Dell's Latitude-On instant OS detailed, screenshooted

Seems the act of waking a sleeping laptop to a full-blown OS is no longer in vogue. We're not sure when this happened though we're pretty sure that ASUS' decision to embed SplashTop into its P5E3 mobo had something to do with it. The benefit, of course, is an extension of battery life to days instead of hours assuming that you're not regularly booting into Vista or XP (which you probably are). Anyway, these new instant-on OSes are all the rage these days in products from netbooks, to ultra-portable fashion statements, and now business laptops thanks to Dell. Dell's solution, as applied to its newly announced Latitude E4200 and E4300, features a fully-dedicated, Linux-based system-on-a-chip subsystem consisting of a low-power ARM processor and flash memory that runs independent of your laptop's CPU and storage. The OS is based on SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 and includes a Firefox-based browser with custom email, calendar, and contacts applications, MS Office and PDF viewers, and all the drivers required to make use of the laptop's hardware and HSDPA radios -- an Instant Messaging client and browser support for Flash and Java are in the works. Data is pulled (you set the refresh rate) from an Exchange server via wireless connection, only.

IT types should be aware that the first batch of Latitudes will ship in a "reader" mode which boots the OS and apps off the laptop's hard drive and likewise reads the laptop's cached data. In November, Dell will rollout the fully embedded Latitude ON system and offer a mini-PCI upgrade to those first-release models. Check the video after the break to hear Dell explain it in their own words.

[Via Electronista, thanks Khoa K.]

[Joachim Bengtsson @ Aug 15th 2008 7:37AM]

I don't get it. People turn their laptops off? Why? Why wait 15 seconds for just a trimmed down "instant-on" OS, when they can get to their real, full-power OS in less than the time it takes to open the lid? Sleep mode!

[Sohip @ Aug 15th 2008 7:44AM]

"The benefit, of course, is an extension of battery life to days instead of hours assuming that you're not regularly booting into Vista or XP"

Please read the whole article next time...

[From My Cube @ Aug 15th 2008 7:57AM]

Longer battery life

[bondsbw @ Aug 15th 2008 8:04AM]

It's an excellent step in the right direction.

As they say in the video, 95% of business users boot their laptops for mail, calendars, contacts, internet, viewing mail attachments, and replying to mail. The system takes those features (all found in a Blackberry), and adds a big screen and keyboard. On top of that, it multiplies battery life by a factor of around 10 through its use of dedicated hardware.

By the way, where did you hear about 15-second boot time? In the video, they talked like it would be practically an always-on solution.

Now, if you want to play games, you'll need a full boot. That said, I doubt you'll see this system anytime soon in an XPS or Alienware configuration, so I'm not sure how well gaming will work on those machines anyway.

My hope for the future: take this same concept and add the capability to load extensions from the hard drive as they are necessary. For instance, if I wanted to play a Linux game, and it requires capabilities not originally loaded in the instant-on OS, those modules could be loaded at that point.

[Glenn @ Aug 15th 2008 8:25AM]

What's another 45 seconds? My computer could boot vista and have firefox open in ~1 minute

[(01) @ Aug 15th 2008 10:36AM]

Sohip, I don't think you understood his comment. I can't remeber the last time I actually shut down my laptop, and I feel many others are in the same boat. While on the initial boot you'll save some time, for someone who's restarting their laptop ~ once a month, and restarting every 6, what's the real benefit?

[Sabba @ Aug 15th 2008 10:50AM]

@ (01)

The real benefit is that it saves battery life. Sleep mode still drains your battery. It's not like you stick your laptop into sleep mode and your laptop is an energizer bunny. Sleep mode drains your battery. Turning your computer off and on in the same amount of time it takes to go in and out of sleep mode drains less battery life.

I think the main point is, not everyone uses windows. Not everyone actually USES the full blown features of their OS. Not everyone needs to leave their computers on all the time to feel connected to the world. Not everyone wants to carry around their power adapters all day and to every meeting.

[Joshua Auger @ Aug 15th 2008 8:01AM]

Obiously they would like to be able to quickly use their computer from an "off" position while saving battery life, it's great for mobile users, or people visiting foreign countries and don't want to have to charge or have the computer plugged in all the time. theoretically the instant on os' could last you at least twice as much battery time as your normal os

[Ihar `Philips` Filipau @ Aug 15th 2008 8:29AM]

Hehe

New turn of events in "Year of Linux Desktop" saga: sneaking behind the back of Windows.

LOL

[Benhur @ Aug 15th 2008 2:51PM]

This is actually a much more interesting subject than meets the eye. Netbooks have proven that lesser functionality is very acceptable for many of the users, and this could actually turn out to be the biggest headache microsoft has had from linux yet, I mean, in a few years time, these could be the dominating operating systems, especially if cloud computing catches on.
So, you can laugh, im sure someone in seattle is non too pleased.

