

BIOS will be dead in three years - Uncle_Sam
http://www.thinq.co.uk/2010/6/8/exclusive-msi-bios-will-be-dead-three-years/?full

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jmillikin
Am I the only one who thinks the BIOS interface is just about perfect? When
I'm trying to diagnose a low-level system problem, having a simple text-based
interface is much more useful than pretty marketing slogans.

It's simple fact that hardware manufacturers don't know anything about user
interface design, or software in general. Any "value-added" software bundled
with motherboards is evidence of this. Look at the screenshots in the article
-- they look like a child's first adventures with Visual Basic, cramming in
flame decals and lens flairs in every unused inch. Sure, it looks good for
marketing, but ask yourself this:

 _Do I want to be interpreting gradient icons across two cultural barriers, at
3 AM, to figure out why a production system isn't recognizing a new RAID
controller?_

Furthermore, I am baffled as to why MSI would think a "user-friendly" BIOS
replacement is needed. There is no reason for end users to be digging around
in the BIOS. If somebody who can't figure out keyboard navigation has
accidentally stumbled into the BIOS, the only command they need to know is
"reboot".

~~~
jsz0
Familiarity shouldn't stand in the way of progress. A good modern BIOS
replacement could eliminate a lot of these low-level issues and offer better
troubleshooting tools. For example you could have LOM-ish style features
standard on every machine to troubleshoot basic booting problems.
Wifi/ethernet booting standardized. Something like target-disk mode for
quickly mounting the HD inside of a machine with a dead video card or toasted
OS install. You could even have a web browser that could get you access to
stuff stored in the cloud in the case of a local HD failure.

~~~
jmillikin
But then you'll need a troubleshooter _for_ the troubleshooter (yo dog). Given
that most motherboard manufacturers can't seem to figure out even the most
rudimentary software development for bundled utilities, I don't trust them to
write a web browser.

~~~
m_eiman
They don't write their own firmware though, they buy it from one of a few
places that hopefully know what they're doing.

------
zokier
"original EFI project, which was designed to replace the BIOS with a user-
friendly point-and-click interface"

"A UEFI system replaces the text-based BIOS with a user-friendly point and
click system"

Seriously. No. BIOS is a lot more than the interface used to configure it, and
UEFI is even more than that. It's like describing Linux by describing Gnome
and telling how its an improvement over DOS because of the point-and-click
interface, ignoring all the tech behind the scenes.

------
edwtjo
Thank god for <http://www.coreboot.org>

