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Get karting quicker with Wii U's new update, out now
The Wii U's summer system update is available now, headlined by quicker booting and auto-installs of further updates. When you turn on your Wii U the firmware's Quick Start menu lets you select recently played or installed games and boot into them in seconds. In other words, getting into Mario Kart 8 just got a triple mushroom boost. Nintendo already introduced auto-downloading of system updates in the powered-down Standby mode, and now the Wii U can install them in Standby too. Another new Standby feature is GamePad Alerts, namely optional "special notifications from Nintendo" that pop up on the tablet even when the system's turned off. Other additions include a revamp of the Users Settings screen, a Notifications icon on the Home menu, and the ever-faithful improvements to system stability. [Image: Nintendo]
Watch the Wii U's quick boot in action, due in summer update
Last time we saw the Wii U quick boot, it was just a simulated demonstration of how it would work. Now Nintendo's posted a real-time video in real-life glory (via Nintendaan), and the good news is that it's quicker than shown last time. Back in January, after selecting a recently played game and profile it took around 19 seconds to load up into New Super Mario Bros U. Four months on, and the real deal makes it in 14 seconds. Nintendo says the update featuring quick boot is due either before or during the summer. Who knows, it might swerve over the line just in time for Mario Kart 8. [Image: Nintendo]
Dell adds cheaper Latitude On Flash module to some laptops
Dell's Latitude On quick-boot OS has been available on some of the company's laptops for a little while now, but it looks like Dell has now found a new way to make those laptops boot fast but be more affordable. That comes in the form of Latitude On Flash, which an actual flash module that snaps into a mini-card slot in the laptop and makes use of the laptop's own x86 processor to speed up the boot process instead of a separate ARM chip like current Latitude On systems. While that switch will still give you a boot time of eight to ten seconds, it apparently comes at some expense to battery life -- although we're guessing the lower cost (a $50 upgrade, as opposed to a $199 one) will make that trade-off more than acceptable to most users. Look for the upgrade right now on Dell's Latitude E4200, E4300 and Z laptops -- which, incidentally, also come with an updated Gen 2 interface for the Latitude On OS.
gOS "Cloud" instant-on OS comes to Gigabyte touchscreen netbooks
Not that we were too impressed with gOS when we first saw Rocket almost a year ago, but Cloud -- the small footprint, quick boot Linux variant that Good OS introduced today at the Netbook World Summit in Paris -- looks like an altogether different beast. Arriving pre-installed alongside Windows on the new Gigabyte touchscreen netbooks (perhaps some variant of the M912V), the new SplashTop-esque OS uses a web browser as its main interface, with an integrated dock providing such Web 2.0 mainstays as Skype, YouTube and the Google family of apps -- and if this smattering of tools doesn't meet all of your computing needs, you can always boot into your main OS from there. Cloud can be installed as a dual-boot partition on your hard drive or SSD as well as onto a flash chip hardwired onto a motherboard. That's all we have for now, but you can bet we'll be on hand to check it out at CES in January.
Splashtop 'Quick Start' comes to the Lenovo IdeaPad S10e
It looks like Splashtop -- the instant-on, quickboot Linux OS that's been cropping up on a smattering of motherboards and PCs lately -- is headed onto a smaller platform. The company announced today that it's going to be loading up Lenovo's IdeaPad S10e netbook with a healthy dose of the software -- dubbed "Quick Start" -- allowing you to get to that all-important YouTube video faster than previously thought possible. This marks the first time Splashtop is making its way to a netbook, and we expect it will be shipping on all new models, though the company hasn't been explicit about that. We'll keep our fingers crossed, and let you know if we hear otherwise.
