Qualcomm Proposes “Instant on, always connected” Netbooks

For the past four years, Qualcomm has been developing the Snapdragon processor for small notebooks/netbooks and handhelds, and according to Brooke Crothers, they envision devices that manage power more like PDAs and Smartphones than notebooks.

“Our vision is that (the device is) always connected. Even when you shut it down, it’s still ‘on.’ (The laptop) goes to your Exchange server, gets your e-mail, puts it on the drive–solid-state or hard drive–and then when you’re ready to do e-mail, you flip it open and it’s right there. Instant on, always connected,” Gill said.

This kind of thing isn’t possible on Intel-driven laptops, according to Qualcomm.  “Two or three hours later the battery’s just completely drained out. You cannot rely on it to be there all day long in your bag and still getting all your e-mail.”

This sounds like something similar to what a smartphone does — it’s always on, always connected to your cellular network, and can usually run all day without problems.  I do hope that the Snapdragon netbooks won’t completely follow that example, as there have been many times when I wanted to shut my smartphone off completely in order to save the battery.

As long battery life is important to many netbook users, this may come as welcome news.  And though the current trend in netbooks is to make them more like notebooks, it looks like the Snapdragon units will privilege connectivity and simplicity over everything else.  Because these devices won’t actually be capable of running Windows XP/Vista/7 they will likely turn to a Linux distro or maybe Windows CE.

Source: nanotech blog
Hat Tip: Liliputing