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I prefer something I can actually get. Most of the aps on my Wing are open source, and nothing else is filling the OS gap for me on any device I can currently afford.

I'm not opposed to an open source mobile OS, if I could get a slim, functional Ubuntu on my Wing I would be all over it. It appears that some inroads are being made, but nothing is 'ready for the palmtop' yet.

Yes, but that's not the sub-$100 model number. That model is:

CPU:VIA C7-M 1.6GHz 400MHZ FSB
RAM:512 DDR II Memory
HDD:30GB
OS:Linux / Windows XP / Windows Vista
Windows Vista:7" WVGA LED Backlights (800 x 480)
Net work:Wireless Lan 802.11 b/g
                                10/100M Ethernet Controller
Card Reader:Push-push SD socket
Audio:Built-in Microphone and dual speakers
Input/Output:USB 2.0 X 2 VGA
                                            Microphone jack
                                              Headphonejack RJ45
Battery:3 cell/3 hours
Weight:900g (including battery)

Which is NOT the one in the video -- and is not the model number in the video. If that model number IS the sub-$100 notebook, then either the manufacturer's specs are wrong on the site, or they have two models with completely different specs with exactly the same model number.

From http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS9413803799.html (the 6th link when googling for that model number): "HiVision's site, which offers pages devoted to its NBx line of notebooks, but which at press time has yet to post information on the new miniNote, should be available here."

The MiniNote is NOT the NB0700

According to Linuxdevices, the manufacturer was selling them for $180 as of 3 months ago: http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS9047481010.html

$60 in 3 months is a big sudden price drop, and 100% seller markup is pretty hard to believe.

* ARM® Cortexâ-A8 600Mhz+ CPU running Linux * 430-MHz TMS320C64x+â DSP Core * PowerVR SGX OpenGL 2.0 ES compliant 3D hardware * 800x480 4.3" 16.7 million colours touchscreen LCD * Wifi 802.11b/g, Bluetooth & High Speed USB 2.0 Host * Dual SDHC card slots & SVideo TV output * Dual Analogue and Digital gaming controls * 43 button QWERTY and numeric keypad * Around 10+ Hours battery life

It's no Indrema console, and better designed. At $350 per unit, It's not cost effective as a Sony PSP or Nintendo DS, but competitive to a mix between a QWERTY PDA with usable RAM/TV-out/redundant-expansion. In other words, it's a trade-off of a better Motorola A12000 CellPhone without the lock-in, more battery life, and better than the bulk of a laptop.

I'm somewhat nervous towards the that communist KOREA government-sponsored Gamepark Holdings' GP2x Wiz. It may be better designed as a gaming system, but it lacks the keyboarding of a Pandora

Arm9 533mHZ processor, 2.8" oLED touchscreen, 3D Accelerator, and 64MB RAM

GP2x Wiz is looking more like a MagicEyes Pollux SOC board.

Their 'supplier' has changed its licensing terms specifically to put them out of business. Companies get antsy about that.

They mentioned GPL3 in their annual report to the SEC

http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS5304340445.html

In addition, the GNU Public License is subject to occasional revision. A proposal for changing the license from its current form (GPLv2) into a newer, more restrictive version called GPLv3 has been proposed and is currently undergoing community review. If the currently proposed version of GPLv3 is widely adopted, we may be unable to incorporate future enhancements to the GNU/Linux operating system into our software, which could adversely affect our business.

in fact they regard GPL3 as a threat to Linux on the same level as SCO's lawsuit.

Our TiVo software includes parts of the Linux kernel and the GNU/Linux operating system. The Linux kernel and the GNU/Linux operating system have been developed and licensed under the GNU General Public License, version 2 and similar open source licenses. These licenses state that any program licensed under them may be liberally copied, modified, and distributed. The GNU General Public license is a subject of litigation in the case of The SCO Group, Inc. v. International Business Machines Corp., pending in the United States District Court for the District of Utah. SCO Group, Inc., or SCO, has publicly alleged that certain versions of the Linux kernel contain unauthorized UNIX code or derivative works of UNIX code. Uncertainty concerning SCO's allegations, regardless of their merit, could adversely affect our manufacturing and other customer and supplier relationships. It is possible that a court would hold these open source licenses to be unenforceable in that litigation or that someone could assert a claim for proprietary rights in our TiVo software that runs on a GNU/Linux-based operating system. Any ruling by a court that these licenses are not enforceable, or that GNU/Linux-based operating systems, or significant portions of them, may not be liberally copied, modified or distributed, would have the effect of preventing us from selling or developing our TiVo software and would adversely affect our business.

