Dell Latitude ON provides instant boot-up, multi-day battery life

Later this year, Dell will unveil Latitude E4200 and Latitude E4300 notebooks with the new, innovative "Latitude ON" feature. Dell claims Latitude ON will give users instant boot-up access to select applications, with multi-day battery lifetimes. To achieve this, Dell will integrate a TI OMAP smartphone processor and a Linux-based operating system in these two light-weight Latitude laptops.

Latitude ON uses "a dedicated low-voltage sub-processor and OS that can enable multi-day battery life" for the Windows Vista notebooks, Dell said. Dell also said the technology will provide access to the web, email, attachments, calendar, and contacts "in seconds."

Now, MontaVista CEO Rusty CEO has revealed a few more details. In his keynote at the MontaVista Vision 2008 conference in San Francisco today, Harris confirmed that MontaVista not only ported Linux to the low-voltage subprocessor used in the laptops, but also integrated the middleware and application stack, part of a new focus for the company on working further up the stack, Harris hinted.

More info at Linux Devices.