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Slinky Little Crusoe Notebook Reviewed
does it really matter? writes "Apparently the love-in is finally on for the guys at TransmetaZone.com since they finally have a review of a Crusoe notebook to show for themselves. The silver NEC UltraLite gets a good going over, and proves to be an interesting match against a PIII-M." I'm glad to see that the promise of transmeta is finally beginning to start being fulfilled.
i wonder how this will stack up against ibm's new linux laptop (t22), there is a review somewhere on linuxtoday still if you haven't read it..
The case looks nice, but are there any crusoe notebooks out there with larger screens?
If I were looking for a notebook right now, that's the main thing I'd be looking for. A 20 gig hard disk on a notebook would be wasted on me - I'm barely using 5gig out of the 10 on my compaq armada e500, and there's 1.5 gig or so of mp3s on there =)
But, it's got a nice 13.3" screen.
On the other hand, a silver case would be nice.... *drool*
Yeah, these guys are really connected to reality. ;-)
Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
This is the real question.. The iBook is just as thin, weighs the same, includes a DVD/CD-RW drive, Mac OS 9.2/Mac OS X, a 12" (1024x768) screen, 4+ hour battery life, and costs less ($1800 for the top of the line iBook as opposed to $2k for the model discussed in the article)..
It's great that it stacks up well against a PIII based notebook, but that's not were the real challenge lies for this thing..
I'm glad to see that the promise of transmeta is finally beginning to start being fulfilled.
:-)
Yep, I'm glad to see they commenced the outset of initiating the maiden launch of that debut myself!
When I first saw this headline, I thought it said "Stinky Little Crusoe Notebook Reviewed".
Oh, yes, that's a 'real impartial review'... it reads more like some oil-haired watchdripping toothshiner trying to sell you a car.
I have a 750 PIII notebook, and the speed is fine, except from the fact that the harddrives still are slow. More memory to avoid swapping does help a lot. But what I really would like are faster harddrives. Of course when creating a harddrive for a notebook, there are other issues than creating a drive for a machine that does not get a lot of bumps and shocks, so I guess all I can do is wait.
I would have hope this thing to come preinstalled with a better OS then Win2k...
I want to like it, I really do. I might seriously consider one if it had 256 or 512 MB of RAM, a larger screen (1280x1024 would be nice), USB 2.0 ports and an external DVD/CD-RW drive. I don't mind schlepping a little more weight in return for being able to watch my own in-flight movie.
And while I'm dreaming, I want a pony...
Transmeta and this reviewer always pitched the Crusoe as being so great because of its low power consumption - and yeah, five hours is a good battery life for a notebook, but big deal...this laptop has a 10 inch screen, the brightness was set to its lowest, and it has TWO batteries (an extra one behind the screen, which Is a pretty cool idea). Of course the power is going to last longer with a slow laptop with a smaller screen and an extra battery!! Transmeta might have had good goals and intentions when they designed Crusoe, but they failed on execution. Give me 10 hour battery life and I might be able to forgive the pathetic performance these processors have, but otherwise there's no reason not to by a PIII laptop instead.
Business Winstone runs real applications through a series of scripted activities and uses the time the computer takes to complete those activities to produce its performance scores.
NEC Versa UltraLite 10.3
Acer Travelmate 739 TLV 20.9
In this set of benchmarks that run day to day business applications in a timed fashion, the NEC UltraLite comes in only slightly above that of the base machine used as the reference point for the benchmarks themselves.
It may have a hard time selling to the intended audience if it is only half as fast at what the typical business user needs a computer for.
Are you kidding me? Have you ever checked out and actually used one of the latest Sony Picturebooks? The last two USA versions of the Picturebook used the Crusoe, and both are mean little computer machines. Supposedly Linus uses a picturebook. I mean, who wouldn't love a fully functional Linux Workstation that is no larger than a VHS cassette tape? So there is no "finall begining to start" crap. The Crusoe has been fulfilling for over a year now, its promise of a high efficieny x86 CPU. AND YES, THE PICTUREBOOK RUNS LINUX JUST FINE!
I'm not even an Apple fan, in fact I detest many of their business practices, but that little iBook2 really does deliver value compared to the NEC with Transmeta chip mentioned in the article. The feature set is almost exactly the same, and the NEC is $600 more!
