Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Common Interests Instant-On Desktops Possible?

The next revolution in Computers is supposed to be instant on machines. Have read a few articles on the subject and people feel we are still a few years out. Said most likely 2005 for machines to become equppied like this.

#1 complaint of users is the boot time lag so people know there is money to be made.

Instant on machines...well, you can actually buy a device that works like a hard drive, except with RAM memory instead. Problem is, it's $$$. I remember seeing on tv a type of flash memory that would work for instant on computers. Was still being researched. Some kid at MIT actually used potato chip bags to make the stuff! That was like last year. All other options are simply too expensive.

The company I was going to do hardware design for was there. I saw an 8GB solid state drive (basically flash). What I would give to have one of those!

Many older Macintosh machines would boot in 7 seconds or less, because there was nothing necessary to pre-load before you use the operating system. My own Mac PowerBook 3400 can boot that quick if I specify "extentions off".

I believe if you got a Mac Classic and had the OS boot from the ROM (as suggested here), it would boot in 4 seconds or less. Pretty fast for a 25 MHz computer with (if you're lucky) 4 MB RAM!

Don't worry, IBM is working on it. Current RAM really isn't too good, hence the development of Magnetic RAM, or MRAM.

Here\'s a good article at How Stuff Works. It also said that Flash memory, though it can be used, was deemed too unreliable to be used for PCs.

My sun desktop is instant on. We are using SunRay workstations. I put my smartcard in and my desktop re-appears.

The really cool thing about this is if I want to share something with my co-workers. I walk over to his cube, ask if we can swap smart cards for a moment, and instantly, my desktop is on his workstation.

Of course, we have a pretty beefy Ultra-Enterprise 5500 serving up the desktops



http://www.sun.com/products/sunray/
TB

There is a similar option in W2K called Hibernate.

yeah and hibernate often takes as long to reload as a properly configured PC booting normally.

You mean you turn off your computer?

This brings up a question I've asked quite a few people lately and have gotten conflicting answers...

I run Windows Millenium Edition at home (had that installed after my Win98 had a catastrophic failure) and now I don't shut it down, I just run it on standby and shut the monitor off, 'cause the last time I shut it down the mofo never came back on. I've been told this isn't a problem, and some peeps have said I'm crazy for doing it. I only use it for internet surfing and not much else (occasional CD burning). What's the consensus around here?? I'm just asking because I'm an idiot when it comes to computers.