14 DAY TRIAL // It looks like Asus is keen on keeping its promise on delivering the best and newest technologies packed in its hardware products as the company recently introduced a high end Intel compatible mainboard based on the high performance X38 chipset, that offers users the ability to surf the world Wide Web and perform a variety of other tasks without booting into a traditional operating system residing on a hard disk drive of optical disc.
The ubercool and pricey Asus P5E3 Deluxe mainboard is integrating an innovative new technology developed by a small company called DeviceVM. Apart from the integration in the new Asus mainboard, DeviceVM is going to offer its technology called Splashtop to a host of other computer hardware manufacturing companies, but until that happens Asus remains the only one that supports it.
Asus branded this new Linux based technology under the commercial name ''Express Gate'' and it allows users to choose from fully booting into a traditional operating system or take the short route to a fully functional Mozilla like web browser or the Voice over IP compatible software application Skype. The advantage of this new technology developed by DeviceVM is that users have to wait only a few seconds in order to have access to the Splashtop control screen, unlike the complete booting process of an operating system that takes much longer.
According to this site, future versions of the Splashtop control screen will add additional functionality like the possibility to browse images, music files and a multimedia player. David Speiser, DeviceVM's VP of marketing, says that the technology will allow access to almost all the computer hardware without the need of an operating system like network, monitor, USB drive, mouse, keyboard and audio within 12 to 16 seconds and at the same time the hard disk drive will be offlimits, making it impossible for users to save or download any files and thus increasing the overall security. In this case the DeviceVM technology is very similar to a Linux based live distribution that runs from a CD-ROM type medium, but it is integrated into the mainboard core logic, probably into a flash memory chip.
This first iteration of the new technology is now integrated only into the Asus mainboard, but David Speiser said that it will be soon included into a number of readily available computer systems, both desktops and notebooks.