Linux Rescues Battery Life On Vista Notebooks From Dell

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)."

Comments

eh

[Gewalt]

Well, I hope it's at least damn pretty, cause being the runner up to "the real os" isn't really something to be proud of. But if its flashy enough, then people will like it and will increase their opinion of linux. Then again... is it going to say its Linux?

Re:eh

[I.M.O.G.]

It doesn't need to be pretty - if I can turn a system on in near-zero boot time and do useful things like access email or open a document... Point me to the cash register, I'm ready to hand over my wallet.

Re:eh

[Gewalt]

It doesn't need to be pretty - if I can turn a system on in near-zero boot time and do useful things like access email or open a document... Point me to the cash register, I'm ready to hand over my wallet.

Ok, *points to store.apple.com* My laptop takes about 2 seconds from "open lid" to "network interface is up and browsser is online" and "documents can be opened".

Now, granted, that's using sleep, not shutdown. But seriously, when sleep actually works as advertised..... Why the fuck would you ever want to shut down?

Re:eh

[mevets]

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

[Lumpy]

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

[Corporate Troll]

A bit expensive... My Asus EEE 701 4G boots up incredibly fast. 5 seconds to the Xandros password screen.

That's cold boot because the sleep functionality sucks seriously on the EEE. ("sucks seriously" as in "sucks battery for breakfast")

Re:eh

[Gewalt]

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)

Re:eh

[I.M.O.G.]

Good point, Apple's sleep mode actually works as advertised. Bit I and most others in business aren't in the market for an Apple laptop to do real work on (not counting marketing, etc... I said "real" work).

On a windows platform, sleep and hibernation have been sketchy, mainly due to questionable drivers. Add to this the fact that even if it does come out of sleep correctly, things feel a bit sluggish still and it altogether just doesn't feel snappy.

Give me web, email, and documents in a snap, with the opportunity to also boot a full OS... And I think thats adding something valuable to a Windows OS. In business environments where its gotta be Windows for whatever reason, I like this option.

Re:eh

[Gewalt]

In only ten seconds more I can launch Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion and have a fuly integrated Windows XP environment that runs at full speed. That's 5 seconds to launch the host and 5 seconds to unsuspend the guest. You can shave the first 5 seconds off by never shutting down the Host application.

Re:eh

[PopeRatzo]

You guys need to slow down a bit. I don't know what kind of job requires you to access your email within 5 seconds, but I get a stomach ache just thinking about it.

Seriously, nobody wants to wait two minutes or even one minute. But I have to chuckle when I think of any apple laptop user that "needs" his laptop to boot in 5 seconds. By the time he stirs his soy latte, brings out his iPhone ostentatiously, and makes sure someone's noticed the logo on the lid, that's 15 seconds right there.

Re:eh

[R3d Jack]

Have your brother run Ubuntu and run XP in a virtual machine. I do that at home with the family Mac and Napster (keeps my kid satisfied and legal).

Re:eh

[PopeRatzo]

Which OS does your Aunt Millie use when she wants to play Crysis Warhead?

Re:eh

[TheRaven64]

Out of interest, have you tried using Windows on an Apple laptop? Apple does something quite neat with sleep mode, where they begin suspend-to-disk when the lid is closed but don't turn off the RAM until the battery is low, so you have suspend-to-RAM which changes to suspend-to-disk if the battery goes flat. I've never actually had my battery go flat while in sleep mode, however, so Windows' suspend-to-RAM ought to work. I believe the drivers for Apple hardware are fairly good (although I've not used them).

Re:eh

[not already in use]

I actually saw a guy in Starbucks time his MacBook on boot. Went something like this:

"Uno, Dos, Tres, Catorce!"

Re:eh

[cayenne8]

"I actually saw a guy in Starbucks time his MacBook on boot. Went something like this:

"Uno, Dos, Tres, Catorce!"

I don't get it.....1, 2, 3, 14 ??

So, you're saying people in Starbucks don't know how to count in any language?

I suppose that explains how they get away with selling coffee at those prices.....

Looks like we're going back to 1981...

[Viol8]

... 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.

For some people this may be enough

[Viol8]

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:For some people this may be enough

[wiz_80]

Strange - my home machine runs OpenOffice instead of MS Office, and I can only remember one PPT that did not open right the first time in OOo. DOCs all come up fine, so much that when I need to do a lot of word processing I do it on the desktop with the nice keyboard and then transfer the file to the work lapdog. Never had any trouble, even with big multi-author documents with all sorts of highlighting and versioning.

Re:For some people this may be enough

[pandrijeczko]

I lost one user from Kubuntu to XP Cracked Edition because she _needed_ to read those forwards that her friends with boring jobs send her.

But presumably she didn't need it enough to go buy a proper licensed copy of XP?

I don't intend bleating on about piracy and I really don't want to play the Linux zealot here, but I do wish people would compare "like for like". Far too many people seem to forget that XP and MS Office are commercial products that they *should* be paying for whereas Open Office and Linux are obtainable freely.

If it was impossible to run cracked copies of Windows, MS Office and other Windows software and everyone had to pay for proper licenses, I'm sure a lot more people would take the trouble to actually try free software, rather than staying in a comfort zone and just assuming it cannot do what they need it to.

