ASUS' Express Gate 2.0 instant-on OS demoed on video
By Donald Melanson 
posted March 19th 2010 8:37PM
posted March 19th 2010 8:37PM
ASUS' original ExpressGate instant-on OS may be getting a little long in the tooth, but it looks like it's finally due for a serious replacement. While it didn't cause much fanfare at the time, ASUS was apparently showing off version 2.0 of the SlashTop-based OS at CeBIT earlier this month, and Notebook Italia has just now provided a quick hands-on video that gives us some idea of what's in store. As you can see, the biggest change is the interface, which now looks more than a little like webOS' cards system, and represents a significant step up form the barebones original. Head on past the break to check it out for yourself.
[Thanks, Sal]
[Thanks, Sal]
A lot of the big name manufacturers in Netbooks all seem to offer "instant on" Linux distros these days, but I always wonder does anyone actually use them?
@rysle I did... once... when my windows crashed... but other then that case... never. it has skype, it has web, but need the feel of Windows... and it doesn't take that long for windows to boot up, considering that I keep mine in hibernate during the day...
@Dking7 totally agree, I can keep my laptop in sleep mode on batteries for few days, waking up takes few seconds. Why would I need more "instant" OS?
@rysle
I do... though not on my portable. My desktop motherboard is an ASUS and has ExpressGate on an embedded 2GB flash drive. I boot it and leave it when we have parties at the house so my drunk friends can't mess with my settings (a favorite party game among a few of us).
@rysle
I've only seen stuff about desktops with instant on OS so far and have been like why. But I think a laptop with it makes more sense. If you only need to check something quick it'd turn on fast and I'd wager it'd use less battery power perhaps.
@rysle
I use my Express Gate AND I keep a USB Flash device loaded with Puppy Linux, because sometimes you need a different OS to accomplish something, and if Windows ever craps out on me and won't let me boot up, I can still get online, do all my basic stuff, and web surf to find out how to fix the problem in Windows (happened once, with Vista. So far Windows 7 has been rock-solid, though).
I had to switch to a Linux distro to install Dingux to my Dingoo A-320, and it has come in handy to tweak my NAS when Windows is being all weird with permissions.
And of course, it's FAST and doesn't use many resources, so if my computer's off and I need to web surf NOW for some reason, I can boot into Express Gate and be online in under a minute.
@Dking7
When using a new ISP the automatic config CD they provided deleted the windows WIFI drivers on my laptop. OFC i could only figure this out later. I could not get the wifi on at all and the hardware switch did nothing. So I thought lets bootup in express gate and see what happens. I was able to turn the wifi on and off through software and then when I booted up in windows the drivers reinstalled automatically. I was very thankful to have an alternative OS that time.
@rysle
No, theres no reason to use them. Sure they boot up fast but they take ages to do anything else. Kinda counter productive if you ask me :d
i want a laptop or a tablet that runs WebOS
@Alexpeegs I'm glad I do not own Palm stock
@Jimbojones why not? you don't even have several million dollars like they do?
To bad they don't show the bootproces, but according the article the biggest change is the interface.
Instead of trimming down the boot-time, wich is the most important feature for an 'instant on' OS, they give you some fancy (but not really smooth and/or usefull) 3D eye-candy.. sigh...
all this expressgate stuff is BS IMO.. I have the asus ul30a and yea I have instant on... its called windows 7 stand by mode.. it instantly resumes whenever i want it to. I haven't used the expressgate crap since i bought the laptop in november.
I'm diggin this beat...
Judging on the screen cap, before I even read the title, I thought this was gonna be an article about how a netbook survived a fire...
The browser in the old expressgate version didn't have flash and this does. :)
@trashcanz
That's incorrect. The express gate that I have already supports flash.
Did they fix the resolution issue? I hate the stretched look of it.
palm ought to license webOS out for things like this
Because my stupid G50vT-X6 when in sleep has three bliniking blue floresent large lights on the machine
They better make it a download for previous users.
@Sonicjet
ASUS is pretty good about supporting their hardware. They were on the ball with Windows 7 software and drivers for their entire line when Windows 7 was officially released. So far, I've been pretty happy with ASUS as a company.
I'd bet that it will be a free upgrade for anyone who owns an ASUS computer.
Looks like webOS crossed with HTC TouchFLO...
this looks like min. 100% junk to me.
now that win7 boots up in well under 2 minutes its not an issue at all for me.
push the POWER, walk around your house and BANG, your good to go.
seriously, if you can't wait 2 minutes there are other issues you need to get sorted first.
@liquidmonkey I couldn't agree more with you, Windows 7 has been one of the fastest bootup times ive ever seen (apart from OS X).
Sounds cool, but there really is no point to this. It's basically an admission that your primary OS sucks. It makes even less sense in a netbook, in my view. What, I'm going to do something even more basic than what I do on my netbook? No, no. This is unnecessary redundancy.
Worst of all, it needs actual disk space. If it were all say, in the firmware, well then it could be used sans-HD in case of corruption, etc. But that's not the case. Sure, it may be of use at some point, some day (as mentioned, Windoze not working right), but this in no way justifies an otherwise useless "feature", especially when just installing a regular Linux partition on the HD would do the same thing, or having an emergency boot flash drive or SD card. It just doesn't make sense.
In my case that "lean OS" *is* my primary OS, as I use Xubuntu, so I find it even more insignificant given that I don't have to deal with the likes of Windoze in the first place.
The only thing using power in Standby mode is the ram holding a charge right? So... Why not just put an equal amount of flash on a laptop and dump the ram content onto the flash when going into standby. Then when you start back up just dump the flash back onto the ram. Bam, quick startup with no power used in standby mode...
Am I missing something?
@LazarusDark
Not really, but there was supposed to be this thing called MRAM and also a phase change version of it too. This would be non-volitlie RAM used as your main system memory that would replace the current style of RAM in computers. Then it really would be instant on as the memory would be how you left it when you turned it off. It has been about 3-5 years since these were announced and I haven't seen anything for awhile now, so it is apparently another one of those technology things that never quite gets done.