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Crusoe WebPads By FIC
p0rkmaster writes "Found a nugget in a Tom's Hardware Guide report from Computex in Taipei - FIC was showing off TransMeta Crusoe 'WebPads' " Interesting specs, but no comment on what OS it's running, or on the type of wireless LAN used. If it's Linux and 802.11, we may have a winner ...
I may be totally wide of the mark here, but does this spell trouble for Palm? Not just from the increased competition, but the Nerd factor must surely be in favour of Transmeta now.
I won't say your off the mark, more that you probably just hang out with geeks. In my experience Palms have brought us much closer to ubiqitous computing than MSFT, Intel and Apple combined. The palm is the only device I have seen turn people both young and old (teens to people in their mid-fifties) into blubbering nerds. I seen people from diverse cultural and economic backgrounds become enraptured with a Palm due to it's simplicity, usefulness and all around coolness. No tech-company today can say that their device elicits squeals of delight both from college students and CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.
Basically what I am trying to say is that Palms attract a lot more people than just nerds and even amongst the nerds that are attracted a lot of them aren't the slashdot-type/linux/free-software/hardware-hacker type, so thinking that some product will steal market share from Palm simply because Linux geeks will want to buy Transmeta is a false assumption.
...What I don't like about my Palm V is the lack of color, lack of memory, lack of CPU, lack of small removable storage. And better sound capability. I want to be able to toss out my portable MP3 player and just swap memory sticks in and out of my PDA with a good set of earphones. And to be able to plug in a small game controller and play stuff on it as well. There goes the Gameboy. Heck, even small movies on that screen if the removable storage has the space...
Ick. You almost perfectly described a WinCE/PocketPC device. So why haven't you bought one yet, then?
Ick is a relative term. I sorta want one too... but I'd have to find or write a program to throttle down the CPU and power down the screen, I think, when it's playing MP3s. It'd be nice to be able to play music for 10 hours, even if you're doing nothing else with it!
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
I am pretty sure you can squeeze an MPEG-2 stream (DVD) over an 1MBps connection; there are a coupla companies already working on video over DSL, so it has to.
engineers never lie; we just approximate the truth.
Here's an article (in english) from the Taipei Times, "Linux the most popular flavor among IA makers":
"If the display booths of companies at a trade show in Taipei is any measure, Taiwanese manufacturers of Internet appliances are enthusiastically adopting Linux-based operating systems..."
Basically, the article says that Linux is the most popular candidate for IA devices; that Transmeta CEO Dave Ditzel has been in Taiwan, pushing the Crusoe; and that IBM is reportedly planning a Crusoe-based notebook. Of particular note, Taiwan companies also find Linux's foreign language capabilities to be of prime importance.
The Aqua is 1.5 pounds, the Palm is lighter then a can of soda. The Aqua is the size of a sheet of paper (B4 paper), the screen alone is 7.5 inches. The Palm fits in my pocket. My shirt pocket if I'm not wearing a tee shirt. The Aqua's battries last about 7 to 8 hours. The Palm's battries last well over a month.
Either the Aqua sucks big rocks, or the Aqua is aimed at a totally diffrent set of problems.
I'll admit, they have a lot of geek appeal. But they have a broader base then that. My lawyer has one. My accountant has one (he promised me he only keeps names, phone numbers, and meeting times, not account numbers in it). The guy behind the desk at the car dealer thought it was cool, and was thinking of getting one "if only they were cheaper". Lots of executaves seem to have them. So I'de say the geeks arn't the big market segment there.
Of corse, fewer geeks would mean fewer after merket doo-dads for it. Certinally no more pocket Rouge.
I thought so. I want one too. But it will never replace my Pilot (Visor actually). It's way too big. I might take it into boring meetings to fiddle around with (we have 802.11b at work). I'll use it at home, maybe. But it won't come to lunch with me. It won't go out on weekends. It won't even go into work every day.
I doubt anyone who has a Palm will stop using it after buying a Webpad.
