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Thinkpads For Penguin Lovers: Q3 2000

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the the-fray-intensifies dept.

MikeFM writes: "It looks like IBM is set to release Linux Thinkpads! This is great news to my ears. I am just holding out for a Transmeta powered Linux Thinkpad and then I can be happy. I do hope these Thinkpads are compatible with other versions of Linux though. I always use either Debian or Mandrake. Being that these would have limited use as a server I'd probably go w/ Mandrake." Question is, why so long? Thinkpads have been running Linux for a long time, after all.

3 of 129 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Transmeta/Crusoe news by Sir_Winston · · Score: 5

    The only problem is, a 1 GHz Crusoe chip wouldn't perform as well as an equivalently clocked P!!! or Athlon. Of course, you're also not going to see 1 GHz P!!! or Athlon notebooks for a long time anyway, thanks to the huge power consumption issues, but I just wanted to remind of the "megahertz trap" too many people fall into, thinking that the clock speed of the processor has anything to do with its actual speed.

    Most Slashdot readers know the difference between performance and clockspeed, but I think this will be an issue that'll be important when Transmeta-powered equipment hits the mainstream notebook/PDA/appliance market: Joe Sixpack and Joe Marketing will get their Crusoe-powered notebooks, and realize, "Hey, what gives, this 1 GHz Crusoe notebook isn't any better than my P!!! 600 notebook. I've been cheated!" I fear that the clockspeed/performance differential between Crusoe and x86 processors will become an albatross around Transmeta's neck, possibly damaging its reputation among non-geeks. After all, the non-Geek would read that it takes a 1 GHz Crusoe to be as powerful as a 600MHz P!!! or Athlon*, and deduce that somehow the Crusoe is inferior, not realizing the Crusoe's strong points and completely different architecture. I fear that magazines for the semi-computer-literate will fuel the fire, magazines like those in ZD's stable of consumer-targeted stuff. A similar thing dogged the K6-2, though the K6-2 certainly didn't have Crusoe's low power consumption or nifty new architecture; but, not being clock-for-clock as powerful as P!!! or even Celeron did hurt its image.

    *: The comparison here is pulled out of my ass rather than from actual figures since I don't have the time to look them up/calculate a good comparison, but they shouldn't be too far off the mark.

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  2. Transmeta/Crusoe news by Oscarfish · · Score: 5
    The Register reports that Crusoe chips should hit 1GHz by year end, consuming only 4 to 5 watts of power (for comparison, mobile Pentium III chips at 900 MHz use 29 watts). If IBM uses Crusoe chips like this in their thinkpads, running a version of Linux that is enhanced for the Crusoe's architecture and unique power consumption, I think we'll have some very interesting laptop machines going around, at speeds up to 1GHz.

    Too bad there won't be any machines like this based on Athlons anytime soon. AMD is having some serious problems with power consumption.

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  3. Thinkpads for "Penguin Lovers" by hypergeek · · Score: 5

    Is it just me, or does it strike anybody else that there's something very, erm, down-right disturbing about the title of this article?

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