[Kukawaki @ Aug 15th 2008 8:46AM]

Ah, this brings back memories of Palm OS pda's and their nonvolatile ram... speaking of which, when is that coming to desktop?

[Brashen @ Aug 15th 2008 8:49AM]

Don't even have a laptop.

[Huh? @ Aug 15th 2008 10:31AM]

Do you have a brain?

[Sabba @ Aug 15th 2008 10:54AM]

so buy one of these then silly...

next.

[Kamokazi @ Aug 15th 2008 8:54AM]

Anyone else reading the e-mail subjects? Seems like a somewhat personal account...suprised he used that picture.

[Sabba @ Aug 15th 2008 10:55AM]

i just realized you noticed that too, lol

i never actually read articles without looking at the picture. And the title / picture combination threw me off so i read the article and was like..."what?!?"

[High Ranks make you sterile @ Aug 15th 2008 8:56AM]

A Linux-based OS with MS Office? REEEEEEALLY?

[zargon @ Aug 15th 2008 9:00AM]

While it would be nice, I don't know how much I would need it. My new Lenovo laptop is into the OS from a powered off state in less than 45 seconds. Sleep mode is even better at less than 10 seconds.

[jorvay @ Aug 15th 2008 10:30AM]

Yes, but will it be that fast in a month? six months? My experience with windows has always been that the longer you use it and the more you install on it, the slower it gets. And don't forget the laggy nature of the windows OS when you first boot up and your anti-virus software needs to update, your windows updates start shouting at you, and all your other software tried to update too. Or there's my work computer that has a bunch of stuff running that kills any hope of booting quickly, and I don't have the authority to change that.
Add to that the slightly longer boot times for Fedora Linux (though if you factor in the above-mentioned speed killers, much faster boot actually), and the fact that I like to turn off my computers to save electricity (esp. my desktop), and spashtop starts making more and more sense.
I can't count the number of times that I've started heading out for a trip that'll have me away for hours or days, when I realized that I still needed that address or phone number from an email. I've already shut down my PC (who wants to waste electricity when they're not even going to be home), so a splashtop access to firefox would be ideal.

[Ihar `Philips` Filipau @ Aug 15th 2008 11:14AM]

@jorvay:

for uninitiated.

the zargon's logo points that he is using Gentoo Linux.

your Windows comment is irrelevant ;)

[zargon @ Aug 15th 2008 12:07PM]

Yeah, I am not worried about Windows at all as it has never graced this laptop, so I am not worried about boot times. I probably could actually slim down the boot time a bit if I wanted to, but 45 seconds is not a problem, I can wait.

I am actually running Ubuntu on it, there is no need to run Gentoo on a desktop, I don't want to sit around waiting for stuff to compile.

[Kelmon @ Aug 15th 2008 9:18AM]

I don't know what Windows laptops are like these days but I don't see the point of this for a Mac laptop since they all wake from sleep in about a second. If I need the laptop to be off to conserve battery during extended travel then it can be put into "Deep Sleep" and even then it boots to the state that it was shutdown at in about 20 seconds. Given this I still fail to see the point of these "instant-on" OSs.

[MioTheGreat @ Aug 15th 2008 9:30AM]

XP sometimes had flakey Sleep support, but I've never failed a resume under Vista, and it takes about 1 second from tapping the touchpad on my laptop to being able to use my computer (On occasion, my fingerprint scanner fails to initialize instantly, and adds another 1-2 seconds before I can login, but that's pretty rare.)

[Justin B @ Aug 15th 2008 9:37AM]

RTFA. It's to preserve battery life. When you come out of sleep mode with the mac you still have to run full OS processes. With this one, you have a limited set to do stuff very quickly without using much power.

[kccboy2004 @ Aug 15th 2008 9:56AM]

@kelmon.... mate....

I don't really think that you use your laptop in a mobile business environment. 20 seconds is FAAAARRRR too long. You don't see the sense coz' you don't have the need. That's OK. (If you work, i guess that you probably plug your laptop in at the start of the day, and unplug it at the end).

I don't see the need for a Mac, that's OK too.

BTW, I know thta you have problems with your mac waking from sleep. I used this webiste to troubleshoot my MAC:

http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20050301010110876

I also used this Apple link:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1776

The problem has been for me and most other Mac users that I know, is that these fixes never last. OSX is really flakey in this area.

One time I removed iStat Pro, that worked temporarily. The site below shows this:

http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=93510

How is it for you ? You may be lucky, or maybe you don't use your Mac very often. Another friend of mine has not had any problems but he only uses his Mac via Firefox to surf the net. (he thinks that Safari is a cause).

On another note:
My home built Car Computer needs to boot instantly from a night of rest, to load up
GPS,
Bluetooth
Rear Camera
Phone articulation software
Music software and library
Parking indicators

Before I drive away;

I tried this with a mac, it failed badly.