But that's what I do in Windows. In fact, I frequently pull up CygWin.
So I don't understand your point.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Altough the Tm5600-based system outlasted the PIII-based one by about 28% in battery life tests, it's interesting to notice that the PIII has a 5400 mAH battery, while the TM5600's batteries add up to 4300 mAH. That is, the Transmeta processor lasted 28% more on about 20% less battery capacity. Some quick numbers indicate that the Transmeta processor would be able to run for over 6 hours on a 5400 mAH battery, which is a full 50% longer than the 4 hours the PIII system lasted, given that the batteries had the same capacity.
I recently bought a Sony Vaio PCG-SR33. As far as I can tell, it's exactly the same machine, but with a couple differences:
1) It starts at $999
2) It comes with an external CD-ROM, but no floppy
3) It has a 600mhz Low-voltage Celeron instead of a Crusoe - but gets the same battery life (about 5.5 hours)
Why anyone would spend $2500 for that NEC subnotebook, I can't fathom.
Oh yeah, my Sony also weighs 0.3 lbs less with the same dimensions.
Why haven't we seen any of these chips appear in a line of PDAs?
I believe Transmeta had a TM3x00 line of chips that were altra low power consumption and a slower clock speed than the TM5x00 line. I was hoping to see it in a line of PDAs.
Looking at the specs for a StrongArm 1110 and a Cursoe TM5400, I'd say they are similair enough in energy consumption that a TM3x00 at a 200 Mhz clock speed would have been a supperior PDA chip. Unfortunately I cannot confirm this as the TM3x00 has seemed to have vanished.
Maybe some day.
You can change out the big battery while the puter keeps running on the screen battery, a very nice feature!
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Page 4. Features of the UltraLite
5. USB Port No.2: The second USB port on the UltraLite is useful for connecting the external CDROM/floppy, or perhaps an optical mouse. Windows 2000 is hot pluggable so the external devices can be connected, and removed while the system is still in operation.
Gosh, thanks for W2K, it makes that USB experience that much nicer.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Actually, I originally thought Volaire said it, and that's who I had credited in my Sig. :)
:)
Somebody informed me to the contrary... apparently Voltaire appropriated it and made it famous. It was originally said by S.G. Tallentyre, whose real name I can't remember.
If you want more information... search for S.G. Tallentyre (sp?) on Google. I don't know anything more.
I don't get it... does this really qualify as an "ultraportable subnotebook"? It's quite a bit larger and heavier than my Thinkpad 240, which is getting to be almost 18 months old now.
I guess what I'm really saying is I'm extremely happy with the size and weight of the Thinkpad 240, and I'm really puzzled as to why it's still just about the most lightweight laptop in the market. Don't people want computers they can comfortably carry around, instead of the six-pound Floppy/CD/DVD/15" monsters I see these days?
Anyway, the only gripe I have with my 240 is the battery life, which isn't much more than 80-90 minutes. Maybe it'd be better off running on a Crusoe chip? Or maybe that's what they sacrificed to get it so small... the size of the battery.
-- If no truths are spoken then no lies can hide --
Why aren't people putting low power processors into these otherwise power-starved machines? I'm obviously expecting limited battery life, but hey, every little bit of power consumption helps.
-bugg
It's nice n' all, but I remember transmeta being about revolutionary new technology, blah blah blah... Where is this revolutionary technology??? There are other products on the market that are about the same, heck it's being compared to a Pentium 3...
We've all heard the hype, now it's time to deliver the goods... a Pentium 3 category machine is not good enough damn it!
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
there are some really neet solutions that are more sub and less notebook.
first, i'm kinda shakey about posting this, cause i can only imagine it will increase the demand and drive up price, but with that said, here i go anyway.
i've had my eye on a sorta pda/subnotebook from psion. i'm particularly interested in the series 7 model. it's really light, really small, and downright cool. and best of all, it runs for almost nine hours of use, so you ussually go days before recharge.
it comes with the EPIC operating system installed, which is pretty nifty i hear. but i'm more interested in installing psilinux on it. psilinux is a cool project. i'm not sure how easy to install it is right now, but apparently with some hacking(which is all fun right?) it's possible to get it working with microwindows and all. nifty!
so yeah, check that out, and don't ever say i'm not looking out for ya ;)
I've installed linux on the "Lavie" which seems
h tml
to just be a different name for the same machine. I posted some comments and details at:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jcl/linux/lavie/nec_lavie.
