It's enough of a nightmare to have malware of any sort, but the more persistent the stuff is, the scarier it gets. That's why the rumors of badBIOS, a bug so bad that it can affect Macs and PCs and communicate itself wirelessly while the infected computers are being taken apart is terrifying. But maybe not entirely…
Windows 8 boots so blisteringly fast that it theoretically gives you only 200 milliseconds to access the boot menu. Fortunately, Microsoft has gone to the trouble of designing a whole new Boot Options menu so you don't have to punch F8 like a crazy person.
We already know Windows 8's bootup time is wicked fast. Now we know it's going to be wicked attractive too, with the same minimalist glory of Windows 7 Mobile and Metro. Goodbye, horrible decades-old DOS eye murder. Hello, beautiful booting.
Albeit, a less useful black MacBook. But anyway! A hacker decided to toss Mac OS X onto the Google's Chrome OS laptop, the Cr-48, and mostly everything works. Well, except sleep, QE/CI and the trackpad is kinda wonky. Check it out.
That's Windows 7, not a mini-Linux OS like Splashtop. It's also from a powered-off state, not sleep mode. Pretty impressive. And much of that speed comes from turning on a laptop's devices (hard disk, ports, etc) in just 1 second.
In the next couple months Lenovo will be rolling out a BIOS update for its Montevina laptop users which enables remote shutdown and subsequent encryption via text message. The tech relies on the laptop having a WWAN connection and activates when a custom string, defined by the user and sent from a single, paired…
Overclocking is nothing new, but rarely is it promoted by a PC manufacturer, let alone in a netbook. But MSI has released the v1.09 BIOS update for their Wind mini-notebook that allows users to function key toggle an 8%, 15% or 24% automatic overclock that can translate to a 30% performance boost (as independently…
Even after Nvidia downplayed their original report that GeForce 8400-8700 cards were failing in large numbers due to overheating, Dell has issued a BIOS update for all of its machines running the affected GPUs anyway. The update tweaks the fan settings to "regulate temperature fluctuations" to keep the…
The Windows boot-time backlash is in full effect. BIOS-builder Phoenix Technologies is introducing a mini operating system called HyperSpace that can boot up in seconds in place of Windows, to run e-mail managers, web browsers and other apps. Such a system could prolong battery life by 50%, and would give laptop…
Microsoft has just announced some potentially devastating news. Well, devastating to those folks who wanted to be able to boot Windows on their Intel-based Macs. Contrary to earlier assumptions, Microsoft Vista, the company s next major operating system, will not support EFI, the method used by MacIntels during boot…
It seems that sexperts at this year's Black Hat Conference see rootkits infecting BIOSii this year, a very real and present danger in this era of locked-down warez. While Windows is currently rock solid, these rootkits can change the way a PC boots and handles hardware, allowing nefarious Linux users to take control…