I bet they have a Tivo in the works based on an alternate OS just to cover themselves.

Obviously, there's not a whole lot of independent research out there, but here are some of the claims:

http://talkback.zdnet.com/5208-11408-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=39451&messageID=725468&start=0

http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS7676844023.html

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9007518

Turned out it didn't fully support DMA...??? Like they didn't complete all the traces properly...

This problem is rampant in many flash card models and brands - even ones that claim to support DMA or UDMA. Search around on the interweb using your Napster machine and you'll see many others with the same issues.

After trying a Transcend 4GB 133x that would only work in PIO mode, I got my hands on a Ridata 4GB 266x that *does* work in DMA. So if anyone is considering that card, maybe that's a good sign. :)

Mechanical challenges turned out to be not the only ones waiting for me when I worked on connecting the CF cards to the camera. These cards were hanging when the CPU tried to read them using DMA mode (and the card identified itself as supporting DMA mode). I tried to find the problem, and used all the tools I had. I added a bunch of printk's to the driver source, tried different speed settings for the DMA, and finally used an oscilloscope to spy on the signals between the CF card and the CPU. What I found was that the card did actually send the data using DMA mode, but always only for two "sectors" (1024 bytes total), regardless of the number of blocks to transfer written to the corresponding register. Then it silently hung, without activating an IRQ line, even if it was asked to transfer just a single block. And the CPU was relying on that interrupt to continue with the processing of the data read from the CF card. Careful examination of the data on the IDE bus did not reveal any problems (I was expecting something specific to the ETRAX). The same CF card with the DMA mode disabled in the driver worked fine (but slower, of course), as did the IDE hard drive (or SATA through the bridge) with DMA enabled. Googling the issue showed that I'm not the first to have problems with CF cards and DMA. The driver itself had a blacklist for some of the devices that caused problems. -- http://linuxdevices.com/articles/AT5102023409.html

Wouldn't one of these be even more of a worry? This thing is barely bigger than RJ-45 connector. And it even runs linux.

Before this Flash and Silverlight stuff, wasn't there MPEG streaming? I seem to recall watching streaming video in the mid 90s. IIRC, Flash video hit the big time when they guys who did YouTube used it to show video over dialup to family members. They created YouTube after they realized it was usable and others probably would be interested.

As far as Silverlight goes, from what I've heard, it uses Microsofts VC1 codec which is like streaming WMV files. There is no comparison between Flash FLV streams and Silverlight WMV streams. It seems FLV is light weight and lossy by design while WMV is more akin to standard video streaming.

I also recently saw where Move Networks is supporting Linux MID devices with a video player:
http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS8810160105.html

Move Networks was used with Microsoft's Silverlight to stream the DNC and possibly the Olympics. IIRC, it is an ISP streaming caching system which streams from the ISP network to keep the bandwidth inside that network instead of steaming from the Internet to every client viewer. Could be some UDP or other tech used but the idea is source the stream close to the viewer.

LoB

On usage vs distribution, from Eben Moglen's Questioning SCO paper (my highlighting with bold):

In general, users of copyrighted works do not need licenses. The Copyright
Act conveys to copyright holders certain exclusive rights in their works. So
far as software is concerned, the rights exclusively granted to the holder
are to copy, to modify or make derivative works, and to distribute. Parties
who wish to do any of the things that copyright holders are exclusively
entitled to do need permission; if they don't have permission, they're infringing.
But the Copyright Act doesn't grant the copyright holder the exclusive
right to use the work; that would vitiate the basic idea of copyright.
One doesn't need a copyright license to read the newspaper, or to listen
to recorded music; therefore you can read the newspaper over someone's
shoulder or listen to music wafting on the summer breeze even though you
haven't paid the copyright holder.

....

But don't users of free software make copies, and need a license for
that activity? The Copyright Act contains a special limitation on the exclusive
right to copy with respect to software. It does not infringe the copyright
holder's exclusive right to copy software for the purpose of executing
that software on one machine, or for purposes of maintenance or archiving.
Such copying also requires no license.

Eben has defended the freedom of usage from constraints on several occasions, so it's hard to see how anyone could gain the opposite impression. For example, in his public discussion with Tim O'Reilly he said:

"We've got to conclude that what Google does, they have a right to do in freedom. They shouldn't need anyone's permission to run programs. Stallman was right about that at the very beginning. If you have to ask other people's permission to run a program, you don't have adequate freedom.