[kccboy2004 @ Aug 15th 2008 10:16AM]

@kelmon,

I would really like to read your dissertation:

Design, Implementation, and Evaluation of Weblogs as an Enterprise Project Management Communication Tool

Can you please send this to [e-mail]

Thanks.

[kccboy2004 @ Aug 15th 2008 10:39AM]

@kelmon,

I would really like to read your dissertation:

Design, Implementation, and Evaluation of Weblogs as an Enterprise Project Management Communication Tool

Can you please send this to [e-mail]

Thanks.

[Kelmon @ Aug 16th 2008 11:52AM]

@Justin B

I understand what the article is talking about but I don't "get it". Unless you simply need to run a basic application then you need to start your primary OS to get at your applications. This just seems like a gimmick in much the same way as the Windows Sideshow thing. If you need to conserve every ounce of battery power then I can see the benefit but for normal use you might as well just wake your laptop from sleep - it's faster, gives you access to everything, and I honestly don't believe that the "instant-on" OS is significantly battery friendly that it makes much difference.

@kccboy2004

The 20-seconds refers to the use of Deep Sleep where the state of the OS is saved to the disk and the computer is completely powered down. I use this only when traveling or when the computer won't be used for extended periods (i.e. days). In normal use the traditional Sleep is used simply by closing the lid on the laptop and that generates the expected start-up of about 1-second, plus a couple more for wireless network connections to be restored.

With respect to the dissertation, I'll put a copy in the email to you. It's not the most exciting read but let me know if you have questions and if you need the software and remaining documentation.

[Pascal @ Aug 15th 2008 9:35AM]

If you read the sentence correctly it says MS Office viewer.

[AJ in the East Bay @ Aug 15th 2008 9:36AM]

Sounds like something I would use if I buy a laptop.

[Yankees368 @ Aug 15th 2008 9:42AM]

So will this feature be available on any of the other Latitudes, like the E6500?

[spam_from_engadget @ Aug 15th 2008 10:01AM]

The screen, backlight and wifi will still be running at their normal power levels, so I would be surprised to see the battery life more than doubled or tripled; maybe 10 hours instead of 4 for example.

Personally I'd very much like to see a laptop with *only* this low-power processor (foleo!). What interests me technically is whether or not the graphics are being handled by a dedicated chip connected to the ARM. If they are, it's likely that the resolution will be limited to 1024x768 since I'm not aware of any ARM-compatible graphics chips that can do better than that. If not, and they're using the ARM with the main graphics chip, then they will have pulled off an even more impressive design by multiplexing them together somehow.

[High Ranks make you sterile @ Aug 15th 2008 10:14AM]

My point was simply.... if it isn't made by Microsoft is it really an MS Office viewer or an office document viewer? If I make a document in OpenOffice and it has the file extension of .doc, it doesn't make it MS in my opinion.....

[chris @ Aug 15th 2008 10:25AM]

I hope his boss dosen't see this because his name is JEFF MORRIS

[d00b @ Aug 15th 2008 10:28AM]

Well, it's a SoC with an ARM CPU and embedded Linux (SUSE Enterprise) solution. From what is reported, even the full version coming in Nov will be fairly limited, i.e. web browsing sans multimedia (Flash, et al) support, and no access to local content, only from an Exchange server via wireless.

It's an obvious hacker's heaven, although to play you would need to know how to port Linux to ARM. May be we'll see a software platform developed akin to that for the iPhone.

Extend this to its logical end, and the conclusion is that we can indeed have mobile computing devices that can function for days on a single charge, except that we'll need better OS than the one currently used by most. Hopefully, Microsoft can see the writing on the wall.

[Sabba @ Aug 15th 2008 10:39AM]

oh, ya visalink!!

i'm not sure what an email about visalink has to do with dell. wieeerd.

[GBot @ Aug 15th 2008 11:37AM]

These instant-on OS's remind me of all the things Vista Sideshow was "supposed" to do. Since mini lcd's embedded in laptop lids haven't exactly been all the rage, maybe there is a way to use Sideshow as the embedded OS. Or, dual boot instant-on OS's anyone? :)

[Dylan @ Aug 15th 2008 11:38AM]

