ExpressGate Pre-Boot OS

ExpressGate Pre-Boot OS - Comes with ASUS Mainboard

 

We recently reviewed Asus' P5Q Deluxe motherboard, a very high-end board based off of Intel's new P45 Express chipset and we decided to do a separate review of the ExpressGate software featured on that motherboard as well as the full range of P45 Express motherboards from Asus as well as numerous other products. Let's take a look and deeper at what it has to offer and also run what tests we can to measure performance and power consumption.

To begin if you are as yet unaware of Asus' Express Gate it is a new application that loads immediately on startup of a system based off of Splashtop. To quote from Splashtop's website it is a, "proprietary pre-boot environment, developed by DeviceVM, which allows you to rapidly access certain applications without the need to boot your main operating system. Splashtop boots out of the BIOS on your PC motherboard, and launches a lightweight Linux stack capable of running certain applications like the Splashtop web browser, and the Skype VOIP program. The Splashtop environment allow you to open a web browser, check email, watch videos, instant message, and place VOIP calls within seconds instead of minutes." Pretty cool, eh? ExpressGate is contained within onboard NAND flash memory chip pictured here in between the a PCI slot and the second PCI-Express 16x slot.

This is what greets you as boot the Asus P5Q Deluxe though you can disable it and change the time until it boots into the main OS easily within the BIOS. A very clean and friendly interface giving the user of launching the Splashtop OS and immediately launching one of the four applications: web browsing through a modified Firefox 2.0, photo browsing, chat via Pidgin, and Skype. The buttons at the bottom allow you to enter your main OS, enter the BIOS, or shut down the system. Your mouse will work fine here without a problem making it easy to move through the GUI.

Before we get into the review though we do want to address one of the best things and worse things about Express Gate. I'm willing to place bets that the odds are more often than not when booting their main PC most people are going to want to go immediately to their main operating system 90% or more of the time. Although the pre-configured time to boot into your OS is ten seconds, which can be lowered in the BIOS, and you can move your mouse to the "Enter OS" button and give it a click in a matter of seconds it does of course add to your boot time and require an additional step to boot if you use your mouse to click to enter your main OS even if only seconds. On most people's main machines there will though come those times now and then where they quickly need to check their e-mail, reach someone on AIM, make a VOIP call, or browse the web to get information. Hopefully this doesn't seem to be bashing at the beginning of our investigation but one of the features we think Asus or DeviceVM should look into is some option say at the normal Asus' splash screen when one has booted the computer for a command such as CTRL-E to instead  load the ExpressGate OS for when those moments do come up. When you really can't wait those extra 35 seconds for Windows to load to check your e-mail or browse the web for what you need. Is this an engineering possibility? That we don't have an answer to but if ExpressGate is to become popular and be accepted, and we do believe it is a very cool and unique feature worth exploiting, when booting on your main PC there should be a command from system startup to instead load the ExpressGate OS. Otherwise we do find it likely that after some of the novelty wears off people will more than likely disable ExpressGate from loading rather than have it start every single time they boot their computer as even though it is only mere seconds it is still adding to the boot time. People go to deep measures to save seconds off their Windows OS boot time so adding even two or three seconds and requiring an extra step every time they turn on their PC we believe will eventually cause them to disable it as ExpressGate's use, at least in regards to your main PC, will more than likely only be now and then and in emergency situations where you're running late say for work or to catch a movie. I haven't done a survey of users but odds are this is much less often than more often at least in my case and I assume your average person. Some command at the normal Asus splash screen to load this would do wonders I believe for ExpressGate's acceptance.

Upon further investigation we did find somewhat of a solution to this problem though it wasn't obvious to us and more than likely the newer users who could benefit from something user friendly, we're leaving the above paragraph untouched as we still feel this is a problem. Putting the timer for "1 second" in the BIOS for ExpressGate it seems that the ExpressGate OS either didn't even load or loaded and left so quickly that it was not even viewable by the time we had video output. Moving the mouse around though after immediately powering on the computer though allowed us to enter ExpressGate as needed as we assume the mouse movement was detected by ExpressGate and the OS loaded. That did find a solution to one of our main grievances but again it isn't an obvious one. Perhaps this could be included for a hint for those who want to lower their start time or not require another step to enter their main operating system. I'd say without some solution to this or a work around you again might find more users disabling this feature once the novelty wears off which would be a shame.

With that out of the way let's move onto our experience using Express Gate. We'll start things off with web browsing portion of Splashtop. The web browser in Splashtop is based on Firefox 2 and looks nearly to the beloved browser. Tabs work great, although most of the options are cut out of the program. Bookmarks are there and it closes pop ups well in addition to privacy settings but extensions look like a no go. That said we had no problems checking out numerous sites for e-mail, news, YouTube and other Flash videos worked without a charm. Trying to load a QuickTime movie trailer did not work but otherwise it is good for a quick web experience. Only one window was able to be open but the number of tabs we had open seem to have limits. Here is a picture of the Asus homepage.

And here is a screenshot of YouTube.

Files can also be saved and some limited management off of USB flash drives including copy, delete, and also downloading files from Firefox onto a flash drive if you need to get something quickly off the net but not run it in Windows, here's an example of that.

We did ask about a possible update of the software to Firefox 3 since it is a much faster browser and with better memory management but we didn't hear back on that but we assume that would be in the works as an update to Splashtop. One of the most important things we wanted to test was of course boot time and how much could really be saved by using Splashtop instead of booting your OS.
 

Here is our test system.

Mother Board	Asus P5Q Deluxe
CPU	Intel E6420 overclocked at 2.7GHz
Video Card	Visiontek 4850
Memory	Corsair XMS Dominator 2GB DDR2 800
Hard Drive	Western Digital Caviar SE16 750GB
Display	Samsung 20" LCD Westinghouse W4207

We tested with a stop watch from the bootup. Our time to ExpressGate is the time it took to load the main OS not the splash screen which was instant. Our OS start time was to Windows Vista desktop the time to Firefox included how long it took me to click on the Firefox shortcut at the bottom and for the browser to load. Firefox 3.01 was used on the desktop as again this is one of the benefits of your main PC and of course one of the drawbacks of Splashtop.

	OS Start Up Time	Time to Firefox
Express Gate	5.5 seconds	9.5 seconds
Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 32-bit	38	40

Asus promotes a 5 second start up time for ExpressGate and we found that to basically be true. Or time to Vista Ultimate SP1 32-bit was 32.5 seconds later so a little over a half a minute. Still it took a little longer to load to Firefox even though we clicked on web browser on the Express Gate start up screen immediately with the time to that at 9.5 seconds which would save you a total of 30.5 seconds from Splashtop. 30.5 seconds isn't an amazing savings but then again less than ten seconds to the Firefox web browser is quite good. This however does bring us back to the point made earlier that more often than not people won't use ExpressGate but in those situations where they need to check their e-mail, or contact someone through IM more than quickly but almost immediately to really find ExpressGate useful at least when it is used on their desktop PC. Of course there is more than just web browsing you can do so let's move onto other programs.

The main IM client of Splashtop is the very well made Pidgin which has support for almost every IM client you can think of. Adding and configuring all your clients is a snap and doesn't take much effort. The GUI is identical to the one shipped in Pidgin.

Skype is also included allowing for VOIP communication and messaging as well and worked perfectly and loaded quickly.

Finally the last of the main applications in ExpressGate is a picture browsing program that allows you to browse pictures off your hard drive or flash drive. It does the job well allowing you to quickview all the pictures, zoom, and rotate so all the basics are covered but of course don't look for much more here. Here's an example.

The user interface is so simple it's almost fool proof and newbie proof for anyone to use. The main applications are centered in the bottom middle of the screen and your more advanced options sit to the right. Here's a close up of main bar in Splashtop.

Here is the main configuration panel of ExpressGate with all your options and I also loaded Asus' drive Xpert RAID drive and back-up utility that is included in ExpressGate.

Selecting resolution is simple though you are limited to maximum resolution of 1440x1050 we didn't fine this to be a problem.

There are volume controls for the main sound output and also for a mic output.

Here are your launch bar settings.

And network configuration whicah can connect to networks over WiFi, LAN, xDSL, and cable. WEP, WPA, and WPA2 wireless security standards are supported.

One of the key things we wanted to tested was if ExpressGate might have less power consumption so we gave it a test sitting idle at the OS compared to the Vista's and also browsing the web in Vista and in ExpressGate.

	Idle	Browsing Web in Firefox, Multiple Tabs
Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit SP1	92	100-115
ExpressGate	110	115-125

As you can see it is actually about 20 watts higher in Express Gate at idle and about ten watts higher while browsing the web. This is definitely disappointing as the idea of using it instead of Windows overnight or if they were to add more applications such as a built in media or music player, UTorrent, etc with a lower power overhead would be quite nice. We're not sure if perhaps Intel's SpeedStep is not working in the ExpressGate OS or there's some power saving features in Vista as to why it's not idle or simply somehow Vista idling has less of a power overhead. We doubt it can all be attributed to the onboard flash memory being activated.