Microsoft Considers "Instant On" Windows 440
Barence writes "In what might be a glimpse of things to come in Windows 7, Microsoft is asking customers whether they would be interested in a new 'Instant-on' version of Windows. 'We would like your feedback on a new concept,' the Microsoft survey states. 'The Instant On experience is different from "Full Windows" because it limits what activities you can do and what applications you can have access to.' Sounds interesting but hardly new: Asus and Dell have produced laptops that provide swift access to apps and data using Linux subsystems."
My opinion (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes because as we all know... (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously is there anyone on
Jesus this is like Digg more and more everyday.
OK bitches mod me down now.
Why give an option? (Score:5, Insightful)
Certainly there must be a way to offer these "instant on" apps while the rest of the subsystems load in the background. And if that's true then there's no need for an option, just always do it. It sounds like it's only an all-or-nothing proposition because they're copying the way others are currently doing it.
Nope. (Score:5, Insightful)
Instant on is useless if you can't do everything you want; which is what this is.
How about an don't need to reboot version?
Instant on while it loads up the rest? (Score:2, Insightful)
Can't we have best of both worlds? Perhaps booting instantly a browser and basic apps, and then loading up other stuff in the background?
Or how about it loading up bits that you need, when you need them?
Nothing new here....Headlights. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Why is it that Microsoft has no original ideas of their own?"
One could very well ask FOSS the same question. Any takers?
"The worse part of this whole thing is, Microsoft convinces the public that their idea is something new!!!"
Like Apple?
If you wanted an uptime contest... (Score:5, Insightful)
But I can think of plenty of reasons to turn a notebook off. For example, a kernel update (we get those a lot in Fedora). Or a hardware upgrade. Or a low battery. Or extended storage. Or, if you are using a dual-boot system, to switch OSes.
Re:What an original idea - NOT! (Score:4, Insightful)
No one said it was an original idea.
Does it need to be an original idea for them to implement it? Are only original ideas worth adding to an OS?
Well, that explains it all again (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd enjoy it if they focused it on... (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd enjoy an "instant-on" version of Windows if they focused it on productivity software and casual access to the internet. I'd also need to see it improve laptop battery life by a fair amount. Let's speculate: if this version of Windows allowed you to run Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer (with overhead plugins turned off, such as FlashPlayer) and gave you access to file servers (FTP, SSH, etc.) and sported a 50% battery life improvement, I'd use it! This is a perfect setup for what I need from my laptop when I'm going about my day from classes and meetings.
Re:What an original idea - NOT! (Score:4, Insightful)
"Does it need to be an original idea for them to implement it?"
Only if it is Microsoft - the bar is higher for them because nobody likes the company.
Re:Uptime... (Score:5, Insightful)
The only practical way this will ever work is coercing hardware manufacturers to stick to more specific standards. In practice, ACPI hasn't solved it.
Re:Next Windows should be Windows Verde (Score:2, Insightful)
The green os. 12-18% better power savings for 'always-on' desktops. Sell it to the CFO, not the CTO, and leverage half the marketing budget to the Windows Green campaign. Don't bother with other features or capabilities. They are unneeded, and do nothing to drive adoption or deployment. (Sorry, feature teams.)
You got modded funny, but that's a pretty damn brilliant marketing gimmick. Better than anything Microsoft has come up with recently, that's for sure.
FOSS is innovation - just a different kind (Score:5, Insightful)
People always claim that FOSS (usually they just mean Linux, and in particular the KDE and GNOME desktops) just copies Microsoft and/or Apple, so "where's the innovation".
Well, this is where. FOSS made it possible for Asus and Dell to think about instant on computing. With Windows, you'd only have it if Microsoft came up with the idea. With Linux, anyone is free to come up with the idea. Even people not associated with Linux development per se.
That's what open source innovation is about. Providing the freedom to innovate. Yes Linux is still playing catchup (to a limited extent these days) in matching mainstream desktop functionality and in keeping up with all the closed de-facto 'standards' that keep appearing due to the fact that the marketplace is still a heavily distorted Monopoly dominated one.