P.S. the Moto 680x0 (or CPU32/DragonBall) in the Pilot is one of the few CPUs other then the x86 that the Crousoe could emulate quite well (similar ALU flags, Crousoe's 44ish registers are enough to deal witht he 16 in the 68010, and the non-IEEE FP in the Crouse won't stop it from emulating a CPU with no FP at all). So if push came to shove, Palm could "upgrade" to a Crosue. If they could solve the battrey problem -- the Crouse uses more then a DragonBall by a longshot. More even then the ARM which is what slashdot rand a bizzare story saying that's what Palm is going with.
Instead of camping out in airplane bathrooms, why don't you just buy a spare battery? Delivery guaranteed to be earlier than your Crusoe laptop.
is the (IMO, detrimental) way they change the relationship between user and content. Content has to be dumbed down to use a click-only interface, or in some cases perhaps extensive customization from another computer to make click-navigation possible (like setting up your stock portfolio for easy quote checks, lining up bookmarks, etc). Most sites (and it's not their fault) simply wont' allow complex navigation using only clicks.
... I'm partial to clicky, some people like silent, and there are plenty of radical designs like the kinesis which I think I'd like as well. Or the twiddler, or the BAT, or anything other than scribbling on glass one letter at a time. Typing may tear the wrists, but it does free the thoughts ...
Let me rephrase: If I can't enter text easily, it's only a toy!
Web TV may offer horrible resolution, slow speed, generally weak user interface, but you know what? It's possible to send email with the chintzy wireless keyboard. Not joyous, but possible.
But with all the processing power built into these various transmeta devices, they will be more like sort-of-interactive picture frames (the constant smirking references to their pornographic applications are really not far off, I think) than the superby useful and fun things they could be, unless there is adequate text-entry means.
Does anybody code using graffiti? Does anyone like drawing up proposals using any kind of handwriting recognition? Maybe a few do, but even those I can just betcha would prefer, given adequate space and barring extraordinary circumstances, to have a "real" keyboard (however defined)
(What if I want to search on google for the name of a friend, and that name has upwards of 20 letters?)
Again, so long as keyboards will work via USB or other ports, then OK, ok, I give, uncle, mercy, etc. I'll get a happy hacking keyboard or similar and be done with it, and if I ever
overcome my Mr.T-like fear of airplanes and leave Iceland, my seatmates will just have to deal.
timothy
(In answer to the obvious, No, and no. Just kidding.)
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
The wireless networking support isn't really a concern, as these devices will not have native wireless lan support. They simply have a PCMCIA/CardBus port where you could plug in a Wavelan board or something similiar. The S3 linux tablet that Transmeta demo'ed at the Crusoe launch had 802.11b support, this was just done via PCMCIA board.
I remember that when I watched the Transmeta unveiling, that they said that the 3200 (or 3150 as I believe it was called then) was a Linux optimized chip, and the 7000something was the Windows optimized chip. This uses a 3200. So, it sounds like it runs Linux.
"The Aqua, which should be ready for volume production by November, comes with a Transmeta Crusoe processor, a Linux OS and a Sony Memory Stick port, said Julia Kuo, a project manager for the company."
Just spoke to the folks at FIC about a release date and they are saying third quarter of 2000. They are also saying that a real prototype doesn't even exist!!! (Where'd they get that nifty little device posed on the site that's stirring up all this conversation?)
reality master, you must repeat your 101 "basics of reality" class. There is no f-ing way that is a picture of a prototype. But I think the rant stands. Gimme 1000x800, touchy, and wireless. About the size of a drawing pad. For $1000. (or $999 at Donny's Discount Laptops)
--
+&x
>If it's Linux and 802.11, we may have a winner .
So, if it ran BSD, this is NOT a win?
This unit is too big to be a PDA. "The PDA Market" has shown large PDA's don't sell well.
Without Applications - a method to make this UNIT useful, it won't be a "winner".
There are plenty of places where this unit can be a win...just not in the palm pilot space, where size, battery life and cost rule.
