ATBNetworks

On Wednesday, DeviceVM, the company behind the distribution, said the hardware manufacturer would be putting Splashtop — which Asus calls “Express Gate” — into a million motherboards a month. Splashtop includes a Firefox-derived browser and the Skype internet-telephony application.

Splashtop is described by DeviceVM as a “secure web-surfing environment”, and is embedded on motherboards so that it can be booted within seconds, as an alternative to booting up a full operating system. It first appeared on high-end Asus motherboards in October 2007 and has since been put onto the more mainstream M3 series, but, according to Joe Hsieh, general manager of Asus’ motherboard business unit, it will now be extended to the entire range.

“In response to great user feedback, our plan is to proliferate Express Gate across our entire motherboard-product portfolio, starting with over one million motherboards per month,” Hsieh said. “Consumers want to turn their PCs on and off like any other appliance, and Express Gate has made that possible.”

Full Article: ZDNet

I am not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand it is nice to see instant-on systems in the near future. But it also locks you into this OS only if you want to use the feature. Also, you would be forced to use online office applications since you cannot put an entire office suite in the embedded chip. However, it will be interesting to see where this goes.