When home computers first came on the scene we suddenly had to deal with machines that no longer simply turned on–computers can take minutes (sometimes) to “boot up.” Gone were the days of simply turning on your TV and having the screen pop to life in a few seconds. However DeviceVM decided, not too long ago, that there was no reason computers shouldn’t have the ability to simply “turn on.” How is such a thing possible?
Everyone knows that a computer needs to get a lot of things straight before it can let you use it, right? It has to get the operating system up and running, the drivers loaded and the peripherals recognized, before it can let you connect to the Internet to surf for porn interesting gadget news. However, DeviceVM came up with something called “SplashTop“–it’s an operating system that is actually stored and run from the motherboard, itself (although it can be run from a hard drive, too).
It’s called an “instant-on embedded OS” and it’s based on the very popular Linux operating system. Of course, this isn’t a full-blown replacement for a full-blown operating system like Windows Vista or Mac OSX or even full-versions of Linux. It’s a light version designed to cover all of your basic needs–it lets you get on the web, play music, chat, browse photos and even comes with Skype, so you can make Voice over IP calls. Since you can pretty much do everything online these days, it means that you have virtually no wait time to get on the Internet and to get to work.
Of course, no computer can be literally “instant-on” but one early review of SplashTop clocked startup time at under five seconds. Not a bad wait time at all. Sounds like something that every computer should come with as standard, right?
It’s the ultimate blow-off of the higher-end operating systems for those of us who just need the ‘net. Currently, only Asus computers come with SplashTop as standard. However, apparently SplashTop (or “Express Gate” as Asus calls it on their devices) has been hacked and can now be run on any machine, even from a USB stick (please note the word “apparently”). You can learn more about this hack over at Phoronix.com, but be warned: it may not be legal or easy.
Learn more about SplashTop at SplashTop.com.
