[Clashman]

As alot of you know, many of the new SFF's, (Small Form Factor PC's), coming out feature "Instant-On" DVD/VCD/CD/and MP3 playing. Basically, a linux kernal is embedded in a chip, allowing these devices to function without burdening the rest of the system, allowing them to boot up "instantly". My question is, if many of the regular PC functions are bypassed using this "Instant-On" system, how much power is being saved by doing so?

My reason for asking this, is that if significant amounts of power are being saved by doing this, over full-blown PC operation, is something like this feasible for extending the battery life of laptops? Alot of people, when they take their laptops with them on Airplane, train rides, etc, use them mainly for watching DVDs, listening to MP3's, etc. Integrating such a funtion into the system should be able to significantly lengthen battery life, I would think. It might also give laptops certain advantages over specialized devices, such as portable DVD players and MP3 players, that have eaten into their market somewhat over the years. I would imagine that a laptop, with it's much larger battery capacities should be able to significantly outstrip an ipod in playing time if such a function were implemented.

So what does everyone think? Is anyone willing to test power consumption on their SFF to see if what I'm proposing is indeed possible? Thanks in advance for any replies.

For those of you not familiar with Instant-On SFF's, here's a couple of links:
http://solution.aopen.com.tw/product...en/default.htm
http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/20040227/index.html
http://www.jetway.com.tw/evisn/produ...q/miniqion.htm

[Mendel]

In lack of other replies, I might just as well give my hunch...

For mp3 playing, sure, the batterylife would probably extend tenfold if not more. For DVD playing, you would still need that power hungry TFT display of yours so I would declare something on the order of 50% more battery life... enough to watch another movie! Then again, I understand mp3 decoding on a relatively simple chip, but what is the device that is decompressing the mpeg2? (I guess I will have to take a look at those links of yours again)

All in all, your idea sounds so good, I'm surprised no one did it already.

[Clashman]

Someone had mentioned on another forum that they thought Toshiba was going to introduce something, similar, but I think they are confusing it with a different "Instant-On" which allows quick booting to Windows, not extensive multimedia functions available "off-line". So, if there are any notebook manufacturers browsing these forums, make sure to throw some luvin' my way if you ever build one of these.