Asus to launch laptops with instant-on feature
The Asus M50 is one of five laptops to incorporate the Splashtop technology, under the name Express Gate.
(Credit: Asus)
Five new laptop models from Asus will incorporate DeviceVM's Splashtop instant-on software, the software maker said Thursday.
The Asus M70T, M50V, M51T, F8Va, and F8Vr will be the first laptops on the market to include the "rapid-start platform."
We've seen the technology, which Asus has licensed from DeviceVM and rebranded as Express Gate, before. It was first introduced last fall on a single Asus motherboard, and recently expanded to Asus' full P5Q series of motherboards.
Splashtop differs from the intant-on media players already found on many laptops because it's actually an embedded Linux OS with both Firefox and Skype. The advantages are threefold: The quick on/off feature means you don't have to wait to load Windows when you want to hit the Web--a boon for travelers who just want to hop online for a few minutes while waiting to board a flight. It also means you can turn off your laptop while in transit, instead of wasting battery life on standby mode. And the Linux base means the Splashtop browser isn't vulnerable to viruses that target the Windows OS.
The laptops announced Thursday are expected to be available at the end of June or early July. More laptops featuring the Splashtop technology are expected in the coming months, though a detailed release schedule hasn't been released yet.
Michelle Thatcher has been reviewing technology products for nearly a decade. Her current focus is laptop reviews, with some kitchen gadgetry and Web 2.0 thrown in for good measure. 
Wha..? Hibernate doesn't use up battery life. It's the same as turning off, except it saves onto the hard disk the current "state" [http://opened programs, etc.|http://opened programs, etc.] of the computer.
The author probably meant "standby", becasue that's a similarly quick on/off method, but the downside is the battery continues to power the system and if you don't eventually plug in to an outlet or resume using the PC, you will lose whatever was going on when you went into standby.
"Hibernate" is not similar in that it is slower. However the advantage is that you can leave the laptop off and come back months later and will be right where you left off. You are correct though that it does use some power to write to the disk and start from the disk.
As for "They didn't do this sooner because flash memory is expensive", who says you need flash memory or NVRAM? It's certainly possible to run an operating system from a non-writable storage device. Every Linux live CD does it. I even remember that there was a certain Macintosh that had a full copy of the operating system in its ROMs.
- by Elicius December 14, 2008 6:27 AM PST
- Being an avid user of imdb during tv shows just to check who an actor is, I think this revelation [to me atleast, I've only just disvovered it, heh] is pure genious. Way t'go Asus.
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