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Introducing Splashtop

When you power up the Asus P5E3 Deluxe WiFi, instead of the expected splash page or BIOS startup you get “ASUS Express Gate” – a GUI selection tool that lets you choose between browsing the web, using Skype, booting the “normal” OS, going into BIOS Setup, or shutting down.

That’s right. 

A GUI even before the BIOS screen!

If you choose “Web”, the P5E3 launches “Splashtop” – a tiny embedded Linux OS residing in part of the BIOS flash chip – from where you can run a web browser, use Skype, and configure Splashtop's settings. (For more on Splashtop, go to www.splashtop.com)

Here you can see the web browser showing the P5E3 Deluxe page on the ASUS web site.

And here is the Splashtop web site.

As I don’t use Skype, all I can show you is its unconfigured contacts list.

Here you can see the applets in the Splashtop control panel

The time and date is set with a simple, familiar looking applet.

And there is an applet for the input method.

Set your language and keyboard here…

Splashtop also has a really nice network configuration dialogue, showing a diagram of the back panel I/O

The video card / monitor configuration lets you set up the Splashtop resolution.

And last but not least: mic and speaker volume controls.

Splashtop is a nice addition to this board, however, as much as I like having an embedded Linux, its utility is limited by being stripped down to only a web browser and Skype. If Asus added a gigabyte of flash, they could have Splashtop additionally include OpenOffice and a bunch of games, making it far more useful than its current limited form.

As an aside, for those of you looking for a small, useful Linux distribution, take a peek at PuppyLinux – it can run in as little as 48MB of ram, and comes with a LOT of software!