Info on Dell’s Instant On Feature Begins To Trickle Out

Instant-On is one of those mobile computing Holy Grails (along with more battery life) that many lust after and with the advent of the NetBooks, and you could say even the much maligned HTC Shift we’re starting to see this creep closer to a reality. As we’ve reported before Dell is planning on introducing an Instant-On feature in its new business laptops  (the Latitude E4200 and the E4300).

Dell’s Instant-On feature is a fully-dedicated, Linux based solution on a chip running an ARM processor. This runs separately from the CPU and storage systems. The SUSE based system will offer a Firefox based browser with a custom PIM solution (email, calendar, and contacts), Microsoft Office, and the drivers you need to access the laptop’s hardware and radios. Push is the name of the game here as you can set the refresh rate for your data. This means that when you open up your device, theoretically you’ll be able to see up to the minute (depending on the refresh rate you set) data.

Dell is saying that you will have read and write capability for apps in this subsystem. The full rollout of this is slated for November, with what Engadget is calling a ‘reader’ mode for early batches of this.

We’ve talked about Splashtop’s Instant-On before and this sounds akin to what that offers, and I think we’ll get more info as this rolls along.

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So, how many GBM Readers are excited by an Instant On feature? Is it a must have for you or just something you’d find handy?

Via Electronista via Engadget