Multimedia PC with instant start-up launches

“Why can’t a PC simply turn on like a TV?” It is the question that has been bugging people who use multimedia PCs as the heart of their home
entertainment systems. When they want to watch TV, play a DVD, listen to internet radio or play CDs and MP3s, they have to spend fruitless minutes
watching the Windows egg timer while the PC boots up.

Not any more. In a direct challenge to PCs running Microsoft’s Windows XP Media Center, InterVideo of California last week launched the InstantOn PC.

Instead of having to wait for Windows to boot, the technology allows all a PC’s entertainment functions – TV, DVD, CD, MP3, radio – to be run on a
pared-down version of the open-source Linux operating system, called LinDVD. Rather than sitting on a hard drive, LinDVD is small enough to be held in
a read-only memory chip and boots in 10 seconds flat.