Dell uses Linux for days of laptop battery life
Dell's "Latitude ON" system could see notebook batteries running for days at a time by the end of the year, including in the new Latitude E4200 and E4300 notebooks.
A new trend in desktop Linux deployment is seeing a range of systems ship with Linux built in to motherboards as an "instant-on" desktop, ready to boot whenever you power the system on.
It doesn't replace Windows, but it does give you access to the web within seconds of powering on, and with some new Dell systems, it will even extend your battery life from hours to days [ed. though we'll take this with a grain of salt till we get to test it].
Instant-on live Linux
The most common form of instant-on Linux is "Splashtop", which ASUS is shipping under the name "Express Gate". It's already available on a number of ASUS motherboards and systems, including the new Eee Box mini-desktop system, and ASUS plans to introduce it across its entire motherboard range in future.
Essentially, Splashtop is like having a Linux live CD built in to the motherboard. A chunk of flash memory holds the Linux kernel, a basic desktop based on the Blackbox window manager, and a selection of applications, including Firefox, Pidgin, and Skype. Select the appropriate option at boot and your PC will skip the hard drive and boot from the flash instead, arriving at a desktop within 5-10 seconds.
I'm one of those terrible people that leaves their PCs on all the time, but if you don't, there's great appeal in being able to open a web page or check your email without having to wait a minute or two for your regular OS to boot.
Latitude ON for long-lasting latops
Even more impressive is Dell's "Latitude ON" system, which is set to launch by the end of the year on its Latitude E4200 and E4300 notebooks. Latitude ON takes the instant-on Linux concept a step further by moving it to a dedicated, super-low-power ARM CPU, just like you'd find in a smartphone.
The performance will be limited, of course, but it should be more than enough for Dell's extensively customised environment, which will feature a slimmed-down version of Firefox, as well as email tools with full POP3, IMAP, and Exchange support.
The advantage of this approach is clear: battery life. Laptop CPUs usually use tens of watts of power, and even the highly efficient Intel Atom uses about 4 watts. Laptop system and video chipsets often add another 10-20W to that, and the RAM and hard drive add a few watts as well. An ARM smartphone CPU, in comparison, uses just hundreds of milliwatts, including its video chipset and RAM.
The display is still a big power user, and other components like the input peripherals and wifi radio will need a little power too, but with everything else in the system shut off and replaced with a single super-efficient chip, running a laptop in Latitude ON mode could more than triple its battery life. With Dell quoting up to 19 hours of battery life on some of these new models, you could run Latitude ON for days without recharging.
Hacker appeal
Dell is targeting the feature at business users -- its development codename was "BlackTop", referring to its BlackBerry-like feature set -- but I can't wait to see what happens when Latitude ON systems start appearing in the wild. Hackers were very quick to reverse-engineer Splashtop and add their own features to the environment, and with any luck, Latitude ON will be no different.
I'm not fussed about connecting to Exchange servers, but give me a terminal emulator and an SSH client and I'd be a very happy man indeed.
Can Microsoft catch up?
Microsoft is considering its own instant-on environment for Windows 7, but by the time it launches it may be too little, too late. If other motherboard manufacturers take ASUS's lead and start shipping Splashtop, it could become a standard feature, at least on high-end systems, well before Microsoft's option becomes available.
More importantly, there's no way Dell could build something like Latitude ON using Windows, since neither desktop Windows, nor Windows Mobile, offers the needed blend of CPU support, functionality, and customisation ability. With open-source, you can customise everything, and the choice of CPU is inconsequential, since you can take the source code and compile it to run on whatever CPU you like.
Ed. readers might also be interested in our look at Sony's move to report more realistic battery life numbers.
Toshiba has also developed a battery prototype with a new quickcharge capability.
Other Blog Entries written by Leigh Dyer:
Thoughts on this article? Add a comment below.
Comments: 1
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Oct 19, 2008 9:35 AM
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