| ExpressGate Pre-Boot OS - Other Applications, Control Panel, Power Consumption |
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| Written by Jeff_Tom | |||||||||||||||
| Wednesday, 23 July 2008 11:34 | |||||||||||||||
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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.
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.
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.
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