BurnPC.com

So I came across this article and it all ‘clicked’. I had not only heard of ExpressGate before, but I also just built a new computer with an Asus motherboard that supports this feature. A quick summary of ExpressGate is that it allows you to just boot your computer up very fast (5 seconds or so) into a web-browsing, youtube-watching machine. Plenty to check your gmail or whatnot, and catch up on the news.

For my new computer, as cool as it seemed because ExpressGate is built on linux, the sleep functionality works very well and consumes low enough power that I’m very pleased with it. Recovering is very quick, and is really no longer than it takes for my monitor to turn on. So ExpressGate seemed ‘neat’ but not that great. But when I read the article about it now on Asus laptops… I wish I had one of those. I’m just thinking about being able to have a laptop completely off (lowest power consumption in laptop world is not just about trees, but battery life) and then quickly power up in the airport to get emails etc before boarding the plane and shutting it completely off again. The speed at which you can boot up is also ideal for this.

One current and big disappointment with ExpressGate is that it actually consumes a bit more power than running full windows! See this article for details, which explains the theory that Intel’s SpeedStep isn’t working right in ExpressGate. I also wonder if in the article they were spinning up the hard drives.

If Asus can fix the power consumption issue, it’s a definite winner. Even until then, it’s definitely something to think about when purchasing your next laptop.