As another poster has already said, I've never seen a PPT that I couldn't import in Open Office. Sure, I don't use all of Powerpoint's features but, in my experience, the compatibility seems quite good.

I don't think it's the Linux

[Sockatume]

Going out on a limb here, but I suspect the use of a mobile phone processor contributed a teeny bit more to the improved battery life than the Linux. (FWIW, I don't see any statistically significant battery life difference between Xubuntu and Vista Business on my own machine, but that's another story.)

Re:I don't think it's the Linux

[Gewalt]

You ever try to get windows vista running on a AMD Geode LX800? You are correct in saying that its the processor saving the power, not the OS, but without the OS, the processor wouldn't be an option.

Re:I don't think it's the Linux

[akozakie]

Not only that. Having a general purpose operating system gives you a choice you wouldn't otherwise have - using applications that the designers didn't consider. I know I'd like a laptop with 20+ hours on a normal battery, but it would have to have at least ssh (works on my phone, so obviously not a problem), and something to edit text (LaTeX, docs, sometimes simple programs - vi or something else that doesn't need much processor power). I could do 80% of my everyday work with this. And if after a few hours of work I could boot to full power to e.g. compile the text - even better. Now, what are the chances that these applications would be installed in an "email/web" mode? With Linux I can just install what I need and - as long as it doesn't need much to run - it'll work just fine.

Re:I don't think it's the Linux

[Constantine XVI]

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)

10 to 20 hours is easy...

[squoozer]

... you just need a very very big battery. Rather than quoting run time on battery we should probably start reporting the average power draw of the system idle and under full load.

Flamebait headline

[abigsmurf]

They're talking about using a system on a chip solution that is designed to draw about 2W compared to the 20W or so the laptop usually draws. Of course it's going to last longer.

Given the Geode is x86, this could quite easily run XP and would likely achieve a similar battery life. It just wouldn't be instant on.

It's also an incredibly expensive solution that'll add weight and bulk to the laptop. If this kind of thing is important to you, get a PDA or smartphone.

umm

[RMH101]

...you are aware that a good proportion of Windows Mobile devices run on OMAP processors, right? Like the venerable HTC Wizard etc?

Re:umm

[SQLGuru]

While not what MS intended, I don't see why someone doesn't do something with Windows PE ( Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Preinstallation_Environment ). It'll pretty much run anything XP will, has full networking support, etc. All without the normal Windows bloat.

I first learned about it when I bought a copy of Active@Boot Disk ( http://www.ntfs.com/boot-disk.htm ) to recover data from a corrupted / failed hard-drive. [Works great, BTW.]

Layne

Re:umm

[Constantine XVI]

In this case, the problem is that WinPE still is x86 only, and x86 still has a major disadvantage in power draw compared to ARM-based chips like the OMAP.

How about a solar cell notebook case?

[digitaldc]

How about putting a solar array on a notebook case/cover that could power your laptop and any other items such as cell phones and music players?

Seeing that batteries are a very limited resource, how about having the option to use the unlimited power of the sun?

It also has a dual benefit of forcing you to get out of your parent's basement every so often.

Re:How about a solar cell notebook case?

[ErroneousBee]

Because then you have to leave these things out in the sun, where they will get stolen, or suffer from heat stress issues, warping of plastics, water damage, etc.

Its also hard to charge an 18V battery from the 5V typical that you get from a laptop sized solar panel.

Power monkeys and similar are the way to go, especially if capacitor based batteries come around, then you can charge devices from the powermonkey in minutes.

silly...

[Timothy Brownawell]

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?

That would be silly. Why not plug your foldable self-powered screen/keyboard thing into your "phone" when you need more pixels or want to type something long?

Re:silly...

[argent]

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.

Re:silly...

[soupforare]

I really wish IBM's metapad got out of the prototype stage.

Freedom from x86

[rbanffy]

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:Freedom from x86

[TheRaven64]

ARM (or OMAP

OMAP is an implementation of ARM. The current generation is based on the Cortex A8 series, and comes with a nice DSP core as well (some also come with an OpenGL ES 2.0-capable PowerVR GPU) in a package that can have a 128MB RAM chip clipped on top, so you don't need any motherboard traces for RAM unless you want more than 64MB. If you want one to play with, there's quite a cheap development board.

The next generation is to be based on the Cortex A9 MPcore architecture, which supports 1-4 cores on the same die, and they are rumoured to have 256MB RAM chips ready soon.

Re:Will it be possible to only use OMAP3 for work?

[TheRaven64]

Oh and why did't netbook manufactures use OMAP3 yet?

No idea, but OpenPandora 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.

"Sleep" versus "PowerOff / Hibernate / etc."

[DrYak]

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.

Let's the options

[DrYak]

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 :

1. Linux (tons of OMAP support to pick from already)
2. *BSD (you can basically copy-paste comment about linux)
3. Symbian (has been used in netbooks including from Psion. But doesn't have such a large hardware support)

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

[tjrw]

"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 :-)

Easy thing to do for Software Freedom

[dmarti]

I agree. The easiest thing you can do for Software Freedom is to refuse to make or support infringing copies of proprietary software.