I'm not too sure which statement of Stallman's he had in mind there, but it's certainly reflected in the FSF's general position on free use of GPL software.

And presumably this is why the FSF has phrased the GPL to be consistent with the above: the GPL doesn't limit usage whatsoever, only distribution. The GPL is not a usage license, neither by intent as expressed by the FSF ("the freedom to use the software for any purpose"), nor by legal applicability of Copyright as a constraint on use as Eben Moglen explained in the SCO paper.

The company that employs my friend is simply moving away from Linux - to Lynux - look it up.

Just did! ;)

Perhaps you should have been more specific about WHERE to look it up!

Of course, by the time you read this, there's every chance wikipedia's entry will be updated.

I recall an article some time ago in which a Dreamcast could be turned into a Linux server. This may have been the article: http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT7466555948.html

Microsoft is (and has been for a few years now) fighting hard against the Linux tide on the sub-desktop. Currently, they say its 50-50... but that was years ago. I guess that's why the first result in every API search at the time returned the WinCE version.

Fast forward today, and Windows is sliding against the Penguin, which could suggest why the first result in every API search returns the .NET equivalent, and how if you install the Platform SDK, you cannot uncheck the option for .NET embedded APIs.

So.. Linux for the future, I reckon so simply because the biggest and best weathervane for increasing Linux adoption is shouting how worried they are (ie Microsoft). If MS were ignoring Linux and F/OSS then I'd think it was all hype, but as they're coughing up cash for various OSS projects, declaring how open-source friendly they are, creating their own OSS repository sites (codeplex), getting various OSS projects better integrated with Windows.. all that just shows how worried they are, so Linux is a big deal at the moment.

4. Develop a SIMPLE Operating System for it. Linux is way too big for the sort of cheap ARM chips available today. Most modern BSDs are also probably too big. Think much smaller. UNIX used to run on small machines though so it could be POSIXish.

I understand and agree with some of your comments, but this one was just ignorant. I am assuming you have never heard of the linux distros that fit on a floppy? An Example: http://www.linuxdevices.com/links/LK8414188089.html Not only do they fit on a floppy but they typically will have a web browser, FTP,Telnet and SSH.

It's quite sad that Microsoft feels the need to steal the name of an existing browser for their new browser-based project. A simple Google search reveals there's already a Midori browser. The company Steve wants to buy reveals the same thing. Even MSN knows about it, so Live Search isn't left out.

Transmeta even had a Linux distribution meant for Internet appliances called -- you guessed it -- Midori.

How about a little due diligence, Microsoft? Or is the plan to just lie, cheat, steal, and discredit credit-worthy opponents in the eyes of CIOs and the press? What about the new, nicer, more open Microsoft we keep hearing about? Is that just more underhanded marketing building on the goodwill of truly open companies?

no...super computers, especially beowulf clusters (or even the petaboxes)...they are interlinked in some way.

besides, super computers are usually given the designation "cluster" or something of that nature and not the singular "machine"

Encapsulation, scope, etc etc, is 101 stuff. I find it hard to believe any programmer, OSS or not, doesn't know them. Are we talking script kiddies perhaps?

Stripped down Liunx is far from a myth. (Try 50MB DSL http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/) That why it's used in embedded devices. Some of which you can find at:

http://www.linuxdevices.com/

You don't have to start with a big fat distro. A full desktop system is silly for kiosk, I would argue so is x86.

Yes all this can be said for WindowCE (which you should be using over XP any day for this kind of thing!!!), but the difference is that Linux is the same OS, from watch to super computer.

D-Bus dependencies don't seam that crazy if you don't count the all the bindings (if you are including Mono, what did you expect?)

http://www.emdebian.org/packages/search.php?package=dbus

Do you work in the embedded applications industry? I can tell you that Linux is and remains quite toxic to the business community b.c. of the GPL and the perception of substantial legal risk thereof. Cisco for instance is making a push to use a FreeBSD derivate in all of its consumer products--displacing in some cases existing linux based hardware.

Heh, while at the same time embracing Linux for their professional Integrated Services Routers. You may be familiar with the 1841, 28xx and 38xx series? Many people are.

BSD has enjoyed tremendous penetration into the commercial marketplace. Linux is included in a handful of devices--decisions attributable to a wave of linux euphoria which has now mostly dissipated.

Hi! And welcome to this planet. You seem to be a tad out of touch with the current marketplace reality, so let me give you a quick update and assure you that Linux is everywhere.