Usually, you pay a premium of $200-$300 for equivalent functionality in a Mac compared with the PC alternative. In this case, though, it seems like the opposite is true. The only advantages I see to this machine are PC card slot and lower weight. (iBook is 4.9 pounds, this is 3.3, IIRC)
The two have more or less equivalent battery life (Apple claims 5 hours, these guys claim 5.5) If you get one of the higher-end iBooks, memory, hard drive, etc are the same. And CPU speed is pretty much identical-- I'd guess a G3/500 will edge out a Crusoe/600, but even if not it's not going to be much behind. Crusoes are optimised for power consumption, not performance.
On the downside, there's no internal media (which probably accounts for the weight difference) and apperantly you can't even get DVD-ROM or CD-RW without going to a third party. And the iBook includes FireWire ports and an interal 802.11 slot, which this does not.
Most striking is the price. To get an equivalently loaded iBook (with DVD and 128 MB RAM) is $1500. This is "approximately" $2000. Why would you pay $500 extra for a laptop with fewer features, lousy performance, and the inelegance of x86?
So, really, the only reason to prefer this to an iBook is if you need something that runs Windoze. If you have the option of running a real OS (either Mac OS or *nix) get an iBook and save some money.
For me, something like the Vaio picturebook (also with a Crusoe processor) would be ideal. That doesn't make me right or you wrong, but it means there's room in the market for both. Vive la difference!
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
From my angelfire cheap-oh page:
"Note: Early September 2001, I bought an Apple iBook, and am so far quite pleased with it. Seems to be the best thing going in notebooks at / near this price ($1500 for the midgrade model -- DVD player), though the last month has seen some interesting and cheap Intel notebooks. Mac OS X is quite nice, but the stock 128MB is not enough to run it well. When I finally figure out burning ISOs, hopefully this machine will also run Mandrake 8.1.
There are a lot of things wrong with the iBook, but a less overhwhelming number of things than are wrong with most notebooks, because it has a decent latch mechanism so far (hope it lasts), side-mounted CD-drive, 1024x768 screen, and decent battery life. However:
This list is incomplete of course, and will probably be added to. But I like the iBook well enough that I haven't touched my moderately-powerful intel laptop in the last 9 days, and have invested in more memory for the iBook (an additional 256MB for $35?! Insane. Should make OS X an acceptable option when it arrives.)
Cheers,
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Why can't I find a nice laptop in the budget $300-500 range?
c ategory_slc.asp?Id=1701
You can buy older notebooks at Tiger Direct:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Category/
They have at least one in the $300-$500 range, maybe even more than one.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
I got way into this "transmeta hype" .. I thought it would be something awesome and rival all other CPU makers of today. When it all boils down, sure, they have a very cool software solution to make a "Almost as good" x86 processor. And I thought the point was supposed to be 'cheaper & less power' ... Well.... that laptop costs $2000.00 and still requires a very hefty battery to last 5.5 hours.
... sorry. I'd rather buy the "real mccoy" PIII or Athlon Mobile processor instead of the Transmeta "low power" & "cheap" chip.
I don't see the point
I'm sorry, but very little of that grammar is correct, and it's still very difficult to understand what you're saying.
And "cutting-edge flames" is a rather amusing description. (Cutting-edge means new and unique; perhaps you meant 'incisive' or 'biting'.)
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
I'm writing this comment on my NEC VersaLite FX, it's really bad, I've had three hard drive failures, a bad screen, bad keyboard, had the (Internal!!!) network card fall out several times and once had to be replaced. And the powersupply has had it's connector replaced more times than I care to count.
And that's in only ONE YEAR.
/* FUCK - The F-word is here so that you can grep for it */
Thus tune ya head it to work in kernel mode, so I try to do sharp speaking and, gosh, none did understood.
Maybe better for my talk it doing as yours do.
"I do read mostly bashing and cutting-egde (mispell: edge) flames I hadn't saw any other MB.
I hadn't saw.
Never-before-seem to me.
It's cutting edge - for me.
No way, misty cow. Grammar there it is correct, methods for my subjectives are correct too.
I roll over a post adding some more object pronoumn defs, and also aliasing terms causing the text a expandedum which it to increase ten or twenty lines I agree you it should be readable for kiddies. Might.