A good place for thsi unit is in the 'roving inside your business comminicating data' market. Or, in the bathroom giving you something to read. Even here, if the backend of the company is Windows based, the only hope for pad-to-backend intergration is XML or a custom App. Given how well custom apps were rewarded by Apple/Newton, not many people will want to go that way.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
I've seen the Symbol devices, as well as a near clone made by Olivetti. The cost of integration is way too high.
I appreciate the pointer anyway, AC..
.sig: Now legally binding!
I may be totally wide of the mark here, but does this spell trouble for Palm? Not just from the increased competition, but the Nerd factor must surely be in favour of Transmeta now.
Part of the Palm's success (I'd guess) was its appeal to nerds; and when one nerd brought his to a LUG, suddenly everyone else had to have one too.
But luggers are more likely, are they not, to opt for something made by a company for which The Creator works?
Just a thought.
PS oh, I want one. As well as my palm.
The website mentiones 802.11b specifically as an example of their RF card. It's probably a safe assumption that they use 802.11 as their RF standard.
Now if we can only get confirmation that it runs Linux....
The Second Amendment Sisters
Finding God in a Dog
I think it's definitely cool, but I don't see where they're going with it.
"Aqua is weighing less than 1.5 lbs., measuring under B5 letter size, offers a charitable 7.4"/8.2" DSTN LCD"
What exactly do they mean by "charitable"?
The specs mention DVD. I wonder if this means the DVD player is in the base unit (referred to as its "Access Point")... probably not, because the RF wouldn't have the bandwidth to support DVD.
Or would it? I don't see where you'd put a DVD in the handheld webpad, yet the specs have it mentioned. Could this just be a buzzword seed?
I definitely like the concept. I'd buy one right now if it were available, but in the meantime - my I-Opener will have to do the job.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Even though I'm a Palm user, I don't much like the idea of inputting URLs, name & address, or credit card details through a stylus.
The simplest solution is voice input, though that would probably consume far too much power, and may not be ideal in a living room shared with other people. More complex solutions might work, e.g. the TV has an 802.11b or Bluetooth link, or even IrDA, and beams URLs of current programmes and adverts to all and sundry. Of course, there are some security issues - if you are watching the porn channel, Bluetooth would beam the hot URLs everywhere, including outside your house... Encryption might be a good idea here, which 802.11b has, though it's far too expensive for a mass market TV.
The TV industry is looking at broadcasting URLs and small amounts of data alongside the video signal, so that is taken care of, though I don't know the details.
To Paraphrase from the Crusoe launch, because it will last much much longer on the same battery. The analogy that was put forth at the launch was good: Imagine you have two cars - Intel, which will go 100MPH and will travel 100 Miles on a tank of gas, and Crusoe, which only does 90, but will travel 300 miles on the same tank of gas. Have you ever had a long or even coast to coast plane flight? Ever try to get any WORK done on that flight? I once, after draining my battery camped out in the bathroom of the plane for like 1/2 an hour - doing work and charging the battery. :-) Basically I left the bathroom once the flight attendant started persistantly bugging me - I told her I was sick, but she was still mad at me, and I STILL didn't get enough of a charge out of the bathroom to finish the flight. A Crusoe based device will SOLVE that problem for me, big time. Not to mention long car trips. With the advent of cellular modems (it's like a Cell Phone/Modem in one PCMCIA card) I never even need to be offline ever again (assuming I can use it with this device - if not, I'll wait for one that does what I need) and that would be a HUGE help!
Hey Rob, Thanks for that tarball!
Scott
"Going to war without France is like going deer hunting without your accordion." - Jed Babbin
The "Windows-specific" optimizations (according to IEEE Spectrum is merely support for the 16-bit operations. Apparently (a) Windows still has a ton of 16-bit code in performance critical areas, and (b) nobody at Transmeta realised it before their first CPU (the article said they were pretty much all Unix heads).
I find it a little supprising that they didn't do a better job of checking the dyanmic instruction mix of popular OSes and applications (maybe using bochs) before spinning Si, but what the hell.
