“DeviceVM’s SplashTop is sharing a booth this week at the CES with ASUS. At their booth we were allowed to check out a SplashTop demo running on an ASUS notebook! This notebook has yet to be introduced by ASUS, but it’s intended for high-end gaming and comes with SplashTop Linux as a complementary operating system. This version of SplashTop is slightly updated and has new features too.”
Every computer can benefit from a fully featured OS stored at the bios level. Life will get a little bit easier when Gparted and memtest86+ are in there. Heck lets go ahead and put the whole UBCD into it ! ( http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ )
Nah, that would be too much. But SplashTop is just damn good thing to have and I really wish other manufacturers will start using it too! It’s so easy to check if you have connected everything correctly and verify the functionality without even having to have any mass-media or optical drives, not even to mention having to install an OS! And even if your main OS goes haywire SplashTop is still the perfect solution for quick hardware check and perhaps searching the net for help on how to fix anything etc. And it’s always there and won’t go haywire unless you try to flash the BIOS with some modified software
I think SplashTop will actually get quite a lot of attention towards the end of year and might actually become one of the biggest things this year
I can understand this is cool and all but I think a more practical approach for splashtop would be better. Playing MP3’s and DVD’s doesn’t seem all that functional if someone already has windows, or linux on their system. On a UMPC its a totally different story. I think Asus should focus on adding tools to make the users life easier, partitioning tools, hardware diagnostic tools, system restore functionality, over-clocking tools, these are things I would look forward to. Not to say that the product isn’t great so far .
No, SplashTop should focus on connectivity and multimedia consumption. It doesn’t need any productivity software at all. It should be able to read and write to the internal hard disk (the current version doesn’t). A multi-protocol file transfer client would be nice, as would a CD/DVD burning utility.
It would be especially neat to have a VMM that allows the user to boot one or more operating systems from SplashTop and rapidly toggle between them (like virtual terminals). I’m surprised that Asus hasn’t already demonstrated an intention to bring an advanced utility for clocking, fan control, and thermal monitoring to SplashTop.
I don’t really understand what use are multimedia apps in SplashTop… They would be at their best in a real OS installation. But internet access is good for checking help sites et al, a disk utility would be an absolutely brilliant addition (f.ex. GParted, but something more advanced would be nice too), and sure, CD/DVD burning utility so you could download a CD image from the internet and burn it, then reboot with that. And well, it would be nice if SplashTop included an utility for controlling all the hardware aspect of the motherboard, just as you said, clocking, fan control, memory timings and so on. I just came to think that they seem to try to make SplashTop and OS replacement which is totally wrong direction IMHO. I think it should be more like a greatly advanced BIOS, disk and hardware diagnostics utility..Then it would be like a system builders’ wet dream. I know, I have been building systems almost my whole life :/
Splashtop + onboard power/reset buttons = one happy geek configing the motherboard long before it goes into the chassis case.
Why not just use a paper clip over the reset / power switch jumbers?
Seems a bit pointless having onbaord buttons when geeks know the jumpers and non-techies wouldn’t be running a mobo outside of a computer case
Edited 2008-01-14 17:42 UTC
True, only us freaky geeks are going to assemble a machine outside the chassis or on a tester’s shelf (got to get me one of those) but would you rather be shorting the connectors lumped in with the rest of the front panel jumper spikes on a hot system or pressing an onboard buttons designed for the purpose and placed where it’s easy to reach among the cables and cards?
Tweaking your mobo? Ok, that’s a kind of Macho. I’m not a ricer personally but I get it and do like to see how overclocked the ricers are getting cpus these days (the comp eng guy that put a cpu under liquid nitrogen then cracked it.. that’s a serious tuner)
Assembling your board and cards outside the chassy? Another kind of geek macho and good for planning board possitions, cable routing and config settings. I’m that type; I make clean cases though I don’t bother with chassis windows and blinky lights. My world is exploring what the hardware and OS can really do.
Shorting connectors when you don’t have too; that’s just being stubburn and trying too hard at geek macho. That’s not a nock against anyone. If shorting the power connector is the best option then I’m not going to avoid my paper clip drawer either; I’m just not going to go out of my way for it if there’s no need.
There where a few different reasons I got stuck on this particular board though:
– onboard reset, power so no shorting connections on your board
– rear mounted post with human readable status codes
– front panel plug block so no mucking with jumper leads and small cables in bad lighting
– SATA / eSATA
– Gigabyte NIC
– Cooling pipes out the hoohoo (I still can’t bring myself to run water through an electrical box)
– nVidia chipset ready for nVidia gfx (Too many years of broken ATI drivers have taken there toll)
– Intel Socket 775 (in the cpu class I can afford right now, Intel has the benchmarks over AMD.. such is life)
My complaints:
– Onboard sound sucks, I’m going to replace it with a real soundcard anyhow. Where did all the mobo without onboard sound, video and everythign else go?
– 3 pci slots or less sucks but hopefully I can fit a Creative sound and Hauppauge along side something from the geforce 8#00 series.
– Potential issues with lacking kernel modules. I hear rumours that nVidia’s support of nonWindows is still broken at best but the board is now a generation behind so hopefully the usual reverse-engineering projects have matured. Let’s hope Amd’s decions for nVidia to follow there ATI example.
I’m not married to the motherboard but I haven’t yet found another one that compares in the same generation and the latest/greatest is outside my budget these days. (700+ for a video card? And they want us to buy two or three of them and SLI the bad boys? That’s madness unless you can get a sponsorship deal for gaming)
Anyhow, that’s my long wordy two cents though I’m open to mobo recommendations in the 800 fsb, intel 775 range.
The Killer App for me on this set up would be MythTV. I’d be able to keep the system quiet and saving energy until I needed it. Then it would be there. Oh happy days.
This instant on capability with a limited OS introduces interesting possibilities for embedded systems of all sorts. But until it gets the capability to interact with the operating system through shared storage space (or native access) its utility will be severely limited.
Although the new laptop model combined with the experimental OS provide some interesting features, this comment really jumped out:
intended for high-end gaming
But not one additional word regarding this aspect is mentioned in the story. So what “high-end” games run on this Asus/Splashtop computer? What are the laptop’s specs that facilitate high-end gaming?
Or was that portion of the story leader just a tease?
as I understood: the laptop (presumably with a regular windows install) was intended for gaming, not the OS.