This week, the news arrived that Dell is putting ARM processors alongside Intel Core Duo chips in high-end Windows-based laptops that can boot Linux for instant-on application usage. The company's Latitude Z notebooks run Windows on a Core Duo Intel processor, but will let you jump in and out of simple applications and browsers for on-the-fly tasks when you don't want to wait for Windows to boot.
The concept isn't new. The idea of instant-on computers has been around for more than 15 years, but Windows computers have mostly been diametrically opposed to the concept. We have written about DeviceVM's Linux-based SplashTop instant-on software a number of times, and I've used it. It's excellent for when you want to check on a quick bit of information without loading a bloated operating system. Still, who wins if this idea takes off on a widespread basis in portable computers?
