What is Digg?125 Comments
- apotropaic, on 10/30/2007, -0/+78Hopefully the beginning of a new trend.
- matthekc, on 11/15/2007, -3/+81tell the people at Redmond to watch for chairs tuesday
- inactive, on 10/30/2007, -1/+59This is really a great idea, i mean really
- byrdgang, on 10/30/2007, -4/+52In the words of a thin, blond chick "That's hot."
- stox, on 10/30/2007, -2/+49What??? "To update Express Gate though you will need to be running Windows on the hard drive in order to run the ASUS utility." I hope that is a typo.
- tnoy, on 10/30/2007, -0/+41I think I just found my next motherboard.
- omababy, on 10/10/2007, -1/+41awesome
- inactive, on 10/30/2007, -0/+33It just needs a media player and it's going to be one awesome feature.
- geminitojanus, on 10/10/2007, -0/+27Really, why /isn't/ it a good idea? Instant-on, fall-back in case of hard disk emergency, advanced diagnostics, operating-system-independent driver layer, take your pick.
Intel's been attempting to get the industry to budge off BIOS for about 7 years because of this kind of technology. People are finally starting to wake up and realize how useful it really is, now that Flash is absolutely dirt cheap, and they've got a poster-child integrator in the form of Apple (first major vendor to embrace extensible firmware on the desktop). - superyounan1, on 10/10/2007, -0/+245 second boot into one a free, open, secure, robust operating system with internet browsing and voice chat
- motang, on 10/30/2007, -2/+25This is totally unexpected and extremely cool! I would like to have something like this.
- geminitojanus, on 10/10/2007, -0/+19This isn't BIOS, so no. This is some kind of extended firmware, like EFI. They've got their whole distro running on a Flash chip on the board. It's really where the industry has been heading for a long time, but there's been a lot of resistance to this in the form of a company named Phoenix.
- psilanthropist, on 10/30/2007, -2/+20how about quickly checking something on the net in a few seconds ? it would take atleast 5-10 ful mintues (depening on your specs) on a normal booting computer. and this isnt limited to just firefox and skype. it has infine possibilities. imagine if they could fit mythtv into it. instant linux-based media center.
- ElRayQuieres, on 10/10/2007, -2/+20Maybe I'm the dumb one.. but I sure as hell wouldn't trust flashing my bios via wine.
- Yoshi39, on 10/10/2007, -0/+16Why can't the OS continue loading in the background?
- superyounan1, on 10/30/2007, -7/+23boot in 5 seconds... and into linux.. drooool
- Rikti, on 10/10/2007, -0/+14And by 2010, half the motherboards in the world boot into a fully featured Linux desktop, mount their harddisk and play some music while browsing the web...
Hey, a man can dream... - oMeSSiaHo, on 10/30/2007, -1/+14Five to ten minutes?! Granted the boot up time of this will be faster but it shouldnt take five minutes until you can use a web browser. At that point its not your computers fault!
- dd240sx, on 10/30/2007, -0/+13damn it took them long enough that is one smart move on asus part very nice
- twljagflba, on 10/10/2007, -0/+13ASUSTeK (Eee creator) didn't actually make this but SplashTop did. It looks like ASUS just made some alterations to it, added their logos, and put it on a mobo. So since ASUS didn't write this from scratch as DeviceVM did, I doubt Xandros was used especially for how light-weight it looks.
- BHSPitMonkey, on 10/30/2007, -0/+13That's too cool. Printing would be an especially helpful addition down the road, for those 8am "emergencies" before class. The part about needing Windows to apply its updates was a little off-putting and surprising, given the circumstances. Hopefully they'll "fix" that as well.
- Protoss, on 10/10/2007, -1/+13More of a life-saving recovery tool for most. I know this would be amazing if say, I didn't have a laptop, but my hard drive died or something.
- eggo, on 10/30/2007, -0/+11I'm thinking of the custom kernel options that will inevitably follow. Kernel sits on super-fast flash on the board, use the hard drive just for storage. I most definitely want one.
- crestfall, on 10/30/2007, -0/+11plus, it gives you the option of booting from an hdd or cd/dvdrom. So, it's not about advantages over a full OS, but more like... the advantages over your current BIOS. It's like BIOS with a browser... or something. like psilanthropist said, do something quick - get email, make a call. How useful would that be in an airport or on your lunch break? It would be ***** awesome..
- fac51, on 10/10/2007, -0/+10When did WD make a 15,000RPM Raptor???
