6/15    A friend of mine who is in a hardware business trying to implement
        a relatively common feature in laptop: be able to play DVD, play
        mp3 without ever get into Windows.  How do people usually do that?
        Do they have an embedded Linux somewhere where one will boot up and
        perform these functions?  If that is teh case, where is the embedded
        OS?  is it in BIOS?  How come these things tend to have almost
        instant start-up time compare with desktop Linux which takes 1 minute
        to boot up?  thx
        \_ Many embedded systems put the boot system on flash.  I think the
           boot speed has less to do with the boot media and more to do with
           the limited kernel size/number of drivers embedded systems load.
           Google for Soekris.  This is the hardware company many of the
           community wi-fi projects are using. -dans
           \_ pcengines.ch WRAP >>> Soekris.  -John
        \_ thanks all.  It seems that it is Intervideo's InstantOn that
           is behind couple of the mainstream OEM's solution.    --OP
        \_ Check out ROM-DOS by Datalight.