1. How long will the battery last when only IOS – Instant on is used ? Please advise.
2. Can you quickly send a photo by email as an attachment? i.e gmail, yahoo mail

Also this splashtop video shows that Windows can be loaded in the background while using Instant On (aka. express gate from ASUS):

http://www.splashtop.com/blog/index.php/2008/03/20/marks-presentation-at-under-the-radar/

So it is possible.

The technology to allow better use of the hardware is called coreboot. See: http://www.coreboot.org Coreboot was sponsored by Sandia National Labs in New Mexico and used to quick-boot their computer clusters used for research. It has been under development since 1999. Coreboot used to be called “LinuxBIOS”, and http://www.linuxbios.org resolves to the Coreboot website.

Coreboot works by replacing the computer’s BIOS with a Linux kernel. The function of the BIOS is to initialize the hardware. All modern operating systems re-initialize the hardware after the BIOS is done. Instead of initializing the hardware twice, VoodooPC replaced the standard BIOS with Linux.

The result is a quicker boot. By skipping the BIOS initialization and letting Linux initialize the hardware, and by loading directly from memory, the coreboot technology makes better use of the hardware to speed booting times.

After the computer is initialized (the first screen comes up), one can choose to boot Vista or the IOS. Vista boots from the hard drive (slow OS with slow hardware). The IOS is also Linux, but boots from flash (quicker OS with quicker hardware).

In summary, the VoodooPC boots Linux from the BIOS, the give the user a choice of booting to IOS (Linux) or Vista.

Why Linux in the BIOS?

The primary reason is the limitation on the amount of available BIOS memory. The BIOS memory is limited to 1 MB (one megabyte). This was considered adequate and even excessive when the original Intel processors were designed in the 1980’s. For the sake of compatibility, all modern Intel-compatible processors have this limitation.

No one really thought of trying to install a modern operating system kernel in 1MB of memory until the Coreboot program started looking at Linux.

Because of the source code availability of Linux, and the ability to customize the operating system kernel, they were able to compress everything they needed to boot and initialize a computer in less than 1MB of ram. This means a full-fledged, 32-bit, modern operating system can be booted directly from power-on. There was really little discussion about using anything other than Linux.

The big programs, like the Mozilla Browser, flash, and skype, are not stored in the BIOS with the Linux kernel. They are loaded from either Read-Only-Memory (ROM) or a flash memory after Linux has completed booting to the first screen. I suspect the reason Joanna can’t save anything is because the “hard drive” is actually either ROM, a flash memory that is full, or a flash memory with write disabled. When the IOS is chosen, it boots to a user interface that looks exactly like the user interface that first appears after boot, giving the perception of only booting the IOS once.

Actually, when you are in the IOS you are in an operating system. It is called Linux. IOS or Splashtop is nothing but a stripped down and customized Linux.