News Multimedia PC with instant start-up launches

Mooted for some time, the quick boot PC becomes a reality. This from New Scientist:

"Why can't a PC simply turn on like a TV?" It is the question that has been bugging people who use multimedia PCs as the heart of their home entertainment systems. When they want to watch TV, play a DVD, listen to internet radio or play CDs and MP3s, they have to spend fruitless minutes watching the Windows egg timer while the PC boots up.

Not any more. In a direct challenge to PCs running Microsoft's Windows XP Media Center, InterVideo of California last week launched the InstantOn PC.

Instead of having to wait for Windows to boot, the technology allows all a PC's entertainment functions - TV, DVD, CD, MP3, radio - to be run on a pared-down version of the open-source Linux operating system, called LinDVD. Rather than sitting on a hard drive, LinDVD is small enough to be held in a read-only memory chip and boots in 10 seconds flat.

Full report here

 

Boots in 10 seconds!? Nice!

* Dad scampers off to see if he can find that distro to download and play with


::EDIT::
Hey, wait... The distro is made by InterVideo!? I use their WinDVD software! I had no idea they were into Linux too....

 

My old TV's use to take 5-10 mins to warm up.. bloody kids today want it all on a plate, I dunno.

 

lol @ kna, I can remember those days....... the alternative to the "instant on" pc is to use Windows and just never turn it off. Works for me

Darkside

 

Microsoft does not see boot times as a problem. "We find that most people never turn their Media Center PCs off," says Paul Randle, Windows XP product manager. "I don't even turn mine off when I go away for the weekend. So boot time is not an issue."

what about when I patch my security every other day, windows locks up, install a new program , etc?? Sounds like someone has a chip on their shoulder

[has spent more than enough time waiting for windoze to reboot]

*EDIT*
LinDVD, InterVideo's Linux software DVD player, is currently available only to manufacturers for evaluation and integration.

Doh!

 

i dont know about everyone else here but my xp box boots completely to the desktop in ~15 seconds. my brothers xp box takes 20. ::shrugs::

 

20, 25 seconds here

 

I am planning on with-in the next year to have my cars guage display run from a small graphical program that I am making... (Input via Parallel port). 10 seconds is a long time to wait to know my car's vitals. I want an entire OS built in to a ROM chip... Maybe even several if that's what it takes. LinDVD still only plays media stuff, so if I wanted my program to run, I would have to boot up to Windows still. I guess I still have some waiting to do...

 

You could always try trinux (I believe that is the name). It is a linux distrobution that works from a floppy/cd/any type of media and when inserted into a computer you can boot to it. Trinux copies itself into a self-created ram-drive from computre ram. Very small, very compact, but the downside is in order to do anything, you must have the other packages on other disks.

 

Knoppix LIVE? gr8 distro i think, seems to autodetect everything (except the USB on my EPIA-M, but thats getting fixed). does take a little while to load mind. runs from a ram-disk, but u could strip a LOT out of it, to make it smaller, and specify the config to massively reduce the bootup time.

 

This sounds a bit like the MSI Mega PC...

You can play MP3's directly from the HDD without turning it on!

It's all down to the marketing I guess!