Hands on with Acer's dual-OS netbook At an Acer product launch in central London earlier today, Register Hardware got up close and personal with the firm’s first netbook to ship with two operating systems. The machine isn’t actually a brand new model. It’s the old Aspire One D250 – reviewed here – that's been out for since the Spring, just updated to run both …
I wouldn't exactly call it instant boot, there is a couple of second delay but it's much quicker than what I've seen Windows or even the latest Ubuntu releases to. I'd have thought though that they would include an option to boot straight into Windows, I mean having to boot into Android and then switch OS to Windows seems a bit long winded to me.
Still it's good to see that Android would probably cover a fair bit anyway (Internet, E-Mail, Media).
Maybe to shave a bit of time off the boot they can help add support for Coreboot.
Rob
Now that someone's using a full OS as a quick-boot, isn't it more proof of the need for a decent modular microkernel architecture?
Just imagine if this machine booted into a basic SplashTop-like environment then started booting additional modules only when needed. Or let you suffer the boot time of Windows if you preferred.
That's what's called "user experience", that is.
Macs have been able to boot from different OSes for years. All you had to do to change an OS was restart while pressing Option. Choose your OS & go! Plus, Macs can boot off USB & Firewire/i.LInk/IEEE 1394. Since each hard drive on Macs can have up to 63 firewire drives, 127 USB drives & each drive have 16 partitions, that's over 3000 different OSes you can boot from. Why you'll need that many, I don't know, but you can.
Great for the spread of Linux and its derivatives, or at least to show people they actually don't need Windows. I mean, if it's done right, and not the Asus disaster (from what I've heard) with the original Linux shipped with the first Eee PCs.
You know, since the thing boots quick into that OS, why not, someday, take a look around. Go to the web from there, why not. Listen to some music or copy some pictures. Etc. etc. For the people who do indeed need Windows only software, the need to click the button to go to W7 will always be there. But it might be interesting to see how many people would start seeing what their real netbook computing needs are, and that they could fulfill them with *any* OS.
That was the hope when the first Eees came out, and it didn't work. Will it next time?
Have they got approval to do this from sweaty monkey boy? Because the last I heard MS OEM agreements specifically forbid dual booting Windows with another OS. Initially that was meant to crush BEOS but I'd be mighty surprised if they have since revoked that clause, what with the growing threat of Linux and all
Wow, have to admit ignorance... didn't know those xandros guys came up with another chopped up distro. I still run my stock xandros heavily tweaked on on my 701, does what I want it to do although I had to get used to finding out about missing tools and having to go get them.
I must take a look at this presto thing. Quick boots always interest me. Thanks for the tip, see if I can learn something from it.
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Thanks for posting all these videos of this cool netbook!
I just wonder if it will be worth the extra cost and data contract.
I am very impressed with my ASUS 1005HA netbook.
I can overclock it to over 2.0Ghz and have little trouble browsing websites with it.
I wrote a review at the following link that details the Intel Atom N270 performance:
http://bit.ly/44CHFm
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