I think this is great, but i think there are a details that we need to know and a few details that we have heard that are very interesting.As for the interesting / peculiar detail.
1. Yes you get better battery life but at what cost. Correct me if i'm wrong but the reason you get better battery life can only be attributed to the hard drive not being used (which it sounds like they will be adding later thus reducing battery life) and the cpu. This is the real kicker. Yes you no longer have to worry about a power hungry cpu/memory but the trade off is you are now stuck with an arm processor. Now i'm not knocking the arm processors (they are great for phones and pocket pcs) but they very underpowered. The os might be instant on, but doing any heavy lifting the system is likely to be slow.
2. The other way they probably save battery life is to turn down the screen brightness, and this power saving trick is nothing new it can be done in a full os too.
3. I think the last way to save battery is by disabling wireless communications. I think this has probably been turn any time you aren't specificly using it . Thus the comments on being able to set the "refresh rate" probably refer to how often to turn on the wireless to sync mail and such. I wonder what battery life becomes if you are surfing constantly.
4. I find it critical that you can only view documents. Without the ability to edit documents it will make this instant on OS unacceptable for most business users.
Well those are just a few of my observations. Don't get me wrong i think the idea is great but i think we are hearing exactly what dell wants us to hear to hype the product and we are missing the details that will ultimately leave a sour taste in our mouths.
-D

[Ysleiro @ Aug 15th 2008 11:39AM]

Incredible !!!

While I only use Windows I'm starting to understand the greatness of these Linux systems.

On another note, I would love to get instant on XP !!!

[waterboy @ Aug 15th 2008 12:03PM]

I already have an instant on laptop...it's called a macbook pro. I open the lid, and it's on - unlike the Windows laptops I have been using for the last 10 years.

[kccboy2004 @ Aug 15th 2008 1:44PM]

@waterboy
I have a macbook pro. when i open the lid it is not on.

what am i doing wrong ?

you must be lucky. the sleep functions on my mac are terribly buggy. I have nothing but problems with my macbook pro.

the forums that I go on to troubleshoot my macbook pro say all echo the same thing... MAC ARE REALLY BUGGY WHEN IS COMES TO SLEEP. it is not just me.


http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20050301010110876

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1776

http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=93510

Please don't talk to me about Mac and sleep..... Apple Macs are filled with bugs.

I don't have any problems with Vista, works everytime.

Of course I am talking from experience, you might be talking out of your behind. Do you own a Mac ? Do you own a Vista machine ?

I suspect not.

[hfm @ Aug 15th 2008 12:37PM]

I like how Sherri canceled the staff on the 24th.

[zzero @ Aug 15th 2008 1:36PM]

wait a minute.... someone came up with this idea before....

Palm Foleo.

Deja vu?

[AndrewNeo @ Aug 15th 2008 5:00PM]

That's funny, I don't remember hearing anything about the Folio being a full laptop too..

[ldrn @ Aug 15th 2008 1:46PM]

I don't know if you were joking or not... Linux has been available for ARM for quite a while, far in excess of the iPhone efforts. :)

[skulldriveshaft @ Aug 15th 2008 10:08PM]

Very nice, Dell is testing the Linux market without breaking any deals with Microsoft, excellent.

[linuxamp @ Aug 16th 2008 7:02PM]

I wonder why they went with ARM as the secondary processor instead of Atom.

[ricord @ Aug 17th 2008 2:51PM]

To build the cheapest netbook without additional OS,more secure,with long lasting batteries will be the next challenge.

[meteor @ Aug 18th 2008 10:35AM]

I am really surprised about DELL doing Instant-on by one more ARM processor. It must be a nightmare of the hardware OEM: devices controlled by two different CPU? How much would users pay for the more processor and the additive complexity? It's not hand-held smart-phone, it's a notebook. Browser must display 1280x800 screens, maybe with Flash/Javascript, and scrolled smoothly, and the data may be transmitted by a WPA2 encrypted WiFi connection. All of the work by an ARM? Yes, it's OK, but what level of ARM should be used and how about the cost? Or the browser is not full-function?

Instant-on is a good idea and is important for some people. But not too expensive, easy-to-use and even extensibility (can we expect playing full-screen DVD in the low-cost ARM solution?) are important too. I think Splashtop (just using the existing CPU) is a better solution unless DELL sell the Latitude-On solution with very small additive cost.

[James @ Oct 7th 2008 2:50AM]

I just received a Dell Latitude E4200.

The Latitude ON stuff is a complete farse. All it does is get access to your last couple of days of email, contacts and calander. It is a completely read only system (you can't download new emails, add contacts or calander events) that ONLY syncronises to outlook when the system is fully booted. Basically it is just like sync'ing your pda phone to Outlook (which i would recommend anyday over the Latitude ON rubbish).

Basically the only use for Latitude ON is for getting out some quick contact details, seeing a calander entry or a recent email (and not the attachement), and like I said, my PDA phone does this better by a long shot (I can see the attachments and I can email and add contacts and calander events).

I guess I was hoping that Dell would provide us with an ultra fast booting web browser like Splashtop (hopefully in 3 seconds). Oh, and to top it off, it takes over 10 seconds to get Latitude ON Reader running anyway... What a joke...

Everyone needs to wait for the ASUS laptops or the Voodoo Envy that will incorporate the Splashtop instant-on webbrowser (which will be able to connect to the internet by wifi I assume - as opposed to the latitude on which doesn't connect at all).

James.