Precision Instant ON

Hey I bought a M4500 over the summer (and its pretty awesome)
But I didn't get the Instant ON feature, not the reader, not the flash
Kind of assumed at the time it was some kind of bloatware.

From those of you that actually have it, what do you think about it?
Do you use it?

I've been thinking about trying to either install the hardware for it myself, or somehow re-purpose the button next to my power button lol Any ideas?
(Obviously going through Dell sales doesn't work)

 

Avoid it. Not only is it pointless, but it can cause error messages in Windows. Basically, Windows 7 will boot in less time than it takes to enter the mandatory password in this really limited, quirky, glitch prone Linux distro. With Ubuntu Lite on the way, it looks like Latitude On/Precision On might bite the dust. Having sampled it, I can say I'd pay extra not to have it.

Do yourself a favor and set up a simple dual boot setup of Windows 7 and Ubuntu 10.10.

 

My suggestion is to make sure you know what Instant On is before investing time to install it.

These links may help:

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/latON/en/SG/SG_EN.pdf

How Do I Set Up and Use the Dell? Latitude ON? Desktop? | Dell

I did not find it to be a valuable feature and did not reinstall it when reinstalling Windows.

 

Well the idea of the a secondary flash based OS on one button sounded pretty cool, and with no one I know with the actual feature, I thought I'd ask here lol

Once I get the minipcie ssd I'll probably dual boot with a nice light distro of something, or just stick with windows 7. I uninstalled all of the dell software that came with this computer save the webcam program, but once I get my SSD, I'll wipe the entire thing.

So Instant-On is pretty much worthless then? Is there anything I can do with this button?

 

Someone had figured out how to remap the MediaDirect button on the older Inspirons. My 1520 had the MediaDirect button, but I never did get around to following the guide to remap it.

Maybe that will help?

 

Yea I was wondering that too...hate to let a perfectly good button go to waste if there's some way to remap it to something

 

Yeah I found that
Dell :: Remap MediaDirect Button To Boot An OS

It would be pretty awesome if you could use it as a dual boot option for your own instant os. Like the netbook version of ubuntu or a 5 second distro , maybe an OS with only remote desktop utilities?

OR IF IT COULD FIRE A LASER AND DESTROY THE MOON

but i digress

 

If you have Windows 7 on a SSD, boot times should be fast enough there would be no problem always booting to Windows.

 

I agree, but having a second OS on touch still sounds pretty awesome to me
And I hear you can get boot times down to about 20 secs if you do things right, but I wouldn't mind having a 10 sec linux distro. Plus I use that for work anyways haha

 

So apparently you can enable Dell Precision On Reader even if you didn't order it with your unit... you just have to update the bios and then it appears lol Sales support won't tell you that, they kept telling me the reader bit was a hardware thing (and they even charge you a dollar for the feature when you buy). Either way I tested it out and it sucks.

Now I'm looking at replacing it and I found this
Dell Latitude E4300 [Linux Laptop Wiki]
apparently you can replace the functionality of the button on the e4300... so what about the precisions?
And just following the same instructions doesn't seem to work...