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Transmeta Webpad
Quickening writes: "At long last, the coveted transmeta webpad is available from FrontPath as the ProGear 1050 HX+. Juicy tidbits: linux 2.4, TM3200 400MHz, touchpad, 802.11b, and USB. I expect to see this kind of story on Slashdot before I run across the product surfing. These are the same Rio people that bought up the EMPEG car mp3 player." They're not exactly cheap, but they sure are nifty. I think I'll stay with my old laptop with 802.11 though.
"These are the same Rio people that bought up the EMPEG car mp3 player."
No that was a British company called EMPEG, Rio's innovation was writing a cheque and buying them up.
I've seen people with an EMPEG and AirPort base station in their car window... obviouly great for zapping new tunes to your car.
I dont own, nor have I had a chance to use any computer based on a Transmeta chip -- so I cant say wether they're any good or not....
...but I have to think that a fair (most?) amount of the buzz surrounding that company, and the single reason why any of us here pay attention to TMTA is because Linus Torvalds works there.
I reckon that if Linus hadnt signed on with them, today we'd think of Transmeta much like we think of the IDT/Centaur chips...a fringe low-end player in the market.
I dunno why we dont think of them in such low terms _anyway_. Transmeta chips dont perform as advertized -- and both Intel and AMD have demonstrated that they can at least match Crusoe chips (for low-power usage) even if only in the lab -- they could bring those chips out, if there were enough demand to warrant them.
Honestly, does a Transmeta Crusoe (any model) have any advantage or even interesting quirk for end users beyond low power consumption?
Dont get me wrong, I wish them well. I get the feeling that by this time, Transmeta wanted to be competitive with at least AMD, and perhaps even have a (small) slice of _desktop_ computers to go with a (larger) slice of notebooks. But the chips dont even match Celerons in terms of performance, and Celerons are really lagging behind at this point.
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Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
We got a demo unit a month ago for a 30-day evaluation. I set the thing up, so I'll shoot my mouth off here and let you know how it went.
We do customer satisfaction surveys - when you see a comment card in a hotel, it probably gets sent to us when you're done. We scan it, compile the comments, and give nice reports to hotel managers (among other things.)
Well, everybody wants more detailed satisfaction data, so we explored the idea of having these at the hotel front desk. When you checked out, the clerk would hand you this webpad, and you would take a survey instantly just by tapping your choices onscreen. Did you use the restaurant? (Yes/no) Then, of course, it could do things that comment cards can't: change questions based on your inputs (only show restaurant questions to people who click Yes, only show dissatisfaction questions to people who weren't happy, etc.) Anyway, that's what we were using it for - web-based surveys in a restricted environment.
First off, this thing is locked down tighter than the Pope's poop chute. After struggling with it for an hour, we called the support line only to find out that they really didn't know much about it either. When we finally got hold of someone who had a clue, he informed us that no, we couldn't change the IP address - it was DHCP-only. That should have been our first clue that this thing wasn't ready for prime time.
I couldn't tell you what version of Linux it was, because frankly, I didn't care, but you don't have access to configuration utilities anyway.
The handwriting recognition is good for a first release of the unit. (We didn't need recognition, but we played with it anyway.) IMHO, it was better and more intuitive than the iPaqs I've used.
The screen is great, very readable from all angles. It has a built-in speaker, so just for yuks, we tuned into a RealAudio station and walked around the building, using it as the world's most expensive boom box. Somehow, people were not amused. Other than Netscape, RealAudio, and a couple of obscure plugins, that was about it.
At first glance in the ads, you might think the 802.11b wireless is built in - it's not, it uses a normal PCMCIA card. FrontPath shipped them with a couple of different cards (tech support has to ask you which one you have) and we had the Lucent one, if I remember right. The coverage was absolutely phenomenal for a battery-powered unit: we could traverse most of our 35,000 sq ft building, both floors, using just one central DLink access point on the second floor. Very impressive.
Usability is pretty rough - most of the icons don't make much sense. From a physical standpoint, it's just not the right size/weight either. The weight is pretty much spread across across the entire unit, so when you hold it and write on it, you have to support it from underneath. You can't just hold it by the side, it'll flop all over the place. It's heavier than it looks, and it's awkward, too - the "easel" they give you to rest the thing on doesn't support it well enough to actually use it while it's in the easel. (Whoo, bad sentence there.)
That pricing is flexible - I think we got a quote for around $1500 for even the smallest quantity order, but I'm not in accounting so I couldn't give you an exact number.
We recommended against it just because of the ludicrous price. At that price point, we could put in small touchscreen PC's instead, and get much, much more functionality. Remember, you're paying laptop-grade bucks for a machine that only surfs the web and NOTHING ELSE.
What's your damage, Heather?
