So I have had on my desk for about week now a sweet little ASUS laptop containing one of the new Splashtop motherboards. Don’t know what Splashtop is? Well Splashtop is a motherboard that contains, in the onboard memory, a special version of Linux (based on Small Linux - formerly tinyX) that runs right after the bios.

DeviceVM's SplashTop, a product we had named as one of the greatest Linux innovations in 2007, is sharing a booth this week at the Consumer Electronic Show (CES) with ASUS. At their booth we were allowed to check out a SplashTop demo running on an ASUS notebook!

Less than two weeks ago we shared that SplashTop Linux was hacked to run off a USB stick, run custom applications, and more importantly having it run on non-certified motherboards (meaning those not sold by ASUS with SplashTop's instant-on Linux environment embedded).

HP had started quietly shipping Splashtop on its new business laptop, the HP ProBook 5310m. Curiously, enough, HP is also continuing to ship its Windows/Outlook based QuickLook as well on the ProBook.

The Splashtop instant-on Linux environment is included in the new Lenovo IdeaPad S10e netbook, marking the product's first appearance in that form factor. That news should come as no surprise, since netbooks' ultra-portability is a natural match for Splashtop's instant-on.

"Microsoft Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) is shipping and what we know so far is that it is incapable of running on many types of machines. In fact, Microsoft is being sued for putting stickers all over machines claiming that Vista could run on them, when in fact, it cannot.

Opinion: As laptops get cheaper, Linux and Windows XP are both making better business sense than Vista.

Turns out Splashtop is patented. Is the infamous linux-trojan horse really good for linux ?

As the release of low-cost laptops based on Intel's upcoming Atom processor draws near, Microsoft is getting boxed into a corner. The software company plans to stop selling most Windows XP licenses after June 30, yet most of these low-cost laptops won't be powerful enough to run Vista when they arrive later this year.