Comments on: Phoenix’s 1-Second Instant Boot Bios Really Works

By: Avram Piltch

Avram Piltch — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 13:46:06 +0000

Sadly, nothing has come of Phoenix’s technology since I saw the demo in 2009. That said, I plan to do a follow-up on where boot times / post times stand today.

By: Elijah Lynn

Elijah Lynn — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 00:32:38 +0000

Avram,

Great article plus video.

Can you do a follow up article on this letting us know which motherboards and/or laptops have this technology in them? I would really like to get an Intel/Corsair SSD in one of these laptops with 1 second BIOS and run Ubuntu 10.10.

Thanks,

Elijah

By: may tinh xach tay

may tinh xach tay — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 02:52:02 +0000

I have some doubts about this. First Windows 7 did not show up the usual starting boot screen (the one with four flags flying around) and it seems to me as if it was in hibernate or suspended (sleep) state

By: Chen Xiao-Long

Chen Xiao-Long — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 18:22:53 +0000

Does anyone know when this is going to be released for Dell laptops, specifically this Dell Studios? I know some HP laptops already have this. It would be really nice to have.

By: john

john — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:58:08 +0000

ok guys frist mac’s are for the dumbie you click it works not personal put great for olds people pc’s are for people who love to make them there own and that mean’s getting to boot faster i would pay more to get that put let’s make it clear my t7400 HP STARTS IN 32 SECONDS AND SHUTS DOWN IN 6 SECONDS so i’ll challege any mac any day and i run 50gigs of programes NOT pix or songs.
stuff like photoshop cold fushion cad and others put it nice to see things moving forward

By: manfat

manfat — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 10:28:15 +0000

oh I forgot to add, many years ago I had a Cyrix CPU based Windows 98 system that booted from cold start to usable desktop in under 10 seconds. The bloat with modern systems is inexcusable. I want real instant-on, using sensible RAM-to-disk during standby with slow progressive hibernation that shuts down all but minimal services, perhaps in some kind of minimal micro-environment. If we can have a full internet browsing operating system in the size of a BIOS ROM file (like Splashtop) then something like backing that up in RAM with battery power as an always-on option is surely the way forward? I would happily have a rechargable laptop battery for my desktop motherboard if it means my system (and casual internet browsing) was guaranteed to be available instantly but mostly ‘shut down’ into proper standby mode the rest of the time.

By: manfat

manfat — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 10:18:47 +0000

Try holding F8 while booting your Mac and at type -v [return] at the boot prompt to boot in verbose mode. You may also just be able to hold the ‘v’ key on your keyboard while booting. This should show you exactly what is loading and how long each kernel extension takes. Then try loading in Safe Mode using the -x option (or hold the ‘x’ or ‘shift’ keys) and see how much quicker it is when you don’t load so many drivers. For XP users, try using NLite to strip all the crap out of your system (down to around 16 minimal running processes) you will find a perfectly usable operating system that installs to an SSD in under 5 minutes, runs in about 40MB RAM and absolutely flies until you fill it with internet crap like virus checkers…

By: kikoanis

kikoanis — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 09:37:02 +0000

Am I wrong?

By: yootzee

yootzee — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 23:24:31 +0000

wildone, “Hope Apple could use it……” Apple already uses it. UEFI comes from Unified EFI, which was created by Intel, and is now managed by a consortium of (Unified) different manufactures.

Sure, my macbook’s start up time w/a 7200rpm drive takes about 45 seconds as well. But almost all of that time being taken up by the kernel loading (how much of your time is a gray Apple screen with a spinning wheel). But the time that EFI actually takes is a couple of seconds With a stripped down version of osx on an SSD like was being used by Phoenix with a stripped down version of Windows how long would it take?

KH, don’t worry sunshine, you haven’t (burst my bubble). But all that bitterness is going to eat you up. Lighten up, It’s a discussion of computers and an operating systems, not an insult of your mother.

I agree, Apple doesn’t have a big share of the computer market. But I do find it ironic that other hardware and software manufactures find the need to copy many of their innovations, which may not be that bad if they didn’t do end up with a substandard copy.

I use both Apple and Windows (and also Solaris and Ubuntu). I like and dislike all of them. So, I my intention is not to start a flaming back and forth, unlike KH.

The point of my original post was to examine the hype by Phoenix that this “new kind of bios” (which is not a bios), is not a new and wasn’t created by Phoenix (and dry your eyes KH, it wasn’t created by Apple either), that’s all. And yes, I think its cool, and hope to see it on more systems, unlike the Apple platform, which “hardley anyone uses”.

By: KH

KH — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 12:02:09 +0000

Yootzee, hate to burst your bubble, but hardly anyone uses Apple stuff.