Could Linux be the key to instant-on for Windows laptops? The New York Times reports that PC makers are focused on improving boot time on PCs. Sitting in front of a PC waiting for it to start up can be infuriating, especially if you’ve had to reboot before doing a presentation or dialing into a WebEx conference. Those two to three minutes seem like an eternity. And despite earlier technologies introduced by Microsoft, boot times seem to be getting slower, rather than faster, over the last 10 years. The latest approach to solving the problem sounds intriguing if a quite bizarre. DeviceVM has introduced a technology called Splashtop that provides instant-on access to Web browser apps in seconds rather than minutes. How? By booting a minimal-footprint Linux kernel from flash memory that runs Firefox, Skype, a music player, or other special Splashtop apps. Today Splashtop comes pre-installed on notebooks and motherboards from ASUS, including the Eee PC. In theory, it could be used on other systems as well, perhaps running at startup while Windows or a full-blown Linux system loads in the background. HP, Lenovo, and Dell are planning on shipping similar instant-on capabilities. The intriguing part of all this is that we might finally get the instant-on capability for some pretty standard apps. The bizarre part is that the way to speed up your slow OS load it you actually load two different OSes. Sort of like running a five-kilometer race before you run your marathon. Meanwhile, Microsoft is now stating that similar technology could be part of Windows 7, presumably in 2010 and without using any of that open source voodoo. What do you think? Have boot times gotten slower? What do you do while waiting for your PC to boot? Feel free to post your boot time at this online poll. Open Source