We weren’t supposed to launch until Wednesday but a bunch of articles have already started to surface about Splashtop. We are a bit overwhelmed by the attention and excited that readers of popular publications such as Engadget and BoingBoing are interested in our Instant Desktop environment. We are trying to track both the enthusiasm and the suggestions in order to create a better product. We haven’t even launched and I already feel like we’re behind on features. 
Nonetheless, please keep the commentary coming. I will publish every comment on this site unless it is vulgar or inappropriate (those just go to close friends). Here’s a quick breakdown about where we’re at and what Splashtop is about…
Also, to clarify one thing: Splashtop is branded as Express Gate on certain motherboards built by Asus. These are rather high-end motherboards and are the first products to market with our technology inside (positive comments on blogs greatly appreciated). Our goal is to have Splashtop on many more notebooks and desktops by Q1 of next year.
The point of Splashtop is to get you surfing the web seconds after you press that power button. Many people have asked what other applications we might support in the future. While we’re excited to support many more applications, we’re starting with two (Splashtop Browser and Skype) and we will add more in the future.
Some things I hope to address in the next couple of days are important subjects which have been brought up by the press and user commentary. These include allowing outside developers to build complementary applications and being able to update the Splashtop environment from within Splashtop itself. Thanks for your interest in Splashtop and keep the comments coming.
October 8th, 2007 at 10:52 pm
Wow this looks like a really cool idea. I am interested if this will be able to be morphed into something much more such as a built in rescue environment. Will outside Devs be able to roll their own custom distro and install it onto your bios? Will we be able to access the harddrive partitions to get at our stored data? As it is it’s a neat feature but not a killer app. If you can keep it open and let people run with it this will be big stuff indeed. I look forward to what you guys are going to do and I will definately be looking for this on my next mobo upgrade
October 9th, 2007 at 9:49 am
I look forward to your publishing the source to the Linux and apps you use in accordance with the GPL. Will you have a means to add custom apps, for example other VoIP clients, support for USB media, or even use of the embedded environment for system maintenance/recovery? I hope you are creating some software patents and submitting them to the OIN!
October 9th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
Sad you choose Skype. This program suck the internet bandwidth with out the users concern. There are better alternatives to Skype, like WengoPhone, Gizmo, and lots more.
Once again, sad for Skype. Hopefully someone someday will hack SplashDot to replace Skype with something better, or you will add alternatives to that software/network.
October 9th, 2007 at 7:30 pm
Very cool indeed. What I’d like to see is the ability to use Splashtop while the main OS churns away loading in the background. Perhaps you could develop a U3-like environment to load additional apps from a USB key.
October 10th, 2007 at 1:21 am
Great project, I think this a really good step but as Andrés León told, is a pitty you have chosen skype having so many alternatives, not only technically better, also GPL.
October 10th, 2007 at 11:59 am
I think this is one of the best products i’ve seen in the past year.
I work with a lot of narrowcasting machines and this is the PERFECT solution for this! Instant-on, perfect protection for power-loss (no data corruption). Just add some support for IDE (for the use of flash modules to save commercials), UMTS (via USB) and the possibility to add your own cron-jobs, scripts and apps (like standalone Flash) and BAM! You’ve got yourself a solid base for widespread narrowcasting solutions! I’m going to keep a very close eye on this one!
October 10th, 2007 at 12:16 pm
Perhaps, another product would be to work with VMWare to provide instant boot into the VMWare Server.
October 10th, 2007 at 3:41 pm
An idea whose time has come. Switch on, wait 2 seconds, start surfing. Brilliant! The only thing that’s bothering me is that nowhere on the site I can find the download for sources (after all, this is using GPL’d code!) or binaries.
October 10th, 2007 at 9:18 pm
Looks like a SHORT step to getting rid of the OS altogether for many people…YES!! Reminds me of the old “netpliances” of the mid 90’s…perfect solution for so many basic computer users…especially with Web 2.0 apps.
I’m definitely adding your RSS to my Google or Yahoo page.
October 12th, 2007 at 2:05 am
Other than “Nice”, the first thing that came to mind for me was “what about security updates?”.
I assume you’re using a copy-on-write mechanism to preserve a hardware-locked read-only base install in case things break. If not, please consider it.
Since you’re rebranding firefox, you can’t just leave the automatic updates feature enabled. You’ll have to release your own updates that track theirs, and run your own update servers. Are you doing that? What sort of update lifetime do you offer, and how will users know when their embedded OS stops getting security updates?
October 12th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
Thanks everyone for your posts and support. We definitely plan to have alternative applications available in the near future. We’re also working on different ways to access Splashtop from various devices.
October 13th, 2007 at 2:29 am
From my perspective, the purpose of this program is NOT to replace an OS, but to provide a Quick Tool for:
1. Internet Browsing
2. Save/export Favorites/Browser History/Skype Contacts on a USB Stick or save them through LAN on a diff PC’s HD. No need to bother mounting local HD -> to save Power (remember: this is NOT a fully equipped OS environment & therefore this is required!).
3. Internet VoIP (microphone & webcams should work -> must be able to install webcam drivers).
4. Be equipped with a Viewer to view downloaded pics/pdf/.doc/.xls/powerpoint documents (needed when you share files through VoIP).
5. Update SplashTop itself & Mobo’s BIOS
6. Provide a small Office app (quicknote/.doc only) in case you want to take a quick note/write a letter/college paper.
7. Provide a Calculator program
8. Be able to print your note/college paper (must be able to install printer drivers).
9. Be able to perform Remote Desktop (i.e. connect to your Work PC throught the Internet or LAN)
10. Provide a button to Boot straight to your Local HDs OS, than to having to Shutdown & Restart your PC.
Let me call the above “The 10 commandments of SplashTop’s success”.
Thanks.
October 24th, 2007 at 11:59 am
Computer Maintenance Tips…
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting…
October 25th, 2007 at 8:25 pm
Honestly, all it needs is some type of pseudo-terminal and SSH, and we’ll be looking at what is potentially the _best_ thin clients ever.