Apr 9 2009

Moblin Shortens Netbook Quick-Boot To 2 Seconds

No, that’s not a typo – Intel is promising that its new open-source Moblin project could generate quick-boot netbooks that are faster than ever, all on an Atom-optimized platform.

Moblin Netbook

While quickboot this fast may have been a mere dream in the past, the Linux platform will be getting a better look as time goes on. At a Linux summit in San Francisco Imhad Sousou of Intel announced plans to make the two-second booting netbook a reality, and we couldn’t be more pumped.

The project will definitely take a bit of work to make happen, but if it does, this could make netbooks’ role in consumers lives a very different one. Near-instant access from anywhere at any time is the ideal, and the reality’s hot on its tail.

Via Gizmodo.

Feb 16 2009

Xandros And Freescale Offer New Netbook Turnkey Solution

Xandros recently announced at Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress that it would be offering a new turnkey software solution running on a unique processor: the Freescale i.MX515 featuring ARM Cortex-A8 technology. Freescale has been involved in netbook technology before, most notably when it assisted in the development of the Pegatron netbook.

The new release will focus on “fast boot, long battery life, and reliable 3G connectivity.” It will come with a bundle of assorted Xandros software, as well as resources to help OEMs develop netbook products.

Xandros logo

The ‘Xandros solution’ will also include an App Store with acess to all kinds of media, including “access to software, games, multimedia and web applications.” And that’s not all:

“Full-featured user applications include a browser, push-based email, PIM, instant messaging, a photo viewer, a media player, and an office suite to create and edit Microsoft Office documents.”

Wow. All the features will work with both keyboards and touchscreen, meaning the Xandros concept will be portable to pretty much any netbook you’d like.

Freescale Marketing Director Glen Burchers mentioned Freescale’s delight in being able to display Xandros on the advanced i.MX515 processor.

“Consumers demand low costs, high performance and long battery life, and the combination of Freescale’s hardware and Xandros’ rich feature set is expected to enable compelling netbook products that succeed in the marketplace.”

Andreas Typaldos, Xandros CEO, added his viewpoint as well:

“The advanced Freescale platform enables us to quickly bring the powerful netbook experience that Xandros created for the Eee PC to ultra-low powered netbooks with always-on 3G networking and media support… This will blaze a trail for OEMs and carriers bringing full-featured, cost-effective devices with long battery life to new markets, and create recurring revenue streams.”

The Mobile World Congress runs from February 16-19 this year in Barcelona, Spain. We’re anticipating a great deal of new releases from Europe, though not nearly as many as during CES 2009.

Via MSNBC.

Feb 13 2009

Linux-Based HyperSpace Brings Quick-Boot To Netbooks

The latest huge netbook announcement comes from Phoenix Technologies, whose HyperSpace mobile platform has just been released in European markets.

Phoenix is mostly known for its BIOS firmware, but has diversified its computing products greatly, recently including netbooks in the expansion. HyperSpace debuted at Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress. The most interesting factor in the new release is the quick-boot functionality it hinted at earlier this year at CES 2009.

Phoenix’s VP of business development talked about the ways HyperSpace will help netbooks quite confidently, saying that it will bring the “phone experience” – complete access, all the time.  “With a 1GHz ARM chip, these systems will be on a par with the [Intel] Atom world.”

HyperSpace is a Linux-based platform, which can be installed by users or preloaded by vendors. It is supported on machines running Intel or AMD chips – that is to say, basically every netbook. Phoenix is also releasing HyperSpace on ARM netbooks.

Booting your machine in under 15 seconds is a brilliantly attractive option. HyperSpace also boosts battery life by up to a massive 30% against an identical configuration running Windows. Linux is usually more efficient than Windows on any machine, but usually not that much.

That isn’t all, either. Phoenix’s new netbook product can offer “seamless roaming between Wi-Fi, 3G and wired networks,” once more in the mobile phone style. Phoenix wants netbooks to go whenever and wherever instantly, and its new release is improving upon what has made netbooks so popular in the first place. “If you close the lid, it suspends. If you open the lid again, it comes back right where you left off,” said the VP.

If HyperSpace is all it’s hyped up to be, netbooks could see massive improvements in the near future. Be sure to check out our previous article about HyperSpace and netbook quick-boot technology for more info.

Via Vnunet.

Jan 11 2009

CES: Quick-Boot Comes To Lenovo, Sony, Others

All that time you spend watching a Windows load screen may soon be a thing of the past.

Quick-boot technology has been around, but rarely applied to real computing – luckily, with the rise of netbooks, it has found a place.

The idea of this quick-book netbook technology is that netbook users could surf the web, view, images, or check their email without even loading Windows. Lenovo and Sony demonstrated quick-booting machines at CES this week.

Sony Vaio P

Lenovo updated the Lenovo Ideapad S10 to have quick-boot capabilities with a Quick Start software based on the Linux OS of DeviceVM. Sony is now offering the Cross Media Bar navigation system to access multimedia instantly, something we should be seeing in the Vaio P Series.

According to the VP of Global Consumer Marketing at Lenovo, Craig Merrigan, netbooks are exactly where quick-boot should be used. “The netbook usage scenario is kind of a grab it, use it, put it back sort of situation. We believe it optimizes for that quick boot-type of environment,” he said.

Lenovo doesn’t plan to put quick-boot into mainstream notebooks. Machines with the power for content creation achieve that better with a full-fledged operating system.

“For mainstream notebooks when you are doing a greater variety of things… the quick-boot environment doesn’t support that all that well so we think that it’s better left to netbooks at this time,” said Merrigan.

The director of Phonex Technologies product management, Anand Nadathur, said the applications and drivers that slow down PC boot times aren’t what computer users want all the time. “When users start their PC in the morning, they are not looking for the full-fledged OS to come up and do some amazing things. They just look for a simple browser so they can check e-mail.” With this in mind, Phonex introduced a quick-boot environment called HyperSpace Dual at CES. HyperSpace Dual is meant for netbooks and laptops, and is downloadable at the Phoenix website for $39.95 for one year or $99.95 for three.

Phoenix Technologies Logo

Freescale, who partnered with the post-ASUS Pegatron to deliver their own netbooks at CES 2009, talked about quick-boot plans with Qualcomm. They want netbooks starting as fast or faster than smartphones.

Qualcomm sees quick-boot as something they want to add to the Snapdragon platform, which already includes a CPU, 3G, and a 3D graphics core. Freescale wants quick-boot on their Linux netbooks, the ones using the ARM i.MX515 processor (another CES introduction). This processor is also used in the Freescale-Pegatron netbook.
Via PCWorld.

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