While everyone talks about the importance of battery life for ultraportable notebooks, netbooks and smartbooks, one area that is often overlooked is the boot time of an operating system, and here we could be about to see a major breakthrough. Bios manufacturer Phoenix Technologies Inc. has unveiled ‘Instant Boot’, an element of what it calls SecureCore Tiano – a redesigned bios which aims to drastically cut the time it takes from hitting the power button to being able to launch programmes on your desktop. Notebooks.com discovered that, at least in the demonstration video taken above, the bios certainly seems to live up to its claims.
The premise is simple: in a traditional bios, each device within a laptop or desktop is turned on one at a time. This results in a 10- to 15-second wait before an operating system can even start to load. Instant Boot skips this significant delay by simultaneously turning on all devices, reducing the wait to a single second. The consequences of this are profound, with Phoenix showing how Windows 7 can be booted into a usable state on a Lenovo T400s in little over 10 seconds. Phoenix does admit, the Windows 7 installation is clean and the laptop is fitted with an SSD, but nevertheless the point is made.
Knock-on effects? Potentially we may see the end of so-called quick boot platforms such as SplashTop , which also load very quickly, but only offer limited functionality. Battery life in general should benefit too, since machines wouldn’t need to be put into sleep or hibernate modes as often, because a full boot is so quick.
Phoenix says it has yet to start negotiations with PC manufacturers regarding Instant Boot and that further optimizations can still be made, but this is one technology we’d like to see in ultraportable computers as soon as possible.
Gordon
