]

EFI and UEFI system will likely start coming out after vista sp1 comes out apple has been useing efi for all of there x86 systems.

Re:So where is the source code

[Jerry Coffin (824726)]

if its based on Linux/FOSS then the source should be available, yet i cant find it anywhere on the official site http://www.splashtop.com/ [splashtop.com]

Use the source [splashtop.com] Luke!

Re:All I need do is replace my whole OS

[Dmala (752610)]

It's kind of silly, people moan about their bootup time, meanwhile they have 800,000 apps that all launch at boot and run in the system tray. I've never understood why it's so important to have instantaneous access to Quicktime movies, Word docs, or PDF files that it's worth having something running and sucking up resources all the time. Even OpenOffice is guilty, although their app is easier to get rid of than most. Turn off all that shit except for stuff you genuinely need, make sure you have adequate RAM for the OS you're running, and Windows boots plenty fast.

Re:All I need do is replace my whole OS

[msimm (580077)]

Maybe you haven't stepped outside the university much, but most users have those apps boot at start-up because they don't know how to disable them (or worry they'll break something if they did).

Couple that with the persistence of certain vendors installing unnecessary applications into their taskbars (and as services) and of course there's a lot of cruft that could be cleaned up.

Re:All I need do is replace my whole OS

[daeg (828071)]

I really wish vendors made better use of scheduled tasks for update checking. Java, for instance, installs an at-logon time update checker. There's no reason that they couldn't schedule a task every 3 hours to do the following:

1. Star the updater app.
2. Check lastupdatetime.dat.
3. Has it been more than a week since I checked for updates?
4. Yes it has - check now.

The updater stub can be very lean -- a few dozen KB at most, and launch a heavier-duty updater as needed.

Everyone wins - the system stays up to date and the user doesn't get bogged down with retarded logon applications. Best of all, the user can change update checks - or disable them entirely - from one central scheduled tasks panel.

Re:

[russ1337 (938915)]

meanwhile they have 800,000 apps that all launch at boot and run in the system tray.

I use winpatrol [winpatrol.com] and/or CCleaner. [ccleaner.com]

Re:

[fwarren (579763)]

Well anytime Windows is acting unstable. Instead of being screwed and dead in the water. You can fire your computer back up this way. Amazingly enough. You could even use it to google out error messages to get Windows going again. Possibly even download a missing or damaged DLL? Or discover since all you do is facebook, hotmail, youtube and myspace. You don't really need Windows.

Re:

[davidsyes (765062)]

What?

Intel's working on making software and hardware advances to cut the boot time. AMD will likely follow suit, as will other BIOS vendors/makers. That can't but HELP be good for Linux.

But, I suppose Linux can boot in under 14 seconds if it's an embedded device doing non-PC work.

Suspend and hibernate are nice, but maybe even this could be good for VirtualBox and other virtual machine environments.