Some examples:

Hammer MyShare NAS:
http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS9301055710.html

DLink in 2006:
http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS8564956607.html

Compliance reports are here:
http://gpl.nas-central.org/

Some examples:

Hammer MyShare NAS:
http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS9301055710.html

DLink in 2006:
http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS8564956607.html

Compliance reports are here:
http://gpl.nas-central.org/

The Openmoko Website still shows that the phone is sold out. AFAIK, it has been showing this page for the last 5 months. The link given in the post also shows up a blank page, except for some ads. Please, can anyone provide a correct link to the article ?

Still, would be nice to see 'Nokibuntu' or something one day!

How about I call you stupid instead? He did not sign because he does not agree with it.

If his name and words are so important in the community, why doesn't the community listen to him more?

Torvalds called banning binary modules "stupid," and told kernel hackers they should base decisions on technical merit, not political agendas

Mac ... iPod Touch ... iPhone

"It exists malware for both Apple and Linux too, but not in the same volume as for Microsoft's OS:es"

What about on servers, there's an aufull lot of nix boxes out there, with lots of jucy creditcard details on them.

"This way of relaxed behavior is kicking back because it also makes it easy to create malware"

Ease of use doesn't necessarly lead to lax security. A locked down Linux box can still provide a full feeture experience. You can click on URLs and open email attachments with 99.999% safety. Chief reason being that 'OPEN' isn't the same as RUN.

On non Unix platforms, you should run all the security bits on an embedded device, that way the 'malware don't compromise security.

Some operating systems provide a well defined (documented) set of interfaces/APIs/libraries to develop with. Version info included.

Some don't.

The market shows which philosophy is more successful.

Yes, the Webserver market, the embedded market and the supercomputer markets do indeed show which OS is superior.

Thanks for the insight, AC! :)

"How is this any different than what GPL did to BSD?"

"Why does it appear that so many of the new and most actively developed open-source projects these days are being done under the GNU license, rather than the BSD one which proponents say is more business-friendly?"

I went on to read their in-depth article (linked to the main article) at http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS8981295285.html and I found this:

"Another touted benefit is the ability to consolidate control- and data-plane functions on a single device, with "solid-wall" processor boundaries reinforcing security and licensing containment barrier. In this regard, the Tile64 chip resembles another heavily multicore MIPS64 chip, Cavium's 16-way Octeon."

Does anyone know what the heck a "licensing containment barrier" is? It definitely sounds like a performance hit if it's turned on. And if it's forced to have it on then this design just lost a lot of its sex-appeal.

A good idea to add to that you can put a small embedded system in there that could slurp off of any network link. I'm thinking something like this would be cool.

http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS8386088053.html

He who controls the bootloader determines which systems is used by the general population. Ubuntu is already easier to install and maintain that WIndows, as are most linux distros. The barrier is that they have to be installed, for the most part. That's being beaten by pre-installed Linux. But notice that there are no dual boot machines on the market that also boot to Xp. There are dual boot like the PS3, but no dual boot with Windows. Afraid someone will compare the systems, or what?

http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT9423084269.html

you can buy consumer hardware and run android on it today.. there's a good summary of what has been done at http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS4262102607.html

I am running the zaurus version which uses Poky linux as its base, and it looks quite cool. Admittedly, it is a bit of a hack, as it's not fully working, but it's much better than using a desk-bound virtual machine!

Aha! Just blame slashdot and their biased descriptions (though to be fair, I even googled their company and found no mention of such things). And look! Their device ran linux! Back off all, I'm pretty sure Linux bias still trumps Apple bias!

In all seriousness, maybe they do have a case then.

Not if the flash drive is comprised of 5 or 10 of these or something similar: http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS5845259932.html

Sure, it may be convenient for chips/modules to be powers of 2, but not necessary in the case of flash.

Sure. I've also heard of Intel selling off XScale to Marvell. If they sold off their line of ARM chips, maybe it's because they can do better with a new product like the Atom. There would be little sense in holding on to XScale if it were made obsolete by an in-house competitor.

That'll teach me to lift a hyperlink from a third-party page and not check it first. Let alone research it thoroughly.

http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT2772260294.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indrema

Also, it apparently never saw the light of day.

I've been toying with an idea for something like this for a while. For my own living room of course, not as a business venture.

