It takes what, 2-3 minutes to boot your PC? Drives us all crazy when we have to boot up so we tend to leave PCs on all the time – burning electricity, heating components, not clearing out the machine RAM, etc.
Microsoft has said that load times of less than 30 seconds is the near term goal, but there is a lot of activity in this area and alternatives are springing up.
Probably the most market advanced option to get a fast boot is offered by DeviceVM. They make a product called Splashtop (http://www.splashtop.com) that gives a really fast start -in seconds. This product and others like it, use a Linux kernel to quickly bring up email and Internet access. These fast boots are being offered as supplements to Windows. You hit the F4 etc. and boot quickly while Windows is loading, or just to browse or check email and you do not start Windows. This operating system for now comes built-in to new machines -mainly laptops/notebooks -from Lenovo, Asus and Acer and others.
Google Chrome -the new operating system Google is working on (to be, or not to be confused with the Google Chrome browser already released!) has a fast/instant boot as a promised major feature.
Dell has announced an “instant on” offering – they call it ‘Latitude ON”. Right now they seem to have little to say about when its coming, but they have an oar in the water.
Of course Microsoft is not sitting by idly -they are also promising faster boot times to come – as mentioned.
Less power use, instant access to information – it sounds great.
I’ve just read an article in the Wall Street Journal that more and more companies are issuing tablet computers, rather than laptops and PCs. Do you think they are doing the right thing?
I have seen plenty of useful factors on your site about personal computers. However, I have got the impression that notebook computers are still not nearly powerful more than enough to be a good option if you usually do tasks that require a lot of power, including video croping and editing. But for net surfing, statement processing, and the majority of other popular computer functions they are all right, provided you don’t mind your little friend screen size. Appreciate sharing your thinking.