The upgrade will spell the end for the 25-year-old PC start-up software known as Bios that initialises a machine so its operating system can get going.
ios' replacement, known as UEFI, will predominate in new PCs by 2011.
The acronym stands for Unified Extensible Firmware Interface and is designed to be more flexible than its venerable predecessor.
UEFI frees any computer from being based around the blueprint and specifications of the original PCs. For instance, it does not specify that a keyboard will only connect via a specific port.
The first to see the benefits of swapping old-fashioned Bios for UEFI have been system administrators who have to oversee hundreds or thousands of PCs in data centres or in offices around the world.
"Conventional Bios is up there with some of the physical pieces of the chip set that have been kicking around the PC since 1979," said Mark Doran, head of the UEFI Forum, which is overseeing development of the technology.
Before now, said Mr Doran, getting those machines working has been "pretty painful" because of the limited capabilities of Bios.
By contrast, he said, UEFI has much better support for basic net protocols - which should mean that remote management is easier from the "bare metal" upwards.
For consumers, said Mr Doran, the biggest obvious benefit of a machine running UEFI will be the speed with which it starts up.
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