What is Instant On?

June 6th, 2011 in .Laptops & Netbooks .Products
Nick Holland
Pin It
Tweet

Launching on serveral ASUS notebooks and netbooks during Computex is ASUS’ brand new Instant On! feature (yes, with exclamation mark). Sleep and hibernation are better than shutting down a notebook because it means you don’t have to shut down all your programs and work, so they can be resumed later.

ASUS Instant On!

ASUS Instant On! Software

It’s designed to be more convenient. First things first though – a lesson in the difference between sending a notebook to sleep versus hibernation.

Sleep locks the desktop data into main memory, which means the notebook can wake much faster to restore the desktop just as you left it. The downside is that it requires the memory to be always active to keep the data refreshed; this constantly drains the battery and in 2-3 days.

Hibernation takes the desktop data and stores it on the hard drive instead of memory. This means the notebook can turn off indefinitely at no cost to battery life, however resuming from the hard drive is often no faster than a cold boot-up, which can take 15-30 seconds.

Instant On! calls in the best of both worlds of Zzzzzzz. It can always resume in just seconds like sleep mode but it will last far longer. The Eee PC 1025CE will be able to resume in 2-4 seconds for up to 21 days with the 6-cell battery, while the larger new N-series can do up to 15 days. Even then, if your battery does run out of juice or it’s removed in the mean time, the data isn’t lost like in the standard sleep mode as it’s also backed up to the hard drive for security.

If you’ve any more questions drop them in the comments below!

Related Articles

Share |
  • http://twitter.com/cloudsmesh Vishal

    Reboot in seconds.Nice!
    Data will store in hard disk on power off condition.Good!

    Ai-inner circle member,WePC.com