I bet that the most annoying misfeature of virtually every laptop is the start up time. Rolling out and connecting the power supply wires to a wall socket, waiting for OS to start requires about ... minutes. Even taking it from a bag takes some time. It hurts much operative style of mobile computing.
This is why PDAs are much superior to a conventional notebook PC in a mean of accessibility.
Let imagine a mobile computer that does not suffer from such a deficiency. First of all it have to be built from zero time start components. No HDD to spin up, but SSD. No back lit TFT display, but a passive display like e-paper. Low power consumption especially in sleeping mode. It permits to work on battery instead of mains power. And to use such a "hibernation" mode (instead of switching the computer off) and get it later on in a second.
For me the best existing creatures for this case are HTC Advantage and Shift models though I'm not a fun of their Microsoft internals.
You might have heard that some company claims 4 seconds Windows Vista boot (I have no other information than this page). And booting Linux in 5 seconds with no cheating has been already possible for number of configurations.
ReplyDeleteBut in general I completely agree that "always-on" feeling is a great advantage which most laptops are missing. Quite often I check the weather or public transport schedule from my phone screen, although the laptop is just at the desk - it sucks to wait minutes for an operation that lasts seconds.
"5 seconds boot" means waking the system from a sleeping mode. I.e. a saved memory image is loaded to RAM. It raises some laptop battery issues.
ReplyDeleteAnd, again, these annoying power wires are usually the first obstacle to start a computer. And, often, the last one.