i-eclectica.org

This is kind of a milestone in web 2.0 development. Webware today reported that the first PC with Firefox and Skype burnt into ROM is available. The browser (a slimmed down version of Firefox) is part of the ASUS new P5E3 Deluxe/WiFi-AP, and it is part of an embedded version of Linux. The ideas is great if you’re running primarily web 2.0 applications, like Zoho, GoogleDocs or Meebo - it just takes 15 seconds to boot and your on the net. The system is also very secure because there is no hard drive access involved. (Booting into Windows is possible if people want to install it on a hard drive).

Drawbacks: it’s still too expensive because it is built into a high end motherboard (US$ 350), which also means that it’ll end up in top-end machines that will consume a lot of power. Furthermore, the particular Firefox version, while being equipped with a Flash plugin, does not allow the adding on of otrher extensions or plugins - which is a total pain. It seems though that the company providing Linux and Firefox (DeviceVM) is realising the limitations of the marriage between it’s OS and the P5E3 Deluxe. It plans to extend the availability of the embedded OS/browser to laptops (where it really belongs), with the current release projection being the first quarter of 2008 - which makes me think whether buying an Apple is really a good choice .

The company is also adding more features to its pre-boot OS. In addition to Firefox and Skype, future revisions will get DVD and CD players, the Pidgin IM client, and the capability to play media files from the host machine’s hard drive. To save electricity, a future revision of the P5E3 product will enable the Asus motherboard to drop into its lowest power mode when running the browser. (And even that is probably overkill for the lightweight OS.)

[go to Webware to read the full article]

The video below shows how the embedded OS will run on a laptop with a DeviceVM/Splashtop desktop.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 13th, 2007 at 6:25 pm and is filed under IT Hardware, IT Software, IT Trends, products. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.