- psilanthropist, on 10/10/2007, -0/+9the whole point of this exercise is to prove the superiority of EFI over BIOS. why in the hell would they use BIOS ?
- anshuman, on 10/10/2007, -1/+10this is how "Year of Linux" will start, hardware manufactures starting the support.
- dlin128, on 10/10/2007, -2/+11http://www.splashtop.com/ is the site but it's password protected :(
- geminitojanus, on 10/10/2007, -0/+9A) This isn't BIOS.
B) If the vendor has some sense of intelligence, they'd include two, smaller images (possibly on two chips, one with a clipped write pin); if anything ever happened, like malware overwriting the firmware, you'd have a fall-back, un-compromised firmware image. This should never really be needed, however, as whatever upper-level Operating System should remove the firmware chip from its own address space once it's booted far enough to do so, and it would simply be impossible to address the chip (thusly requiring the machine to be power-cycled in order to update the firmware). The next solution would be to attach trust to the firmware image with a crypto system, but customers would never put up with it (Microsoft Palladium ring any bells?)
It's not something I'd be immediately worried about, no more so than the extremely short-lived ROM viruses of the 80s. - subratabera, on 10/10/2007, -0/+8Now this will start a motherboard revolution...
- foxymcfox, on 10/10/2007, -3/+11Who are you quoting? Tom Arnold? I ask because Paris Hilton has never once said "Hawt."
- Zaxcomp, on 10/10/2007, -1/+8Since many of the BIOS's opened their source code last year, hacker already have web based viruses that hide directly into free memory not used in the BIOS' memory. I've done Linux installs on a lot of desktops and laptops for friends and family and am getting quite used to seeing a seemingly fine computer throw multiple BIOS virus warnings when Linux runs its hardware checking.
If anything a Linux based Firefox browser would be a quick antidote to this problem, as it is much harder to write a successful virus for a Linux environment without access to root. - Elranzer, on 10/10/2007, -1/+8But lazy-eyed Paris Hilton has never been hot, or "hawt."
- SystmBetatester, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7i have always spent the extra money on asus, never had a problem with them, and great customer support when needed.
- renegadeafk, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7This would be ideal if say you had a problem installing your os, or it didn't boot or something, you can simply boot up into this and look for solutions on the internet ect..
- Mereo, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5Imagine if you could update the Bios, mount the HD and USB disks, had a small mp3 player... It would be the perfect motherboard!
But it's a good idea, You don't want to boot into Windows or linux just to check something on the web? do it in less than 5 seconds! - BIGmog, on 10/10/2007, -9/+14Useful for troubleshooting hardware but I can't see many other advantages over a full OS.
- serrebi, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5As a blind person, it would be cool if they could intregrate this into a laptop with a screenreader. I could be on time to classes instead of being early to wait for a damn boot process to finish!
- jopache1, on 10/10/2007, -1/+6This would be great for power consumption in laptops
- andycr512, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5A decent OS? Like what, Windows Vista? Don't make me laugh.
- sekhui, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5i don't give a ***** what it's booting, 5 seconds to surfing the web and making VOIP calls is just brilliant. hopefully someday soon we will see MRAM that will allow a whole OS to come up that fast.
awesome that Linux is lightweight and efficient enough to allow something like this to happen. - andywebb95, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5Cool! I was waiting for someone to finally do this! A new mainboard is not in the budget at this time but when I can afford one I know what I will be looking for!
- LeeSoong, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4cool. it is time for mother board makers to embed a browser - the boot speed-up is worth it, and anything is better than vista.
good job asus. - inactive, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5i assume they have a flash storage and not a bios area for this.
- mayonaise15, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4I own an ASUS board now, and they have a Windows utility that will check for BIOS updates and upgrade it from within Windows. It just saves you from having to create a boot floppy to flash it. Maybe that is all they mean?
- lasermission, on 10/18/2007, -0/+3"At least bill gates cares about us and helps us with these in windows"
Hilarious. - niallabrown, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3I would love this for my laptops
- hexydes, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Gotta start somewhere. Copycats and traction in the market will drive this down to the point where it is a standard feature on any $50 motherboard.
- SuperRoach, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3True - although easy to get around if they wanted... its essentially a flash of the err... flash chip, doing its changes. You could do the same with a boot into freedos so it can get its hands on it, if they wanted.
*edit* - or, got wine? - inactive, on 10/18/2007, -0/+3i bet you bought the limited edition windows vista ultimate numbered signed by bill gates special edition didn't you?
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