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.

Dust Bunnies are Evil

I know this seems like a mundane task that most of us are admonished to do on a regular basis, but it really does need to be repeated: Blow your computers cases out once in a while, especially if they get dusty.

We all know that heat sinks and fans lose their effectiveness when dusty leading to potential overheating, but there's a worse possibility. I ran into a system last week that had dust bunnies in it-- nothing out of the ordinary, except that one of them had lodged itself into the video card's tiny fan. The user reported a blue screen indicating video driver failure. I was busy and asked him to reboot since this was a first time thing. He came back shortly after reporting that it happened again, and now the system couldn't POST. A single dust bunny had lodged in a tight fan, causing the fan to jam, burning out the motor. The video card (a Quadra, unfortunately) then overheated to the point of death. Odd stuff like this can absolutely happen, without showing general signs of overheating.

To be fair, the opposite is true. It's possible you might dislodge some conductive dust which might land in an inopportune spot, causing problems. That can typically be fixed pretty easily with a second cleaning. A burnt out video card, northbridge, etc. can be a lot more costly.

Intel: i7 first benchmarks released.

I'm not going to rehash what's out there, and what's out there is still pouring in, but Core i7 is fast. Big surprise there. Here are some early reviews:

Maximum PC
TechSpot
PC Perspective

Expect mass-market acceptance by Q2-Q3 of '09, but with the Core i7 920 at around $270, that's tempting for a midrange + system now. i7 Xeon benchmarks are still MIA as far as I can tell, but expect similar performance.

Shanghai will be good, but Intel has so much breathing room now... things are looking grim over at the green camp.

Happy 40th, Intel

All the best-- 40 years is a few lifetimes in the tech industry. Of course, this wish comes with a fervent request that you not repeat the debacles of Netburst, RAMBUS and the FDIV bug. I will gratefully take a nice Wolfdale off your hands if you have one to spare, though!

Hardware: Hector Ruiz out at AMD

AMD's former chief, Hector Ruiz has been replaced by Dirk Meyer as President and CEO. Will Dirk continue to tell us that crap smells like roses, or will we see a CEO who concentrates on the strengths that AMD has and turn the ship around? Time will tell...