Fast Is Hot

Last month, we reported here about Splashtop, which starts a laptop in only a few seconds. Since then, Splashtop reportedly has found its way into the Lenovo IdeaPad S10e and the ASUS Eee PC.

Now there's Cloud, from Good OS, which gave us gOS Linux and a cover story for Linux Journal in March 2008. Good OS calls Cloud “A New Operating System for 2009”. More specifically, the press release says Cloud “integrates a Web browser with a compressed Linux operating system kernel for immediate access to Internet, integration of browser and rich-client applications, and full control of the computer from inside the browser” (http://thinkgos.com/press-release20081201.php).

The browser looks like Google's Chrome, and most of the icons in the Mac-like dock on the bottom of the screen are for Google apps running in “the cloud”. One exception is the Windows symbol. We won't go there. Meanwhile, the fast-start race all goes to Linux.Cloud, launched in December 2008 at the Netbook World Summit in Paris, demonstrated on a GIGABYTE Netbook.

Doc Searls is editor-in-chief of Linux Journal, where he has been on the masthead since 1996. He is also co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto (Basic Books, 2000, 2010), author of The Intention Economy: When Customers Take Charge (Harvard Business Review Press, 2012), a fellow of the Center for Information Technology & Society (CITS) at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an alumnus fellow of the Berkman Klien Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. He continues to run ProjectVRM, which he launched at the BKC in 2006, and is a co-founder and board member of its nonprofit spinoff, Customer Commons. Contact Doc through ljeditor@linuxjournal.com.

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