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Taiwan Mobile Computing Industry Adopting Crusoe
plaXion writes, "California's Transmeta Corp said on Monday Taiwan's key computer manufacturing industry was already adopting one of its new chips as a de facto industry standard for new mobile 'Web pads.'" It's a New York Times story, free registration required to read.
It seems that the mobile devices arena has three distinct threads, MS in one corner with WindowsCE, the old boys of Psion in association with Symbian (Nokia, Ericsson et al) and the EPOC OS, and now Transmeta and Linux.
Its going to be interesting to see what happens as their currently differing market places begin to combine with the mainstream.
What are the advantages of Mobile Linux over EPOC ?
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Anyone else get the feeling that Transmeta has based their entire business plan on dangling this low-power, VLSM carrot in front of our nose? Every week, we get some kind of new announcment that makes us go "oh.. so they are still doing SOMETHING". Not to complain, really.. I just want one of these web pads. By summer, transmeta's going to have us begging them to let us pre-register to be entered into a random lottery to see the design specs for one of these things.
and we love it.
//Phizzy
"Most European technology just isn't worth our stealing," -- Former CIA chief James Woolsey, referring to Echelon
The nyt article mentions the computer industry only once. The rest of the article makes it sound as though Taiwan itself had by government directive unanimously decided to adopt Transmeta chips. The NYTs article sounds more like a Transmeta press release than a serious piece of journalism.
Transmeta's announcements are so vague, it makes makes Microsoft's release dates seem to be written in stone. Come on 'key computer manufacturing industry'. Give us names, release dates, specs. OK, enough of the frustration. I think it is inherent to the policy of secrecy that Transmeta had, that we have to wait a while before we see the first products. Compare it to Bluetooth. It is one thing to have a chip. It is another to have something working based on that chip.
The Main thing I would love this Transmeta stuff for is to act like a pc that I can lug around and that communicates with my server to show me what is on the screen there. It would be great to cuddle up in the couch and watch a movie on that screen or go to class and make notes on it and then have them stored instantly on my server at home. Here on campus there is a program called Wireless Campus and I think these things would fit in nice. Espescially if you can hook it up with a Bluetooth enabled keyboard, for the things you dont like to do writing. I am really anxious to see what will be shown at CEBIT in 2 days.
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So, when will we be able to buy a Transmeta version of what Jumptec has done for AMD with their DIMM PC, and what Cell Computing has done for Intel with their PNR?
I've been resisting buying Cell Computing's latest with a view to buying an equivalent Transmeta module for my own wearable dabblings... But I can only wait so long. :-)
--The more you know, the less you know.
What does it mean to say that "Taiwan ... had rushed to adopt the company's low-power Crusoe chips using the Mobile Linux operating system."??
Taiwan is a free capitalist country. "Taiwan" doesn't decide to do anything - individual companies do. Replace "Taiwan" with "US" and you'll see how ridiculous the quote is.
And it seems like a gross exaggeration to say that "The entire island of Taiwan is standardising on these mobile devices using Mobile Linux and Crusoe"? I doubt the "entire island of Taiwan" is standardizing on anything.