Dell to Showcase New Instant-On Desktop Systems

[HaZ]

Want to be more productive? Get back to work faster? Probably not, but Dell has a solution for businesses that want you to be. Next week consumers will get a first look at Dell’s new Instant-On system for Optiplex desktops.

Dell to Showcase New Instant-On Desktop Systems : Read more

 

[Guest]

Sounds much like Asus' Splashtop.
but now it uses a separate CPU to boot.. strange...

 

[cruiseoveride]

probably an embedded linux solution

 

[JonnyDough]

"The Instant-On feature sounds a lot like Dell Media Direct, a partition that was pre-configured on select Dell systems that allowed you to listen to music and watch videos without having to boot into the operating system"

I don't know if it was Dell that came up with this idea. It may have been around before Dell was. Back in 1997 or so I recall that my math teacher had a computer with a "CD" button or something that would allow you to boot into DOS and play a CD from a program without booting into the OS. Even though I remember it from about 1997, I think his computer may have been a few years older than that. If anyone might know anything about this please inform us of it. I'd like to know more.

 

[Guest]

on viewing the video it seems like a blackberry like OS, running from a separate processor.

A little like from the time when the Intel Core Solo platforms where created, with 2 separate CPU's.

only this time,a setting for low power (linux OS), and one for high power (the normal OS).
So in essence it would be the same principle as a splashtop.
Dell would have better spend time on how to boost the booting process of the pc (like for instance have a highspeed flash memory allocated to store a hybernation file in or something...

 

[Darkk]

My HP laptop does have the ability to play DVD movies without booting up windows. It got a Linux partition with DVD player software already installed. Pretty cool.

 

[derek2006]

[citation][nom]ProDigit80[/nom]on viewing the video it seems like a blackberry like OS, running from a separate processor.A little like from the time when the Intel Core Solo platforms where created, with 2 separate CPU's.only this time,a setting for low power (linux OS), and one for high power (the normal OS).So in essence it would be the same principle as a splashtop.Dell would have better spend time on how to boost the booting process of the pc (like for instance have a highspeed flash memory allocated to store a hybernation file in or something...[/citation]

I had a old windows 95 PC that could do something like that. When trying to play games it could actually reboot and not ever start up the operating system. This allows the game to have full access to the hardware. I suspect they don't do this anymore because hardware is so diverse.

 

[hemelskonijn]

JonnyDough:

Some good old advanced 486DX4 mobo's supported a dual bios setup (some even mouse controlled) you could switch between the two bios with a dip switch or a jumper.
It would not be that hard to use the jumper pins to connect a button and start from the second BIOS chip wich in turn could make sure some minimalistic media player os.
He would have to be a genius to program all the stuff in a two meg rom though its not impossible for as far as i can see.
Less genius but still impressive would be letting the second BIOS boot a hard drive floppy drive usb drive or whatever in stead of the regular hard drive.
And now i think of it ... since we already had those nice looking mouse controlled BIOS there might have been a chip bakery (or customiser) that just sold a solution based on it.