Splashtop OS comes to Asus Laptops
You might remeber the name "Splashtop" from when DeviceVM, made a, er, splash, with DeviceVM's announcement last October that it was partnering with Asus to integrate the light-weight Splashtop OS into Asus motherboards. Asus calls the technology "Express Gate," and includes it with a number of its motherboards. Beginning in June, Asus will be integrating Splashdot/Express Gate into a some of its laptop models as well.
"Splashtop software enables users to browse the web, watch videos, listen to music, chat with friends, share photos, and more - just seconds after turning on their PC. Express Gate is already available on a wide range of PC motherboards from ASUS. The notebooks announced today are the first to integrate Express Gate for the broad consumer market, including the M70T, M50V and M51Vr multimedia series and the stylish F8Va/Vr series."
Splashtop is essentially a light-weight Linux-based OS with a few pre-installed connectivity-based applications such as the Splashdot Web browser and a Skype client. The Splashdot broswer is based on the Firefox browser and incldues a number of essential Adobe plug-ins. DeviceVM promotes three essential benefits to the Slashdot OS: access to the internet in seconds after powering on your laptop; by using a non-Windows-based browser you are "immune" from Windows-specfic malware; and "eco-friendly" in that you don't need to leave your computer on all the time because the Splashdot OS boots up so quickly.
The Splashdot OS resides in the system's BIOS, and therefore is only available bundled with motherboards, laptops, or systems. While Asus is the only announced partner to date, DeviceVM is working with other OEMs to get Splashdot into more systems.
There are other opportunities for what can be done with a light-weight OS that go beyond merely instant-on Web access. For instance, you could boot quickly into the Splashdot OS, and then boot Windows in the background as a virtual machine while you are already surfing the Web with Splashdot. This particualr scenario is not avaialable to the public yet, but DeviceVM demonstrated its potential in March at the Under the Radar Conference. The video below is the six and half minute demo that Mark Lee, CEO of DeviceVM, gave at the conference. The Windows virtual machine portion of the demo starts about 2:50 from the start:
