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Transmeta Powered High-End Portable?
NETHED writes: "CNet is running a
story on the oQo (Very flash heavy) ultra portable computer. 'Along with Windows XP, it will come with a 5800 Crusoe processor from Transmeta, a 10GB hard drive, 256MB of memory, connection ports for FireWire and USB (universal serial bus), and wireless networking connections through either WiFi or Bluetooth.' Sounds like a winner, considering they want it to cost LESS than 1000USD. Now, only if this didn't sound like vaporware."
What the heck is transmeta? Liquid? Gas? Have fun with your gadget, but I'll stick with my *electricity* powered portable thank you. And don't complain to me if you can't buy a transmeta refill canister at CompUSA. I never saw any.
Big corporations are so pro-Intel
<best Bill Lumbergh voice>
Ah, uhm, I'm going to have to, ah, disagree with you there Bob.
</best Bill Lumbergh voice>
IT departments of "big corporations" don't know an AMD from an Intel from a MC68K (trust me on this one). More importantly, they don't care. All they can differentiate is OEMs: Dell, Compaq, Toshiba, etc. The OEM is the entity that provides all of the post sales service/support for the machines, so large IT crews are more interested in this than the processor.
If "alternative" processor manufacturers want to make inroads into "big corporations" they are going to have to start buddying up to the OEM's that supply PCs to them and get their chips inside those putty boxes.
it's not going to stop until you wise up, no it's not going to stop. so just give up.
The screen measures just four inches in diameter
[Boggled look] The screen is round?
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
The real bottleneck to shrinking computers are no longer really the actual chips and disks. These are getting smaller and lighter and more energy efficient (well, at least the first two anyway).
What has not been effectively shrunk yet is the areas of human interface. The input (mouse and keyboard) and output (computer screen)
On the input size, cameras and microphones are shrinking, so these may be useful. On the output side, I know there are small screens out there, but to get real work done, you often need a big screen area.
evanchik.net
"Despite the faster chip, the batteries on the OQO run about 9.5 hours, Ditzel and Hunter said. Although the Crusoe processor runs on fairly low amounts of energy, the small screen size helps enormously."
Power consumption of a 4" LCD CCFL is around 1W, which is the same for any 4" - 15" single lamp LCD panel. The small screen size does not help any with the reduction of power consumtion. Power consumtion for this device will about the same as any Crusoe powered laptop since memory and the hard drive will still draw the same amount of power. This unit will only see a 9.5 hour battery life if the CCFL is off and the hardrive is powered down with the processor running at under 20% with not many accesses to memory.
Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur