“If you don’t get the experience right, the fact that you created the world’s coolest technology doesn’t matter,” Hobbs says. The company has worked hard to get the technology right, and the CEO says that the user experience, and not the engineering, is the most important part. In that case, “you won’t even really know you are using hyperspace,” Hobbs says. In the fourth case, the core security software grabs input and output from the network and disk to check the data for security threats. As a nod to netbook manufacturers, Phoenix offers a mode called “dual resume,” which allows the users to switch back and forth between the main operating system and HyperSpace completely, with some delay. The software can be used in two other ways. Computers that do not have enough processor power or memory to run both systems at the same time, such as the increasingly popular netbooks, can only boot into one mode at a time. The full-featured version allows PCs and laptops to hot-switch between the main operating system, such as Windows, and the HyperSpace environment. Phoenix currently offers two versions of HyperSpace. “A lot of people tell me that they got a new PC, and it starts up real fast. ![]() ![]() “Your system starts to get sluggish because of the registry, or drivers get out of date, or virus checking has to take place,” Hobbs says. As time goes on, regular computers are typically slowed by legacy software too, he says. Because it does not carry the weight of numerous drivers, utility software, and add-ons, HyperSpace taxes the processor and memory far less than does Windows, Hobbs says. The most visible selling point for the slimmed-down operating system is speed. Office suite: The BIOS software runs a variety of common applications, including a Web browser, a media player, and office productivity software. “It is trying to create a new market using the ideas of a fast-booting, safe platform that people can work in, but remain outside of Windows.” “It is going after a different audience,” says Rob Enderle, a PC technology analyst. Now every PC and laptop shipped with Phoenix’s core system software will also contain the necessary components to use the company’s add-on HyperSpace. ![]() Yet the technology has not found much use in consumer products. In the business world, a single big server or a cluster of computers can run virtualized systems so that resources can be divvied up among customers. By creating a virtualized layer of software, known as a hypervisor, between a computer’s hardware and the operating system, for example, data can be transparently checked for viruses and other malicious software. But as the technology has evolved, developers have recognized other advantages, aside from interoperability. Virtualization software started out as a way for users of one operating system, such as Windows XP, to run another operating system, such as Mac OS X or Linux, in a virtual environment. The core system software, as the company now calls its BIOS, builds on Linux operating system software and virtualization technology.
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