From Linux Devices: http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS5492118276.html

ARM vs. Atom

There's much to like about the Intel Atom, writes Williston in EETimes. Yet, he suggests, the media and its readers may have been overwhelmed by the hype machine. Williston offers the following responses to typical arguments from the atomic power lobbyists, at times quoting analysts such as Forward Concepts's Will Strauss to back him up:
Atom will beat ARM because it can run Vista. -- No it can't, says Williston. Atom can run Windows CE and Linux, but ARM can do the same.

Only Atom offers a "real" Internet experience with Flash video, YouTube, etc. -- "Wrong," writes Williston, pointing to ARM Flash players from BSquare, and an ARM-based YouTube decoder from On2. He might also have noted that Nokia's ARM- and Linux-based Internet tablets use a Mozilla-based browser, with plugins for Flash, Windows Media files, and even Microsoft's Flash-like Silverlight technology.

Intel dominates every market it enters. Here, the writer refers the reader to the history books, especially two years ago when Intel sold its PXA line of embedded processors to Marvell after failing to dominate the market for ARM-based SoCs.

Atom will win because ARM is proprietary technology. Nope, he writes. ARM chips are available from a number of semiconductor vendors.

Intel will win on cost. Not likely, he writes. Using a 65nm process, the Cortex-A8 occupies less than 3mm x 3mm, he notes, while the Atom core probably takes up about 9mm x 9mm of Atom's 25mm x 25mm die size, despite its smaller 45nm process. "With such a huge area disadvantage, it's hard to see how Intel will win on cost," he writes.

Intel will win on power. Once again, not likely, he argues. Intel quotes a thermal design power (TDP) of 0.6W to 2W for Atom, he writes, but doesn't specify clock speeds. ARM offers only "typical" power measurements, making comparison difficult. But at best, he suggests, Intel matches ARM on power usage, while "in most scenarios, Atom burns more power."

Intel will win because it has the most advanced fabs. Perhaps, he writes, but who cares? "Consumers focus on cost, power and speed," he writes.

Linux is used a lot in the actual EFPOS terminals, particurly in Europe where the numbers are way higher than the corresponding US numbers.

The PC is the mainframe... The people worrying about MS Exchange are like mainframe developers predicting or worrying about some obscure business application. It's irrelevant. You're 3, 5 years behind the times already.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(mobile_phone_platform)
http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS8591201260.html
http://www.symbian.com/phones/index.html

This is the now, not the future, Microsoft have already lost, and they have admitted it. All their Windows mobile devices?

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/pocketpc/default.mspx?curPg=All

Almost all, industrial applications.

I really like my Sansa Connect WiFi enabled player with the Yahoo Music Unlimited service. I knew there was trouble ahead but I figured it would still work as a regular mp3 player once Yahoo Music Unlimited goes dark. The Sansa Connect runs Linux and uses Mono. Time to start hacking. A general purpose WiFi internet radio receiver would be cool. You can find Sansa Connects for under $90 as recently as last week and probably less next week.

There are worst-time patches and CPU binding patches for Linux. Not only that, but many embedded applications are not, in fact, in need of an RTOS at all. Linux won't displace QNX, LynxOS, and VxWorks completely, but to say it's not making gains in the embedded space is either disingenuous or ignorant of the facts.

It'd also be pretty big news to, for example, MontaVista, Nokia, Cisco, and the BlueCat folks that embedded Linux isn't making any sales.

Marketing department? God I know. That site is horrible.

A better review is here

It looks like they are caring about the hacker community. Whats cool about it is not only does it support Wifi but SMS messaging.

Accurate lip-reading techniques would be of enormous benefit for agencies involved in counter-terrorism and other law-
enforcement areas. Unfortunately, there are very few skilled lip-readers, and it is apparently a difficult skill to transmit,
so the area is under-resourced. In this paper we investigate the possibility of making the lip-reading task more amenable
to a wider range of operators by enhancing lip movements in video sequences using active appearance models. These are
generative, parametric models commonly used to track faces in images and video sequences. The parametric nature of the
model allows a face in an image to be encoded in terms of a few tens of parameters, while the generative nature allows
faces to be re-synthesised using the parameters. The aim of this study is to determine if exaggerating lip-motions in video
sequences by amplifying the parameters of the model improves lip-reading ability. We also present results of lip-reading
tests undertaken by experienced (but non-expert) adult subjects who claim to use lip-reading in their speech recognition
process.

I dont get why slashdot needs two posts about OLPC per day when stuff like really available and accessible cheap open source laptops like Zonbu go largely unnoticed.

