Xandros Presto is - for want of a better term - a ‘lightweight' version of the company's Debian-derived Linux distribution, and no prizes for guessing the thinking behind its name.
Chopped down to a basic stub that boots in the presence of Windows, it fires up in seconds, and shuts down equally rapidly. Loading it from a laptop also running XP, it becomes obvious how bloated Windows has become over the years by comparison, even in its supposedly clean XP form.
On our test laptop, Presto booted into a usable form in around 12 seconds, and closed down in seven. Some TV appliances take almost as long to turn on and off.
The Presto concept is in much the same mould as the ExpressGate Linux (actually from a company called SplashTop) that ships on some Asus netbooks and notebooks, which we covered last year.
http://www.linuxlinks.com/portal/news/article.php?story=20090512133347855