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Cheap Transmeta Notebooks?

Posted by Cliff on from the are-these-out-yet? dept.

spoonboy42 asks: "Lately I've been drooling over these tiny new Crusoe-based subnotebooks. Unfortunately, as a student, they are out of my budget. Wasn't one of the Crusoe's benefits supposed to be low cost? Now that IBM has put their Transmeta notebooks on hold, is anyone else working on delivering a Crusoe laptop in the range of $1000-$1200? I'm not looking for anything fancy, a little bulk is fine, I just need a few simple features: Built-in CD-ROM, 800x600 (preferably higher) screen, PCMCIA, and an accessible SO-DIMM socket for a RAM upgrade. Anyone know of a laptop that fits this description?"

6 comments

  1. Why Transmeta? Why Crusoe? by tooth · · Score: 2
    i really know nothing about $US so I've got no idea what sort of dollar range your laptops go for (I'm from .au and we use peso now :) but how about considering a second hand intel laptop? I now it's not fancy or new, but I think an older laptop would fullfill what you need (cd-rom 800x600 pcmcia ram-upgrades) quite well.

    Unless low power consumption was needed (you didn't say) i'd consider an second hand intel. if you hunt around you could probably find one in good condition too. remember that curuseo isn't blazing fast, and that you might get similar performance from an older intel chip. (not sure on that, haven't seen a lot of bench-marks)

    just my $0.02 + 10% GST

  2. Why the obsession with transmeta? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    get an older apple powerbook (the older 333Mhz G3s are getting pretty cheap on ebay.)

    all the battery life, and their available now. probably faster too.

    of course, you miss the linus worship factor, but you can still run linux on it...

  3. One word: by CokeBear · · Score: 1

    iBook.

    They will run OS X, as well as several flavours of Yoo-Nix.

    --
    Reality has a liberal bias
    1. Re:One word: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      ahh, but an iBook has no PCMCIA slot. Then again, it does have built-in 10/100 Ethernet and a built-in modem, which is what 90% of all PCMCIA slots are filled with anyway.

    2. Re:One word: by Xunker · · Score: 1

      ...and you have USB and an Airport slot as well. But the iBook has a lot more bulk than most people want -- lots and lots of wasted plastic on it's chassis. But they are cheap(ish), and they have a 6 hour battery life, can run Linux/BSD, etc.

      Or you could pay a pittance and get a second (or even first) had K6-2+ based note, but you'll loose battery life.

      --
      Hilary Rosen's speech was about her love of money and her desire to roll around naked in a pile of money.
  4. Thinkpad 240 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Sounds like what you want.