Negative. Ain't asiatic and I did never used to know pulled-eyes home in persona.
I do have difficulties personally reading some zine-sized crap a dumb could do consider written by any "GOD".
I think compact is much better, thus why PCs are very popular contrary to clusters and we're talking about nb's.
At the risk of making out that all marketing is evil... What the heck is a 'ultraportable subnotebook'?
I use a Sony C1VE which I would class as pretty much the smallest viable non-PDA 'laptop' (handtop?). Perhaps the Libretto is also in this class.
At the other end of the scale we have the 'desktop replacements' with massive screens and all the bells and whistles.
Anywhere between those two extremes appears to be in a mess: notebook, sub-notebook, ultra-portable, ultra-sub-notebook, etc.
My two pence is that the market has fragmented between the 'full-featured' desktop replacement machines, the 'low-power, low weight' machines and then the associated trade-offs in between.
I can't see the validity of the attempts to compare Crusoe and PIII systems, when the raison d'etre of the systems is usually so far apart as to make the comparison pointless. I mean who buys a Sony C1 to play Quake III? So, why to magazines give us benchmarks to show me that my C1 is slow at 3D!
OblongPlatypus asks if people want laptops they can carry around comfortably, so of us do, but some people need a DVD/CD-RW/1280x800 screen. My point is that they are very, very different beasts, its just that the media is very bad at understanding what we use our machines for in real life. I have no need of DVD on the road so I bought a machine that didn't include one, but to compare them on a like-for-like basis is just daft.
The NEC Ultralite just looks like an oversized Sony Picturebook. The Picturebook also uses the Transmeta chip, but has been shipping for more than two months now. The picturebook is smaller and lighter with the same processing power and battery life (longer, actually) as this NEC machine. The only thing to ooh and ahhh about on the NEC machine is that it has a built-in NIC.
-Mazor
I prefer small laptops and I want laptops with long battery life. Subnotebooks have been around before the Crusoe, but they had poor battery performance.
However, the designers of Crusoe laptops usually decide to make the batteries *even smaller* than those used in the old subnotebooks. Probably because "3 hourse is enough for most folks, so let's add features instead now that we save on the battery's size".
I really looked forward to Crusoe laptops, but so far, none of them delivered what I looked for in them. I hope that the PaceBook will one day stop being vaporware.
------------------
You may like my a cappella music
things like this nec lappie, and the sony picture book (and some of the other little vaio's are great except they are missing two things that I think would make them really popular.
a) onboard 100meg ethernet
b) a 9 pin serial port
when a core router dies you don't want to be scrabbling around for a legacy ports dongle. you wanna unhook the ethernet and power, grab the notebook and run to the data suite.
yes I know serial portsare old fashioned but lots of kit still has consoles available over it. even a serial port available over rj45 would do (in fact would be great) so you can just grab the notebook, wrap a cisco rollover cable, and maybe cat5 round it and go. on messing about, no looking for the special bag that has all the dingles in it.
ffs, there are loads of network techies who would kill for a picturebook with onboard ethernet and a serial port. does no-one get that?
dave
something like a picturebook would be ideal, it's light and tiny, runs linux happily. if it had a serial port then you could close it, wrap the
Funny, but it was actually 1987.
--
E_NOSIG
a) audio out -- Ah, so this *is* a normal headphone out? OK, that I was unclear on, thought it required the little converter yo-yo looking doodad for recording. SIlly me for not reading manual before complaining ;) Still, I could rephrase, it's ridiculous that it doesn't come with a mic / line input as well.
;)
b) external pwr supply -- Yes, this is typical of notebooks. It's still bad! Worse perhaps for being accepted as normal! Old Toshiba satellites had internal pwr supplies, not sure about the current ones. That's why I wanted a toshiba, but of course at the time I couldn't afford any laptop, never mind a nice one
C) Powerbook 1400 with clear panel -- Thanks! It's a very smart thing, wish apple would play up customization feature like that a lot more.
Cheers
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Hey
Why don't a number of us get together then and develope our own desktop version of the Crusoe? I have been thinking about doing a desktop for a long time the only thing holding me back is that I have decided whether to use the Elan (intel), GX1 (National) or the Crusoe. Let's stop talking about it and just do it.
HB
Never buy Sony CDs - they will open up your computer to anyone..