Judging by a new Microsoft patent uncovered by Manan Kakkar, DCE or “Direct Computing Experience” could be bringing the long awaited “instant on” feature to Windows 8 machines.

The patent describes a simple system of press a button, see a splash screen and them play your media, much as we see in other systems such as Splashtop.

What makes this interesting, beyond the obvious joy of being able to instantly access your media or watch a movie without having to log on, is the emphasis on sandboxing in the patent, which shows that Microsoft is approaching this with security very much at the forefront of their minds.

Sandboxing will be a feature in Windows Phone 7, and it’s good that they’ll be bringing this extra security feature to Windows 8.

You can view the full patent here.

[Editor’s Note: DCE Could Bring Instant On To Windows 8 is a post from: winextra. –mrh]