So don't expect a new desktop paradigm (which most people probably don't even want). But expect a host of new devices (EeePC, Android, TiVo, etc) made possible by the true open source innovation - freedom to reuse.
Re:Next Windows should be Windows Verde (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, I used to work in a call center with the same policy. I eventually told them their options were A) I leave my computer on 24x7 and show up on time and ready to rock, or B) I take overtime for showing up 10 minutes early to start my computer.
They chose A, despite B being much cheaper.
Re:Finally some progress... (Score:4, Insightful)
I was actually kind of excited when I read the headline here. I thought maybe they were going to propose bringing up the full OS "instantly." This limited OS thing doesn't seem particularly useful to me. My Dell laptop already has an "instant on" media player thing, and I never use it.
Re:Green for Windows Verde, then brown for ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Presumably the box and ads would be green, too?
Maybe, but recycled cardboard would probably be better.
Re:Next Windows should be Windows Verde (Score:4, Insightful)
Too bad they didn't use the BIOS or Wake-on-LAN to turn the PC 10 minutes before your shift starts.
Re:Why business would upgrade for this feature. (Score:3, Insightful)
Ehm, people will just slack off those 2 minutes in other ways. For example by chatting around the coffee-maker.
Boosting productivity by shaving *minutes* off of a workflow (especially a once-a-day one) is a myth.
Premature optimization in business processes is just as harmful as it is in computing.
Try to optimize tasks that amount to hours of overhead each day first - then look after the 2 minute thingies.
The most common sources of overhead in modern organizations are, still, unclear communication-paths and dependencies.
Those imaginary 10 hours are very likely wasted in *your* company every day (or even every hour in big companies) only because processes are not properly decoupled. You know, A is waiting for B and C is waiting for A. People just love excuses and "I'm waiting for X" is so much better of an excuse for not getting shit done than "I had to wait for computer to boot".
Also see: Chain of Blame and The mythical man month
Re:Next Windows should be Windows Verde (Score:5, Insightful)
I imagine in most cases it's the login rather than the boot itself that takes the time....
Re:Next Windows should be Windows Verde (Score:4, Insightful)
Mod parent up. Booting up an XP machine is often a lot faster than the time it takes to login, and wait for the OS to become responsive as it loads all the startup crap.
Re:Hype and Power management failure. (Score:5, Insightful)
After reading your journal entry, I'm a little confused on how you believe Microsoft "intentionally sabotaged" power management under Linux? Of all the evidence presented in the Iowa case, surely you have something more specific than an email that proves nothing at all other than Bill Gates' reluctance to release something for free?
Also, if your claim that Microsoft somehow crippled ACPI (and/or APM) to hurt Linux... how come ACPI works as well (or as badly, depending on your hardware) as it does on Windows? Specifically, if Microsoft, *BSD and Linux all implement the same open standard, how is that intentional sabotage by "M$"?
And, going back to your journal entry, I see you never did reply to any of the posts that challenge your interpretation of this problem. Why is that?
Re:Easy Lazy Instant-On/Off... (Score:3, Insightful)
What I'm saying is that as soon as you try to actually do *anything*, like click on a button, the OS will have to load all of the virtual pages on disk containing needed libraries as the application traverses down its software stack. Your mouse click will generate an interrupt, which then needs to invoke the USB subsystem, which then invokes a callback which generates a windowing system message, which then gets routed to your processes, which then loads your process' window event callback function. Eventually, by the time the software stack is traversed, you've quite likely loaded your entire application plus most of your GUI libraries into memory.
I mean, I could be wrong, it all comes down to how much of the physical code gets touched in response to any particular gui event. Just redrawing the screen would require loading quite a bit of libraries, though.
Re:My opinion (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Uptime... (Score:1, Insightful)
Why does anybody turn their notebooks off?
