ASRock has a ploy to sell more of its motherboards: Instant Boot. The BIOS update for select MoBos promises to boot XP or Vista systems 10 times faster than standard PCs -- in other words, about 3 to 4 seconds from a full shutdown. ASRock achieves this minor of miracles through manipulation of the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface that Microsoft manipulates for its sleep and hibernate modes. At the risk of oversimplification, ASRock appears to add the processing baggage to the backend of the shutdown process, essentially rebooting the OS and then dropping it into a suspended state ready to instantly pop on the next time you hit the power button. Pretty smart actually. Here's the catch: the system you're using
must be limited to a single user account without any password protection -- a definite no-no for corporate environments. See what happens when Hugo and George steal Dad's camcorder after the break.
[Thanks, Daniel]
posted November 14th 2008 6:38AM
It's really just putting it to sleep after it's rebooted... well, in hibernation so it uses less power I guess.
I don't see anything too special in this, especially with its limitations but it'd be good to see more in this field
I am complaining because boot up is not equal to waking up from sleep.
I can conserve more power by completely shutting off my pc and the power strip its plugged into then putting it into sleep .
Booting up and shutting down uses more power than letting it sleep on most PCs in a typical week so you actually will save power if you leave it to sleep. In sleep mode you're only using the smallest amount of power which can be compared to shutting down and Booting up once a week.
Not always true with laptops though. Similar effect it just means less battery in the morning either way.
@Thi mam:
A computer in standby can easily use 5W. If it's in standby for 8 hours that's 0.04kWh
If the running computer consumes 100W and takes 1 minute to boot:
0.0016kWh
Even if you half the standby power, and double the running power you're still ahead shutting the machine off.
I still go into standby if I'm away for a while and don't need the machine running, because it's quicker to come bck and I don't have to close my applications.
I don't get what the big deal about boot times is. In Vista sleep works great so why even shut the computer down a few seconds and you are entering your password and back at the desktop.
Vista sleep *IS* great.
However Vista still suffers from memory fragmentation over time. So after a while, memory usage will be suboptimal. Rebooting fixes that issue.
This 4-sec bootup is just a hoax, it is cannot cutoff AC power or batteries.
These are just a Hibernation (20-sec) mode and a Sleep (3-sec) mode to it changed a sleight of hand for their ad. A shameless merchant.
Came here to post this.
Anyone notice how George looks like Jerry Yang?
lol at "Hugo". I think I'll go buy a new MoBo from ASRock as well ;)
Or you could just put it in standby mode where it's only using like 4 watts of power to get instant on.
where's kumar? :D
Golf Clap... HEHE, great movies.
Well as long as we are playing shenanigans I can get XP to instant boot in 2-3 seconds and it doesn't involve any restart then sleep tricks and the system can have multiple logins with passwords.
How is this possible you may ask? Its called a VM, I never said I was instantly booting a physical machine. Shady marketing 101.
Thats not necessarily true. These guys are optimizing for use.
When you boot up your computer, you're likely waiting for it to start up.
When you are shutting down, assuming it's not a reboot, you're likely done computing and will walk away.
So why not add extra time to shutdown to optimize start up?
The only suck is if you need to power off to add hardware.
so basically
"please install our software, which works on your BIOS, and remove any passwords and accounts which may divide the harddrive and make it complicated for us to manouvre around whilst you are sleeping"
Brilliant
dj Raj Lovesoul
http://www.lovesoul.tv
Another innovative motherboard from Taiwan.
I am impressed.
Hey look everyone, an marketing employee!
Falcon you are hilarious
is that 'clak'? i can't really see, your message is too pale
Thans on a newly installed OS, how well would it do after you've install Norton, Photoshop, paintshop Pro, Mesh, SpyBot SD, AWC, Ect.
I wonder how well it would boot XP.
im not able to watch the video, but it seems, from comments here, whats happening is the shutdown was padded with bootup sequence, and then the windows suspend? is this a joke?
Why not just HORM. This has been around for years, and Windows XP embedded supported this for years. HORM = Hibernate Once Read Many. Take a good boot, then hibernate, and use that hibernate image each time you power up. People building Car PCs have known this for years, as booting each time you start a car wood just take too long.
Wow must be fun working at Asrock, just look at Hugo's enthusiasm... Instant Boot hmmm looks like George moved the mouse and the monitor was off, I didn't even see the Windows logo on Hugo's monitor. I don't know....
@icepop: You’re right, I didn’t use the correct technical term. Still, from what I read on the AsRock website, InstantBoot basically has the same boot times as S3/S4 and only differs in that it boots from a fresh image rather than from the hibernation file. On the website there is no mention of a special flash memory to store the data on in “regular mode”; and technically it is based on S4 (and S3 for “fast mode”, respectively): http://www.asrock.com/feature/InstantBoot/index.asp
So booting in 4 seconds AND completely plugging off the computer apparently does not work.
From what it does, “regular mode” seems to be comparable to HORM (Hibernate once resume many) on Windows XPe.
4 sec for Instant boot, 46 for none... and this dude said almost "10 times as fast"???
what a mathematician lol
His maths is better than your punctuation and grammar.
46 divided by 4 = ?
@Samboini
Yea, why don't you tell your mom and sister to come over and teach me, Mr. Spelling Bee
Instant Boot + logoff.exe in startup = better prank now
"I'd tell you to go to hell, but I work there and I wouldn't want to see you every day."
fucking engadget and your shitty reply button!
These guys seem to be confusing tongue-in-cheeck laughability, with moronic mouse waving.
I'd rather experience a clear, concise and proffesional vid, despite the likely prospect of boredom, than suffer this barrage of ninnery.
Oh my good gowd! How cool is Hugo!!! I want to be your friend Hugo!
Ok, so they basically gave sleep mode(S3) a new name, removed the security of booting back to a password, removed multi-user support that XP and Vista already support, and saved about 1 second of wake-up time and decided its worth selling it as a feature? Blow me, I'll keep my password thanks.
There is no way that "instant boot" has some magic to actually go through the whole booting process in 4 seconds. It is obvious what this does: Instant boot fast mode is Stand by. Instant boot regular mode is Hibernate. Big whoop. If you need to restart your computer, you're still going to have to turn this auto-standby off.
*Correction -
"keep on stroking Steve Jobs' cock"
Thank you
The countdown to disaster - T minus 4 seconds.
Yeah! Why not?
Awesome... Can't wait until this is most motherboards out there in the future.
This is most boring and dumb news posted here yet, posted by boring and dumb people that work here.
Good job!
I'm losing all respect for all of you that work here.
good thing to know such a technology out there but i'll pass since im running os 24/7
thanks for the hard work people
are you for real?
good work !
just watch, it takes like 10 minutes to shut down...
How do we know they didn't just have the computer in sleep mode? There wasn't even anyone sort of bios text or anything at the beginning.
The 'instant-boot' machine didn't actually boot windows. The Vista splash screen didn't display and neither did the startup sound/image. It looks like it woke up from a sleep state.
My guess is that they rewire the shutdown to actually be something like reboot. It turns off the screen and does the reboot.
Windows launches and when it's done it automatically puts the machine into a suspended sleep state.
The realistic test is install a windows update patch and time how long it takes from the moment you start installing the update until you've finished rebooting and productive again.
Wouldn't a complete reboot cycle suffice? On to Off and back on.
is asrock still using those cheap chinee capacitors that leak and can cause a fire? yeah, lots of people will appreciate this comment. i remember having to change the cappies right above the dimm slots back in the p4/pentium D days, as there were the first to "explode". secondly, most people pay for their electricity. i doubt this feature will be used much.