Dell adds cheaper Latitude On Flash module to some laptops
By Donald Melanson 
posted December 19th 2009 8:20AM
posted December 19th 2009 8:20AM
Dell's Latitude On quick-boot OS has been available on some of the company's laptops for a little while now, but it looks like Dell has now found a new way to make those laptops boot fast but be more affordable. That comes in the form of Latitude On Flash, which an actual flash module that snaps into a mini-card slot in the laptop and makes use of the laptop's own x86 processor to speed up the boot process instead of a separate ARM chip like current Latitude On systems. While that switch will still give you a boot time of eight to ten seconds, it apparently comes at some expense to battery life -- although we're guessing the lower cost (a $50 upgrade, as opposed to a $199 one) will make that trade-off more than acceptable to most users. Look for the upgrade right now on Dell's Latitude E4200, E4300 and Z laptops -- which, incidentally, also come with an updated Gen 2 interface for the Latitude On OS.
Whats wrong with the sleep feature?
Well we're still only just getting used to the fact that Windows can sleep propperly! Until Win7 it was rather hit and miss.
@grindboy
Really. Every computer I have goes to sleep normally and I don't know anyone with any problems. We're talking about a small amount of people here. They're normally people who don't know what they're doing. People like you.
@kris120890
well, arent we an ass today....
@kris120890
I hope your either terrible at sarcasm or that your able to make more than one or two friends sometime soon. Windows always has had trouble with sleep mode, especially after one or two years of running.
@Ducman69
This is a full reboot, man.
Nothing wrong with sleep mode but 10 seconds from power-on (i'd guess after POST) is impressive a hell and is really gonna kick the ass of the horrid little Unix clone box from Cupertino.
@Ducman69
There are devices that don't like to sleep. I, personally, have had game pads and TV-tuners that misbehave after waking up from sleep, due to driver problems.
Also, is it possible to swap a battery while a computer is sleeping? I would think you'd have to power-off for that if you weren't plugged-in at the time.
@kris120890
Are you using only Macs or something? I have never had a Windows PC that could sleep properly. And I'm talking out of the box. I'm looking forward to this "new" feature of Windows 7. I've been jealous of Macs' ability to sleep properly for quite some time.
@(Unverified)
You've obviously never owned a mac. That is one of the best things about them is wake / sleep. My PowerBook G4 from 2004 is still faster than my Win 7 laptop.
@Ducman69
Are you all serious? I have had many computers since Windows XP and they all sleep fine.
@figmentPez I did too on Vista, but new machines should all be shipping with W7. =)
I haven't had a single issue since the first beta and I manage all of my family's assets (including three HTPCs w/ tuners). I did have an issue w/ sleep on Vista w/ one of the computer before, where it would say a tuner was still in use, but hey, at least you can even GET an internal tuner on a Windows box, lol!
I had sleep problems on windows, but of course some programs have as a feature to disable sleep, like torrentclients, so it can be just a missed setting or something in one of the many programs that start with windows, but I had problems without all of that just purely windows sometimes refusing for no particular reason.
And I bloody well know what's what.
Meh. I would be more pleased if they had a quick boot system like my eeepc. Press the power button and its already loading windows.
And for business, the bootup is usually really slow because of the encrypted hard disk.