How about to save electricity? Do you really use your Macbook much when you are asleep?
No wonder the planet is screwed....
Re:Next Windows should be Windows Verde (Score:2, Insightful)
Worse, all those scripts could be written in VBScript or perhaps javascript and run asynchronously, giving the user their desktop while mapped drives are connected in the background.
Oh well... batch scripts are much easier to write.
Re:My opinion (Score:3, Insightful)
If this was for a Linux distribution people would love it. But because it has windows on it... It makes it bad.
Re:If you wanted an uptime contest... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hype and Power management failure. (Score:2, Insightful)
It's a well-known fact that you never use Microsoft's compiler if you need ACPI to work under Linux. That's what the Intel [t-online.de] compiler exists for. I will grant you that laptop vendors might simply use Microsoft's compiler because "it works" (barely), but until very recently they had no reason or incentive to cater to Linux. However, had they wished to do so, they had a readily available option. I'm pretty sure Dell is not using it for their Ubuntu laptops.
That's a completely different problem, a vendor specifically excluding power management support for Linux. Once enabled with a simple BIOS hack, everything worked correctly.
I fail to see how that is relevant here at all.
Screw instant on, Computer should always be on... (Score:2, Insightful)
Screw instant on, Computer should always be on...
This is why hibernate and other state technologies exist. Hibernate your freaking computer, stop shutting it down. Even in a hibernate state, the computer can turn itself on to grab updates or performance maintenance if allowed and then re-hibernate.
(The concept of 'shutdown' for modern computers is something that will die in a few years anyway, like like application states of being off will be a thing of the past before long also.)
Why aren't people better educated about this. Even Vista by default puts itself to sleep and hibernates.
On my work laptop, it has been restarted about once a month for updates. The rest of the time it is either ON, Standy/Sleep, or Hibernated when traveling. I literally wait longer on the 'aged' BIOS than the OS itself.
As for the statement about Linux 'instant on' media features on some laptops... Um, some of the current instant on Media/DVD utilities use a modified form of XP more than I have seen Linux versions, as embedded XP is what was used by some of these companies.
As for Vista, it already supports Media or Hotstart features, that just haven't been used much by the OEMs, because it boots in 15-20 seconds instead of the 2-5 seconds of the embedded XP implementation.
Again, why settle for a single application instant on, when people are getting 15sec boots times on a full Vista boot? (Even the PS3 or XBox 360 take 10seconds to boot) Are people just getting insane about boot times? -And if you want to see a 'real long' boot time, restart your Cable Box or Sat Receiver, yes even the *nix based ones. 5 minutes or more you will be waiting.)
This is crazy on several levels. Especially when several OEM's BIOSes take longer to intialize than the OS itself takes to boot.
Microsoft should:
1) Demand OEM BIOS times are 'instant'.
2) Educate users to use freaking hibernate ALWAYS.
3) Forget the limited feature OS boot (A form of WinPE or an embedded Vista core, like the XP media center instant on features use already).
Re:Yes because as we all know... (Score:3, Insightful)
> ANYTHING that Windows wants to do to improve sucks and linux has already
> done it, done it better, cured cancer, etc.
Actually.... Linux hasn't done it YET but almost certainly will before Microsoft can ship this idea. This all started with the embedded Linux distros to get around the long boot times for Windows (and most current Linux distros, lets be fair) and Microsoft now wants to play "me too!" but Linux is already moving on to solve the actual problem. Fedora demoed an Asus EEEPC booting to a full desktop in five seconds flat recently. To make netbooks and small form factors (PDA, smartphone, etc) viable candidates for Penguin domination the boot time problem is going to get solved.
So again, Microsoft will be pushing a me too clone to yesterday's problem while the penguin army will be moving onto bigger and better things. Who will want a crippled up raggedy assed mini-me Windows when a full Linux desktop can load in the same couple of seconds? Unless Microsoft wants to chase taillights they need to get their full OS booting in a couple of seconds. It should be possible.