Actually, there are millions of us that want touchscreen computers. The problem is that the marketdroids that figure out what we want don't have the vision to picture a Linux-based PDA on steroids.
BTW: I played with both early and late prototype FrontPath units, and they are really just laptop PCs: You can easily load Red Hat, Debian, or Slack on them - I know because I've run them on this device.
A real SuperPad would encompass all PDA functionality (and do it as well as a Palm, which is a tall order); interface *seamlessly* with PDAs, cellphones, and desktop computers; have reasonable support (handwriting recognition AND virtual keyboard support preferably in the BIOS) for keyboardless input, good wireless support, and most importantly, be designed to be hackable, since the simple fact is that neither the marketdroids nor anyone else really knows what applicaitons for such a beast will take off - it needs to be open enough to let people try, just like they did with the original (Palm) Pilot 1000: people wound up using it for things Palm never dreamed of.
(This raises interesting questions about architecture and design for such things, and points out some problems: Even if it makes sense to put some new functionality in the BIOS, you can't do it, because MS excercises absolute control over PC architecture via the PC9X and related standards - they wield their club over the OEMs more heavily in this area than any other. Compliance with their architecture dictates is "voluntary", but you will find yourself paying MUCH more than your competitors if you don't dance the MS tune. This is a REAL example of how MS PREVENTS innovation.
Tablet computers are desperately needed, though, and would be wildly successful if they were designed as above. Somethign at a laptop price point that's locked down to being only a bad web surfing device will fail, as we've seen over and over again from companies like Netpliance, Epods, etc.
People desperately want tablets or full-function webpads, they just don't want supid ones, and since the technologies they use are on the expensive side anyway, manufacturers will need to go out of their way to make them attractive. I'm available for consulting.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
The Powerbook G4 is my webpad.
For nearly the same price, you get an actual computer. It is light and thin enough to bring on the toilet (the main purpose of a webpad) backpack or airplane (the main purpose for a laptop), and the powerbook keeps your legs warm on winter nights to boot.
2x HD space, State of the art Unix-based OS, larger screen, DVD player, more RAM... I can't think of a comparison where the Tibook comes out behind this product.
I bought the G4 because I was done waiting for the webpad of my dreams to come. This webpad has the right specs for a webpad, but the price-performance ratio is still beaten by the Tibook. 6 months have passed without obsolescing this purchase, I'd say a that's pretty good ROI. I'm impressed, anyway, and that's all that matters.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
I've been playing with a beta version of one of these units for a while, getting the software of the company I work for running on it. Here's what I've found out:
After using this thing for weeks, I still agree with everyone who prefers laptops to webpads for the consumer, based on street prices. Webpads have perfect applications, but randomly applying them to the market doesn't work. Real keyboards and real pointing devices are still far superior to "virtual" ones. That said, I would gladly take this little beasty home for some lovin'. for slouching style couch surfing, it conforms to one's lap much nicer than a laptop, especially in a drunken stupor (i plan to put this theorem to the test at a future date). once the Progear has been paid for, it's AOK.
Feel free to contact me if you want to hear more (and please do if you're also hacking this thing!) [ j o s e p h s (at) o e o n e (dot) c o m ]
somebody bent my whookey.
...seems to be that they are marketing to companies that make products nobody wants. Put the thing in a real laptop for crying out loud. If people wanted these webpad thingies, the laptop market would already have evolved in that direction by integrating some of the webpad features into traditional laptops. It hasn't. People don't want this crap.
If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times: It's the servers, stupid.
People want to cram more servers in a rack, run them cooler, with less power. Save space, save power. Everybody seems to understand that except Transmeta's sales and marketing department. If they continue like this, I give the company another 6 months and that's it.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
teach em how to build pr0n sites then.. they'll be making more than you 6 months after graduating.
How to increase your students' attention span
ProGear allows you to help students conduct Internet research with touch-screen broadband wireless LAN anywhere in your classroom.
Yeah, that's exactly what I need, a bunch of 13-year-old boys surfing for porn while I'm trying to explain how to build a table in HTML...
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
You can get an epods one for around $200, hack it back to plain Windows CE, and add a 802.11b hub and card for cheaper than that! $2000 is an insane price to ask, so I assume this company will either have to discontinue the line before it gets too far out the door, or drag the Rio and RioCar down with it as it dies trying.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
why pay $2299 for a glorified wireless Audrey?
just pick up a TiBook or a superslim laptop, i don't see what the big deal is. are people willing to pay more to eliminate a keyboard?
how exactly do you type on a 'virtual' touchscreen keyboard, anyway? if you're using 2 hands to type.... what are you holding the computer with? and if you lay it flat on a table, can you still even see what's on the screen?
i think they need to fire a couple of gadget-freaks and hire someone with some common sense & UI design, then sell their Lexus IS300's and ride the bus so they can drop the price on this to a shade over 7-800$.
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