At first blush, the idea of the Isostick might not seem that amazing. In simplest terms, it’s a USB flash drive that your computer detects as an optical drive. But who needs something like that? Nowadays, just about every computer on the market can boot to a USB device, be it a flash drive or an external hard drive. This…

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Pretty much every PC that ships today uses a system called BIOS to allow the operating system to interact with your computer’s hardware. The BIOS software is basically the firmware that’s loaded on your motherboard. And it looks like something that was designed decades ago… because it was. When you want to change BIOS settings, you have to load up…

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Jolicloud might not have Google’s marketing clout or the giant Google fanboy base which Chrome OS is going to, but they can still put up a good fight. If Tariq Krim and company stick to their guns and respond to the community, Jolicloud could very well garner some mainstream success in the netbook OS business. With any netbook OS, one…

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I finally got around to installing Windows 7 beta on my Asus Eee PC 1000H last night. I downloaded it shortly after returning from CES, but I’ve been so busy I haven’t had time to use it. But last night I set aside a few hours to install Windows 7 and CrunchEee on my netbook and watch some bad TV…

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Boot time matters, especially when it comes to laptops and netbooks. Today, when you pull a netbook out of your bag and hit the power button, it can take anywhere from 25 seconds to 2 minutes to load a working Windows or Linux desktop. In the not too distant future, that figure could be as low as 5 seconds. Two…

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Finally an answer to the age-old question, how long does it take to boot Windows XP on a Dell Inspiron Mini 9? About 30-35 seconds. No real surprise there. This is about the same amount of time it takes to boot Windows XP on most netbooks that have Intel Atom processors and solid state disks. Of course, let’s see how…

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I’ve had my HP Mini-Note for a few hours now, and while I’m not ready to write up a complete an thorough review, I thought I’d share a few thoughts.I purchased the $549 model which has a 1.2GHz processor, 120GB hard drive, and runs OpenSUSE. The first time you boot up the computer, it takes 10 or 15 minutes to…

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