Comments on: Instant-On Hyperspace Promises New Era of OS Co-Habitation

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 05:20:18 +0000

@heulenwolf

hehe. One vulnerability in Hyperspace and computer is mine.

Another thing is, if Hyperspace is constantly running, can you access it via the internet when the user is in Windows?

With a subscription model, it’s possible that Hyperspace would dial out a lot of the time or even constantly to check the users details. If it just had a file stored somewhere, it would be too easy to mod the file, thereby tricking it into thinking you have a longer subscription. So chances are, it’s accessing the internet. Which means it’s easily attackable.

By: Subscriptionless

Subscriptionless — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 03:40:14 +0000

I was interested until I saw that it was subscription-based.

I do not want to be locked out of my system because I did not happen to renew, and am not connected to the Internet. (example: In my cabin, away from phones and networks.)

By: heulenwolf

heulenwolf — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 15:24:18 +0000

I’m very interested to check this out. It sounds like the kind of standalone OS that was meant for Netbooks, even without some other OS behind it. The whole netbook concept was that cheap, small hardware could get you online and able to use your web services quickly without loading all the background capabilities that we expect on the full blown laptop. That’s why the first EeePC came with only 4GB of storage. I wonder whether any of the netbook vendors are in discussions with Phoenix about including Hyperspace as the sole OS on their system and bypassing the subscription fee.

My other primary thought on Hyperspace is about the security implications of Hyperspace’s virtualization of Windows. Isn’t this the ultimate rootkit? Hyperspace monitors the status of Windows and can control its sleep, restart, and shut down functions without any authentication or so much as a Ctrl-Alt-Del keyboard combo. If it has that kind of ability to bypass Windows’ security model, couldn’t malware in Hyperspace log keystrokes sent to Windows, install a rootkit, or just track everything that happens in Windows from the outside? I don’t mean to spread FUD because I really don’t know the answer. I’m just sharing a thought.

By: Kenneth ZHeng

Kenneth ZHeng — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 09:56:57 +0000

It’s good and powerful solution for morden PC.

By: techie

techie — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 08:32:35 +0000

Once you have done a software like Hyperspace, porting it to 64bit shouldn’t be much difficult. So, 64bit shouldn’t be an issue over a longer period of time. Apparently, Hyperspace Hybrid is available only with the hardware that supports Virtualization (like Intel VT). This should reduce the performance degradation to a great extent. Some hit is only to be expected.

By: Paul

Paul — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 15:56:59 +0000

I put a review of it up on my website after using it for a few days and I was pretty impressed with it. It does have quite a few down-sides to it, I didn’t even see the 64-bit side of things. Once Windows 7 comes out thats going to kill their business model as most machines will be 64-bit versions of Windows.

By: Fanfoot

Fanfoot — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:57:40 +0000

Cool. I guess the obvious question is whether the overhead of running hybrid will be obvious as far as Windows performance is concerned. My experience running Windows XP under VMWare under Linux suggests that the performance degradation is quite significant, which might make this a bit of a non-starter for many. Also there’s no way I’m paying a subscription for something like this.

Also of course the proper way to fix the sleep speed problem with Windows is by fixing Windows itself. Maybe in Windows 7…

By: Carey Turner

Carey Turner — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 13:45:12 +0000

Yeah, sounds great, but it doesnt support 64bit os’s. Come on, how long have we been 32 bit. I really wish Microsoft would force the hand, and make Windows 7 64bit only. But then we would have another Vista incident where people get angry cause it wont run on there 3 year old system. Grrrrr.