* Performance:
o Access time -- 30 to 100 microseconds
o Burst transfer rate -- 300 MB/sec.
o Sustained transfer rate -- up to 100 MB/sec.
o I/O operations per second -- Up to 20,000
* Environmental specifications:
o Operating temperature 0-70 degrees C ("commercial" range), -40 to +85 degrees C ("industrial" range)
o Shock (operating) -- 1,250 G
o Vibration (operating) -- 16.4 G rms
* Reliability:
o MTBF -- 1.9 million hours, minimum
o Error correction -- corrects up to 9 random bit errors per 528-byte block
o Data integrity -- up to ten years
o Read endurance -- unlimited
* Physical specifications:
o Form-factor -- 2.5-inch HDD
o Dimensions -- 2.75 x 3.95 x 0.93 inches (69.85 x 100.45 x 23.55 mm) maximum, storage capacities 64 GB and below are 0.33 inches thick
o Weight -- 2.9 to 7.8 ounces (83 to 221 grams)

Does have Linux, if you go to the White Box Robotics website, they have a version with Ubuntu. That's the "Player" software on their site. Since they're running mini-ITX motherboards, Linux should run OK. Not cheap, the MS version is ~ $8K, with the Linux version at ~$6.8K.
For my money, I'd spend $350 and get the Pleo, it does run Linux on an ARM CPU. Would be more fun to work with too! http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS9421520726.html

I sent this letter to NetGear a few days ago:
--cut here--
I like the fact you are using Linux in some of your products, as seen here:
http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS3943657768.html

A product I and I am sure many other enthusiasts are interested in:

A line of inexpensive, small, software-reconfigurable "appliance" computers
that can be easily repurposed by reloading different software. I would like a
vendor who provides a supported "image" for various applications but who allows
custom applications to be loaded at will.

Such an appliance would have one or more of the following options:
- a drive bay or bays, for use as a NAS server
- USB port or ports for printers, scanners, drives, or other devices, for use
as a device server
- 3 or more ethernet ports that can be put on separate networks or used in a
one-IP-addressable-port/two bridged ports for use as firewall device
- wireless network or networks for use as a wireless router, access point, or
repeater
- CPUs and support chips of various price points and capabilities to match
various loads. A typical home/SOHO configured as a WAP+firewall+printer
sharer+NAS would likely need a medium-performance board, a home/SOHO configured
for one of those purposes would need a low-performance board, and a gamer would
need a high-performance board.

I would expect a "bare bones" setup that only did one function with light duty
to start well under $50, with high-end systems going for several hundred plus
the cost of high-end wireless transmitters, drives and cases for drives, etc.

The most important feature of this line would be customization:

A user who needs features supported by the hardware but not the firmware should
be free to customize the firmware to his heart's content. The only exceptions
would be for the brick-recovery emergency-boot firmware which should be
read-only. Individual physical subsystems such as the wireless transmitter,
USB hardware, ethernet hardware, SATA hardware, etc. should of course enforce
regulatory and standards compliance.
--cut here--

Please send your own letter to NetGear thanking them for choosing open-source. Better yet, buy products that use embedded open-source.

Surely you meant to bring up the mobile-ITX form factor, which is half the size ;)

Yeah, because there haven't been 386, 486, and other systems on a chip and Via doesn't have a 1-watt processor anywhere to be found. This is not the first 1-chip chipset for all of the x86 line. That's bullshit. An SoC is even more integrated than just having the chipset as one chip. Somebody never read the old Computer Shopper before it slimmed down. SoC solutions for x86-compatible systems have been around more than a decade. The summary is bad, because TFA does not say this is a first for the x86 line.

You're right that even low-powered x86 chips like the C7 and the Geode line are generally no match for ARM and XScale. MIPS I'm not as familiar with for power usage purposes. It'd be nice if that question was answered, but I'm afraid it'd be summarized incorrectly too.

2005 article on anx86 SoC
another 2005 article about a different x86 SoC
2004 product page for an already obsolete x86 SoC
Linux Devices list of x86 SoC solutions, some dated to 2000
2000 Register article about the year since Cyrix released an x86 SoC
Chipslist page showing availability of AMD processor with 80188 features plus DMA, watchdog timer, serial ports, and I/O pins in 1995
article on the National Semiconductor Geode (the owners of that line before AMD bought it) thin client system-on-chip

And the best proof of all: an archive of a 1996 story on the AMD Elan,which featured a 386, ISA bus, serial UART, memory controller, power management, and PLL hardware ON ONE CHIP