Dell Laptops Use Hybrid Processor, OS Solutions

Latitude systems boast Intel and Arm processors

As technology develops, portable computer systems, such as notebooks, face an increasingly challenging role, which is to provide its users with a faster access to the system's functionalities, with a focus on Internet access and email. This is one of the reasons why some PC vendors, Dell included, have thought of a way of providing their customers with an alternative operating system, bundled together with a Microsoft Windows OS, which will provide fast access to the Internet. This Linux-based OS has been successfully adopted by those small-sized netbook systems that have invaded the market.
But it now appears that such solutions have also been enabled on some fully-fledged PCs, such as Dell's Latitude E4200 and E4300 laptops.

According to a recent news-article on eetimes, the Round Rock, Texas based PC vendor has been integrating a separate ARM-based processor, inside its E4200 and E4300 laptops, part of the Latitude series of portable computer systems. The ARM-based CPU comes in addition to the Intel Core 2 Duo processor, which enables the system to fully load a Windows XP or Windows Vista operating system and deal with some more power demanding applications.

Dell's Latitude ON feature “will enable near-instant access to e-mail, calendar, attachments, contacts and the Web without booting into the system's main operating system (OS)...on the Latitude E4200 and E4300,” claims the PC vendor, in an ad for its portable computer systems. Also, the company confirms that the application uses a low-voltage sub-processor that can enable a multi-day battery life, when used with the non-Windows operating system.

While the Intel processor is busy with those heavier applications, the ARM-based processor, which is more suitable for a smartphone than a notebook PC, provides the necessary support for the pre-OS Linux-based second operating system. This enables the user to take advantage of the system's Internet-capabilities, even before the system is fully loaded. This dual-processor, dual-OS could also benefit ARM, which will likely get more attention from PC users, as they'll be able to compare the power specifications of the two processor solutions.