The Asus P5E3 Deluxe/WiFi-AP motherboard has a Firefox Web browser (running on an embedded Linux operating system) burned into ROM. It also has Skype. You turn it on, and in fifteen seconds, you can be in Firefox and surfing the Web.

This alternate operating system, provided by DeviceVM to Asus, is fast and convenient. There’s no giant OS to boot before you get into your browser, which is a slimmed-down version of Firefox, not some weird, quasibrowser that doesn’t do what you want. There’s a Flash plug-in installed so most modern sites render properly. Flash videos play just fine. The system saves all your settings (including bookmarks) in memory, so you don’t have to start from scratch every time you fire it up.

This motherboard is at the top of the Asus line and costs $350 in a market where most other products are under $200.

This isn’t the only motherboard that will carry their embedded OS and browser. In the first quarter of 2008, we’ll see laptops with the embedded browser, which is where it’s really needed, and we should also start seeing it in less-expensive desktops.