Musings on Instant On and a Plea for OEMs

It's no secret that flash storage is getting cheap and Linux can be tweaked to boot pretty fast. Put the two together, and you get implementations like Splashtop, most commonly commercialized as ASUS ExpressGate and Phoenix' HyperSpace close behind in the race to market. The combined cost is low enough to be able to justify for most systems beyond the budget end of the spectrum. The goal is to be able to get a very basic OS with several key apps up and running in five seconds or less. We'll revisit those apps later.

The whole idea that we can have even a basic OS up and running in 5 seconds is amazing enough, but the concept of using part of the computer without taking the time to boot into a full featured OS isn't entirely new. By the late 90's, several manufacturers offered rudimentary audio controls on the outside panel of laptops so that they could be used as extremely large and overpriced CD player. That's not so much of a real OS, but baby steps... By the Athlon XP era, some of the highest end motherboards from manufacturers like DFI included enough extra BIOS functionality to boot into MemTest86-- we're getting closer, and probably the first precursor on the Phoenix side. Baby step number two.

I point these two out because you see a fundamental difference between these two approaches. One is a pure media/entertainment option, while the other is about geting work done in a very specific way. Having a second OS to boot into to troubleshoot, test or repair is a common and critical need when doing various computer tasks.

Maybe this made more sense when a full OS boot took two minutes and various suspend options were half-baked. I won't say that there are never problems with suspend and hibernate, but modern OSes and hardware have come a long way. I can bring back an already booted OS fairly quickly.

The current implementations favor entertainment and communication apps. There are certainly times when having Firefox up and running quickly would help troubleshooting, but I suspect there's a better way to go than getting quick access to Skype and MP3s. Building a troubleshooting-oriented OS would help tremendously more than a media mini-OS.

Imagine having the ability to:

Work with hardware before a hard drive is installed or with a blank hard drive before the OS is installed.

Have a trustworthy OS to assist with data recovery when the installed OS isn't working properly.

Have an OS to boot into in order to perform diagnotics away from the installed OS.

Boot into a "safe" OS while attempting overclocks without the risk of damaging an installed OS.

A Media-centric OS gets you a browser to help look stuff up when troubleshooting, but not too much more than that. I respectfully submit that having a work-oriented OS is far more useful than a limited media OS.