Latitude ON Reader...

Hi All
i have a small question. I work for a Company in East Africa, We are Dell Direct Partners( Highest Resellers) were not dell. Just people who sell comeputers who happen to buy from Dell Channel. i.e Ireland.
We receatly acquired Dell E4300, we quickly shipped only 3 Pcs Blue Ones. my boss wanted it specially for himself( he was not happy with XPS M1330)
obviously i showed him the latitude On feature. We ordered with them.
when i wanted to set it up. when yu hold down the button. it reads on the screem
Blacktop Reader not Installed please contact your user documentation or call your system administrator""
plus i see no software on the computer. noting that tells me that its Lattitude ON. and i got no user documentation just resrouce cd which does not have any software that is not already installed.
Can anyone provide some info on this please i will really appriciate.

Thanks,

Shane
Simply Computers,
Dar-es-Salaam,
Tanzania

 

Hi shane,

I dont mean to be rude but what i dont understand is that you post a question in a post that is all about the lattitude on feature. If you just take the time to read some of the posts in this post you have your answer.

By the way nice that you are from Tanzania, i have lived in Dar-es-Salaam for 5 years.

Greetings,

Oliver

 

Ow, Thanks for your help.

 

Confirmed, I look deeper in Latitude ON reader software package and it's just an x86 Linux image/filesystem with evolution mail reader installed on a separate hdd partition, it's definitely running on the intel CPU.


US Dell site is pretty clear about Latitude ON, for the E4200:

But EU site says nothing about this... Only Latitude On Reader is mentioned.

Does anyone think I can apply the same rule (SU9400 is ready) for an order on the EU site ? I really don't want to trust my sales representative on this

This will be GPL software, we're supposed to get enough information to rebuild a software image for the embedded CPU, so if Dell doesn't add some features maybe someone else can.

 

Check with the Dell EU rep via email. If you get it in writing and they screw up, they are obliged to fix the issue for you via a replacement.

 

I really don't yet understand how Dell thinks and what the full Latitude ON really is... Will the Latitude ON ECM require to take the laptop apart to install or is in fact the hardware already built in (But only for SU9400 (?)) and the install kit is in fact only a update to the software on the Linux image that has support for things like WLAN, WWAN, Web browser, etc.?
Dell does not even themselves seem to be clear on this point....

And the "late 2008" does not seem possible anymore, I would guess more like jan/feb 2009.

I will order early next year here in Sweden since the Backlight keyboard is not available for order yet. The preliminary date for BL keyboard order availability is 23 dec. I only hope by that time that Dell has made more information available so that I can be sure that the full Latitude ON will be available as an upgrade option (Software only or hardware and software) in the future at a reasonable price.

 

I just found a lot of information regarding the Latitude ON functionality on Dell Support pages:

(Sorry for the broken link below. Remove the spaces and insert dots(.) in the hostname. )

support euro dell com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/dsn/en/document?journalid=5DB483AB8B3D86FFE040AE0AB7E17154&docid=348969

It seems they are getting ready for the actual launch of Latitude ON. Good!

 

Good stuff, thanks. Looks like you can't use any devices at all with LatON except the onboard WiFi. Everything, including HDD/DVD/Modem/Ethernet etc., are turned off to (presumably) conserve power.

 

You can however use your WWAN-connection (Mobile Broadband / GSM /CDMA) which is good!

I think that is a good prioritization. You have WLAN or WWAN more often than Ethernet connection and you have the speakers.

Ok it is somewhat limited in functionality but you get what you most often need when you want a fast booting, instant on, long battery-power computer.


Now it is just a matter of when Dell will actually deliver the functionality and how they will deliver it (upgrade hardware, only software, price, etc.)

 

It seems it uses Evolution for e-mail handling and includes readers for Office documents (Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Adobe PDF)

The browser is Firefox (without Flash support) - Hopefully they will add Adobe Flash support in the future.