Microsoft survey hints at Instant On OS concept

Hmm, what have we here? A recent Microsoft survey sent out to select users has us wondering what on Earth the mega-corp is planning to do next, and judging by the looks of things, it has everything to do with Instant On. We've seen a number of these lightning-fast boot applications, with the most recent being ASUS' Splashtop OS and the iteration loaded onto Dell's freshest Latitudes. The survey makes mention that the "Instant On experience is different from 'Full Windows' because it limits what activities you can do and what applications you have access to." The survey also asks about which applications would be most important to have quick access to, and it very plainly states that in this "scenario," your PC would "be usable in eight seconds." So, is Instant On coming to Windows? Who knows -- but it's clear someone at Redmond is giving it some thought.

[Thanks, Anonymous]

Microsoft survey hints at Instant On OS concept

[dhodge Posted Oct 15th 2008 2:37PM]

Try starting up Windows/386 sometime... it starts in about 1 second on a '486...

[1 Posted Oct 15th 2008 3:04PM]

Why not have the entire system booting in 5 seconds? The mods made for the 5 second EEE boot are being incorporated into the kernel.

[FuturePastNow Posted Oct 15th 2008 5:51PM]

I stopped caring about boot time when I discovered sleep/suspend. I reboot once a month when I install updates, apart from that the computers sleep when I'm not using them.

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 15th 2008 8:11PM]

why not load the bare essentials and lazy load the other components as required? this is a well known strategy?

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 16th 2008 12:46AM]

Have people not heard of Sleep mode??

I'm up and running within 5 seconds using Vista. Battery drain is negligible unless you're on the road for a really long time.

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 16th 2008 4:50AM]

Some time ago I heard that that Microsoft were looking at installing the entire Windows OS on solid state memory similar to an internal flash drive so their would be no "boot" process in the classic sense but would be fully available instantly. What happened to that idea?

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 16th 2008 5:09AM]

Well its a good sales gimmick in a world obsessed by speed, but I wonder how many people would start-up with the instant-on, then ten minutes later find themselves re-booting in 'full functionality mode' because they need to do something they can't under instant-on?
MS operating systems are monolithic & convoluted, I suspect limiting functionality would cause countless unpredictable problems that would quickly negate the advantage of a marginally faster boot.

Reminds me of an apparently true story:

A top Formula One racing driver came home from a practice session and told his wife he'd had a really great day and knocked three quarters of a second of his lap time, his wife just said 'great, and what are you going to do with that three quarters of a second you've saved?'

8 second boot instead of 30 seconds, so what will we do with those glorious 22 seconds we've saved?

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 16th 2008 6:20AM]

For the idiots who are misinterpreting what the Instant On technique is like, go try finding about Dell MediaDirect and how you can use to view Multimedia (i.e., pictures, movies, videos, songs et cetera) without turning on the computer. It saves battery life as well, since it does not really utilise as much system resources as much as a normal OS does.


I support Windows OS fully, and with the added Instant On technology I think Microsoft will do an impressive job.

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 16th 2008 10:47PM]

very good concept!

[looselycoupled Posted Oct 17th 2008 4:58AM]

What exactly is the problem with using hibernation mode?? It takes less than 10 seconds to load, especially on an SSD.

[petrbuben Posted Oct 17th 2008 7:08PM]

what I'd like is a quick boot to net browser/ calendar/ text editor, but BEHIND, the whole funcionality will boot up in the background.
Is this what they talk about? Or Il be stuck with limited funcionality for that boot up?
www.geek.nexo.com

[(Unverified) Posted Oct 23rd 2008 6:42PM]

Why would I want instant on? The slow boot up on my work PC is the only excuse I get to have a 10 minute coffe break before starting work.