Linux Rescues Battery Life On Vista Notebooks From Dell 200
nerdyH writes "Dell is preparing to ship two enterprise-oriented Windows Vista notebooks with an interesting feature — a built-in TI OMAP (smartphone) processor that can power instantly into Linux. The 'Latitude ON' feature is said to offer 'multi-day' battery life, while letting users access email, the web, contacts, calendar, and so on, using the notebook's full-size screen and keyboard. I wonder if someday we'll just be able to plug our phones into our laptops, switching to the phone's processor when we need to save battery life? Or, maybe x86 will just get a lot more power-efficient. Speaking at MontaVista's Vision event today, OLPC spokesperson and longtime kernel hacker Deepak Saxena said the project is aiming for 10-20 hours of battery life during active use, on existing hardware (AMD Geode LX800 clocked at 500MHz, with 1GB of Flash and 256MB of RAM)."
Looks like we're going back to 1981... (Score:5, Interesting)
... when IBM PCs had BASIC in ROM which you could start instantly and (in theory) do some sort of work with without booting DOS. No bad thing IMO.
Re:eh (Score:2, Interesting)
For some people this may be enough (Score:3, Interesting)
A LOT of people by a PC just to access email or the web. If they can do all this with an OS that starts instantly too , why will they want Vista? Time for MS to sweat possibly?
Re:eh (Score:2, Interesting)
Maybe dell will fork a design to leave out the x86 and assorted junk. A notebook sized iPhone-like device with huge battery life would be pretty cool....
Re:eh (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually I have a demo laptop I take with me to convince people. It's my work laptop it dual boots into Ubuntu and Vista.
I show aunt millie Vista.. she oohs, ahhs, and clicks on a few things, I explain how the pop-ups are making sure that things she does are what she wants and tries t o keep her safe.
I then boot into ubuntu and she goes, "wow! why does it boost so much faster?" then she oohs nd aahs even louder playing with ubuntu until I show her the "add software" item in the programs menu and say "you cant buy software for Ubuntu. You get it all free right here on this list, and had her install the Gramps family history program that really excited her. aunt millie installed a complex program on Linux. she cant install most anything on windows.
needless to say, she wants me to install Ubuntu on her brand new computer and blow out the new Vista home install. I have done this to ALL my family that I support, except for my brother that must access a SCADA system for work they all use Ubuntu. And my brother had to downgrade to XP because the SCADA software is incompatable with Vista.
If users use linux and Vista side by side, linux wins hands down even with the non techie crowd. The problem is that almost NOBODY is doing this.
Re:eh (Score:5, Interesting)
My own kids' computers are cheap arse dell dimensions that were leftovers from a project many moons ago. Kids are 5 and 8. I set both machines up dual booting Ubuntu and XP. Taught the kids how to switch from one OS to the other. Both choose Ubuntu for most tasks but will use XP happily enough for that rare game some odd family member bought them that only runs on windows.
For the most part, I consider my kids will grow up considerably more OS agnostic than the average user, and I am hoping that will turn out to be a major advantage for them. (Oh, ya, and they also get to use my macbook pro occasionally too, but usually only when we are on the road, they like OSX the most but I'm a cheap bastard and cant afford to get them their own macbooks)
Freedom from x86 (Score:4, Interesting)
The interesting part, from my point of view, is that a free OS like Linux may foster the development of non-x86 binary architectures with different strengths.
I said this before: I would love to see a notebook chip with multiple ARM (or OMAP, or MIPS or whatever) cores that could be powered up and down depending on demand and desired power consumption.
The fact such machine would be completely Windows-proof would be a nice plus.
Re:Will it be possible to only use OMAP3 for work? (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh and why did't netbook manufactures use OMAP3 yet?
No idea, but OpenPandora [openpandora.org] made a handheld with one. It was released on Tuesday, with an initial run of 3,000 units. They sold 2,000 of these in the first six hours. One of these with a bit more RAM and HDMI output would be my ideal portable. The next generation OMAPs are based on the ARM Cortex A9, which supports up to 4 cores on a single die, which makes them even more interesting - especially if you can shut all except one down when you're on battery.
Re:silly... (Score:3, Interesting)
Why not plug your foldable self-powered screen/keyboard thing into your "phone" when you need more pixels or want to type something long?
I'd rather plug my phone module into my PDA when I want a smart phone, or leave it in the dumb phone jacket to save power the rest of the time.
The phone module for the Visor was going to be a step in that direction, but Handspring had corporate ADD.
"Sleep" versus "PowerOff / Hibernate / etc." (Score:3, Interesting)
But seriously, when sleep actually works as advertised..... Why the fuck would you ever want to shut down?
Hum... increased battery life ?
Also while hibernating & powering off between usages spares more battery than maintaining the system on sleep, it doesn't solve the problem of battery usage *while* the system is up.
Whereas the Linux solution, besides being cool because it's Linux, is also really interesting because it runs on a separate low power TI OMAP hardware platform (like the recently featured Pandora gaming console, like the Beagle Board, or more mundane like the iPhone).
and *that* is something that is much less likely to drain your batteries than a full x86 platform running a full vista in all it's glory.
It brings a whole new level to dual boot : not only you switch OS and environment but even the CPU & GPU on which the OS is running.
Re:silly... (Score:4, Interesting)
Let's the options (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd probably opt for something else entirely.
Which operating system can run a complete desktop solution with web, mail, chat, word-processing and a few other task ? with support for complete support for LAN, Wifi, tons of USB pluggable peripherals and full screen with windowing ? On a low power *NON*-x86 chip ?
And is already used and deployed as such and will require minimal tuning (some branding at most ?)
Ok let's build a list :
and, huh... that's it.
Mac OS X ? Sorry when they ported it to the iPhone they stipped aways huge portions of the user interface. And without it UI, OS/X is just a boring BSD. Beside, Apple will never allow anyone running OS X on anything but Mac sanctionned hardware (on the other hand, now that the OMAP/x86 hybrid have appear on PC, you can bet that Apple will be quick to improve their ARM verions of OSX for similar and much better integrated hybrids)
Windows CE ? Supports OMAP and some of the basic tasks. But lacks support for tons of USB and other hardware for which drivers will have to be written. In short you *could* use it for the Web/Mail tasks, but nothing else, unless you throw several programmers at the task of writing all the missing apps & drivers.
PalmOS ? Well.... Seriously there have been some not widely known netbook in the past, and there was the cancelled Voleo ultra light laptop. But that's it.
Windows XP/Vista ? Hahahaha.... what a joke ! Have you ever seen it able to run on the required CPU ? Sorry these are x86 only (with the exception of some Itanium support).
Vendor opted to Linux because it's already mature and proven for this kind of usage, with drivers and applications already ready for the task.
The only thing left to do are branding and tuning (making a monolithic kernel for better boot time).
Anything else would have required much more development.
x86 power efficiency (Score:3, Interesting)
"Or, maybe x86 will just get a lot more power-efficient."
Umm, have you heard of the Intel Atom? The biggest mill wheel around the neck of that processor is that there is no power-efficient chipset for the laptop/desktop-class processors (the 945 chipset is an absolute dog in terms of power consumption). The processors targetted at the netbook/mobile market have a very good support chipset by contrast.
For reference, the N270 has a TDP of 2W which is pretty power-efficient in my book :-)
Re:I don't think it's the Linux (Score:4, Interesting)
8/10, this mode will be hackable. And since every program you mentioned is OSS, re-compiling for ARM shouldn't be that difficult (and someone's bound to throw together a distro for it at some point)