Pre-boot access from BIOS

According to this eWeek article, Phoenix BIOS will be expanding its “pre-boot” capabilties to more machines. This new BIOS feature will be go beyond what Phoenix BIOS already provides in the HP Tablet PC. I wonder if this is really that useful as implemented. Is this compromise compelling or is it just that–a compromise? It seems to me you have to have a more extensive infrastucture for “instant on” or else it won’t be used that much. I need to go over to TabletPCBuzz and see what others say about HP’s “instant” access feature.