In any even the 400Mhz CPU will run Windows (or anything else a x86 CPU can run), and so can the 700Mhz chip. It's just when running Linux (or any all 32bit OS) more of hte transistors of the 700Mhz part will go to waste, and while running Windows the 400Mhz CPU will spend more time in the slow part of the emulator...
Nasty compromises? I know of companies still using Tandy portables for warehouse stock entry! They're paying around $400 a pop to get refurb units as well.
Why? Long battery life, nearly indestructable, decent input provisions, and you can plug a barcode scanner in. Going with a NCR barcode scanner syatem is prohibitivly expensive and you get shit battery life, and Palm doesn't give you a flexible enough interface nor the indestructability you need.
If they can make these things as indestructable as the Tandy, and offer better battery life for under a grand, I'm willing to bet POS and stocktracking will earn them a tidy sum before the geeks and marketroids even get into the game..
.sig: Now legally binding!
Oh yeah, the direct link is here.
--sugarman--
That is indeed a functioning prototype.
Here it is on the Mobile Linux Web site.
Read the press release:
Demo 2000 Conference, Indian Wells, Calif. - February 7, 2000 - Be Incorporated (Nasdaq: BEOS) today announced the selection of its just-announced BeIA(TM) software platform for Internet appliances by First International Computer (FIC).
BeOS - free.be.com
Except for the mix of things it says it supports, such as USB and DVD, which unfortunately are currently easier to support on Windows.
The last thing you want to do on a webpad is tell people "sorry, you have to be a techie to use that device" or "sorry, you can't play that DVD on there because it's illegal".
As cool as we think these things are, we aren't the market.
We need to fix the problem, the companies won't.
--
I seem to remember that the 400Mhz Crusoe was meant for Linux while the 700Mhz one was for Windows. That would imply that this runs Lunux.
I don't see a problem. the resolution is 640x480, or 480x640 in the default portrait mode. Since most web pages are designed to be viewable on just over half of an 800x600 display (i.e. about 400x600), this device should display such pages adequately. If you want a larger web pad, these already exist.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
I should patent this idea-- but I'm sure that my home network connection would be DoS'ed because of it. ;)
|\_________|
|_\ _______|
|__\_______|
|___\8_____|6
|____\0____|4
|_____\0___|0
|______\___|
|_______\__|
|________\_|
|_________\|
`----------'
<--- 480--->
I won't attempt to draw a PDA in ASCII tilted at an angle, but I think you can get an idea of what I'm getting at here.
This UI idea Copyright (c) 2000 Simon Janes, released under the terms of the GNU General Public License. If theres "prior art", I'll happily concede credit to the original inventor. :)
They say that everyone makes stuff to scratch and itch, and I'll bet you're wondering what mine was: It was listening to you people bitch and moan about this particular web-pad not being 800x600 or 1024x768! ;)
_______
computers://use.urls. People use Networds.
Love that language in the page, though. Favorite phrases include:
[rant gun to full power]
If I want a Palm, I'll get a palm. When I heard "web pad", I pictured a notebook-sized unit with an 800x600 or 1024x768 screen, say about 1/2" thick that I could toss around the living room. At least, I think that was the unit described at the (in)famous Transmeta coming out party.
This is totally worthless for surfing the web. The technology is there for a real web pad... my IBM laptop's screen is only a half-inch thick. Put the electronics and battery around the sides of the screen and boom! instant web pad, the way it should be.
Come on Crusoe licensees, get a clue. If you want to make a Palm, make a palm. But don't call it a web pad when the SCREEN IS TOO SMALL TO SURF THE WEB.
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Personally I prefer something with the size of the Palm. I like something I can shove in a shirt pocket or pants pocket. With a device like that, I think you're best off building to a form factor and shoving everything you can into it. A webpad doesn't have that easy ability to be carried around with me at all times. Given what I'm sacrificing in functionality, that is the only thing the PDA really has going for it.
