Youtube running in SplashTop
DeviceVM, the company behind the quickboot mini-linux Splashtop, announces two great deals: Splashtop will now be embedded in Sony Notebooks and Acer Nettops (Aspire Revo).
On both platforms, Splashtop is oriented towards consumers and does not offer support for Exchange Server, for example (there’s still weboutlook for that). The idea is to keep the core service as small and lean as possible to make it quick to boot. That doesn’t prevent new features from being added. For example, 3G will be supported by the end of the year. Splashtop has made some progress on the boot time by working with BIOS engineers to reduce the number of initializations required before booting into Splashtop. Still, what does “instant” boot means? Well, it’s not really “instant: just to give you a ballpark, it takes about 25 seconds to go from “ON” to opening the browser. It is still a lot faster than a clean Windows installation, but most people (including us) would not call it instant.
DeviceVM has now an impressive volume of licenses shipping every month, that’s literally millions of PCs. We asked them a few more questions:
Q: Everyone seems to be adding support for Exchange, including Apple. Will you?
A: We still consider Exchange as being a professional feature and Splashtop is a consumer product.
Q: Will you build an ARM version?
A: We have been evaluating it, but at the moment there is a demand for X86 that we are working hard on addressing.
Q: When can I buy Splashtop for my old laptop?
A: There are significant challenges in terms of drivers that are obstacles to such a general release. By bundling Splashtop with computers, we can offer a better experience. Most consumers don’t want to deal with the master boot record and Linux drivers.
Filed in . Read more about Acer, Laptops, Nettop, Sony and Splashtop.