[Ed Hansberry]

Originally Posted by Janak Parekh

I assume you're referring to XP? XP uses many tricks to boot fast. One thing Microsoft did is to build a prefetch cache which keeps track of the DLLs and EXEs loaded at startup and reorganizes them on the disk. It's clever, and it works. Nevertheless, they're still loading a lot.

Read the sections on boot up performance for more details. Ever watched an XP machine boot compared to a Windows 2000/NT machine? XP almost never lets the hard drive stop. It keeps looking for the next thing to process even though the OS is waiting on some hardware to finish initializing. 2000/NT will load drivers, wait, load more, wait, load more, wait, etc.

[Ed Hansberry]

Originally Posted by Janak Parekh

I assume you're referring to XP? XP uses many tricks to boot fast. One thing Microsoft did is to build a prefetch cache which keeps track of the DLLs and EXEs loaded at startup and reorganizes them on the disk. It's clever, and it works. Nevertheless, they're still loading a lot.

Read the sections on boot up performance for more details. Ever watched an XP machine boot compared to a Windows 2000/NT machine? XP almost never lets the hard drive stop. It keeps looking for the next thing to process even though the OS is waiting on some hardware to finish initializing. 2000/NT will load drivers, wait, load more, wait, load more, wait, etc.

[lsbeller]

The key here is that this app will only let you review the information - not modify or add to it. With the Compaq TC1000 Tablet PC, from within Outlook (the only PIM it's compatible with now), you would click on a synchronize button that would save the PIM data to a flash memory card in HTML format. For many Tablt PC users, this is a great thing even with the Tablet PC standard for resuming from standby at 4-7 seconds.

For many though, the best non-publicized feature was the ability to publish any html file to the same app. So, you could save an Excel spreadsheet or Word Document to HTML and view it as well without booting Windows!

[Ed Hansberry]

Originally Posted by lsbeller

For many though, the best non-publicized feature was the ability to publish any html file to the same app. So, you could save an Excel spreadsheet or Word Document to HTML and view it as well without booting Windows!

Hmmm... but you'd have to save as HTML first, so you either know what doc you'll need, in which case you can just print it, or you save all files as HTML just in case? I think I know why it is a non-publicized feature.

[lsbeller]

Yes, but when carrying a Tablet PC, the real idea is to go as paperless as possible. And for often referenced but seldom modified documents (say a price list for a sales rep) it is nice not having to boot up to get to it if the only thing you are carrying is a Tablet PC.

[Mark Johnson]

Originally Posted by markhammill

There's been a similar application to this on the Compaq TC1000 Tablet PC for a while called quicklook.

It looks like FirstAware Assistant is the direct offspring of QuickLook. Both are from Phoenix. HP apparently marketed QuickLook as though it was some sort of a stand-alone utility, but it looks more like this is simply a Phoenix BIOS update that adds a "boot from CF card" option.

Seems like this is quite similar to other BIOSes that support a "boot from usb mass-storage device" option (like some Dell notebooks I think) or the IBM ThinkPads that supported CF boot.

Once QuickLook sends the boot sequence to the CF card instead of the hard drive, apparently the CF contains a tweaked FreeBSD kernel and the actual data reader utility.

This whole concept is IMHO very nice. I don't think it will replace PDA's any more than it would replace having a full Windows XP installation on the drive. It is, however, a sweet way to handle a "niche" set of problems.