What I don't like about my Palm V is the lack of color, lack of memory, lack of CPU, lack of small removable storage. And better sound capability. I want to be able to toss out my portable MP3 player and just swap memory sticks in and out of my PDA with a good set of earphones. And to be able to plug in a small game controller and play stuff on it as well. There goes the Gameboy. Heck, even small movies on that screen if the removable storage has the space.
A webpad just doesn't do that for me. A webpad might work strictly as a specialized input device that I used strictly to enter data now and then and to dump immediately into a computer or into my PDA. But I wouldn't keep anything standing on it. Or with wireless capability as a remote terminal, which again puts it more in the data input category and ability to view remote data. Or if they used the size to have a DVD-ROM drive built into the thing, which is about the only thing that might justify the form factor. Even then I might just break down and go to a laptop.
A webpad strikes me as one of those nasty compromises that gives you the worst of two worlds. Not as large and comfortable and powerful as a laptop and not as conveniently portable as a PDA. As others have noted, this is where the Newton died. Ergonomics are critical for a device like this, and webpads just don't do it for me there.
The report at Heise (german) says it will run embedded Linux.
might want to consider the Vadem Clio. You can pick up a reconditioned C1000 factory direct for $600. 640x480x256 (or 65K colors with the C1050), workable keyboard, acts as a laptop or flip down the LCD on top of the keboard and you've got a webpad. PCMCIA slot, takes flash memory. try 12 hours of battery life.
see www.clio.com. and no, I'm not gonna give you that in html; you like your keyboard so much, right?
and Linux is already ported to it, see www.linux-vr.org.
just waiting to get the damn PCMCIA-CF adapter in the mail, and I'll be going to town on it.
*urp!*
These webpads would be a rad idea if they were cheaper and larger. Does anyone remember the webpad deceloped by Cyrix a year or so ago? That sucker was pretty nice sized and did most if not all the things this little bitch does. The main difference was running a MediaGX chip rather than a Crusoe. Personally I think the MediaGX idea was better becayse it incorporated the media processing on the chip so you needed less internal components for decent performance. These webpads are also teeny tiny with a 7.4 inch screen. How am I supposed to sit around looking at news and porn on such a screen? The smallest screen I want is 9 inches with about 800x600 resolution. The WebPlayer by Virgin has the right idea for a web console. You buy it on a lease-to-own basis (50$ per year) and get internet service bindled with it. It isn't portable but something similar could be made portable. I want a webpad for checking out websites from the couch so I can use my DSL with an RF networking card rather than WebTV or something along those lines. I think this was posted due to the trend factor of it having a Crusoe processor. I really hope we start seeing some decent Crusoe based designs rather than underpowered overpriced Palm VII's.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
I agree, but for a different reason. For Crusoe to take off in the mobile market, its inherent low power must not be compromised by power-guzzling components used around it, as in the case of the Webpad.
A mere 5-6 hours mobile use between charges is ridiculous for a truly mobile device, it's as bad as a laptop. Compare that to the 3 months on a pair of AAA batteries for the Palm -- it's no comparison at all. Crusoe-based webpads need to strike a happy medium to be useful, something like a week's use between charges, otherwise there'll be nothing special about Crusoe-based equipment and people will stick with tried-and-tested technology instead.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
You're looking at the Genesis 2000, which is another beast altogether: the CPU is listed as an "NS Geode GXLV 233MHz processor".
:-) It seems to compete directly with the Corel/Rebel Netwinder.
The lack of built-in video display in the G2K kinda limits its use as a webpad.
The Webpad in contrast *is* Crusoe and Linux-based, as is readily apparent from the link off www.mobilelinux.com.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
In that case we'll all be buying the Yopy instead of Webpads, since "third quarter of 2000" really means mid-2001 in the shops, earliest.
I wish these damn mobile computers didn't have to be made with colour displays for marketing reasons though, as the resulting poor battery life makes them almost unsuitable for their main target market. We need something between laptop power consumption and the Palm's three-months-on-two-AAAs frugality, say a week's use between charges. The Yopy's StrongArm is even more frugal than the Crusoe, but the colour LCD makes that irrelevant. Bleh.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello