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VIA Introduces A New Laptop Motherboard
arrasmith writes "It looks like there is going to be an upgrade to that non-expensive $800 Linux laptop. VIA just came out with a new laptop motherboard based on the faster Nehemiah core for the C3. You can get all the specs at the Antaur homepage. If they stay near the $800 cost I can see this one selling pretty well. And they would have a great mobile media system if they added a hardware DivX decoder on top of the hardware DVD decoder. :) And now that the Linux drivers are starting to mature and the sources are finally starting to come out, by the time this is released to the U.S. market it should be a great little Linux laptop."
The key is portability. This notebook is about 3 lbs. Normally you pay a premium for small size, all else being equal. That is why $800 is impressive.
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But I'd like to see a lot more of it. If open source software continues to team up with distributers and hardware manufacturers like this they could be well on their way to being viable M$ competition. If little johnny asks his dad for a computer it's going to be a tough job for M$ to convince johnny's daddy to buy him a windows computer for an extra $200(rough cost of OEM operating system license and office license?) when the linux machine boasts all the same features. M$ has ridden the coattails of every manufacturer in the world shipping a license of Windows/Office with every computer they sell for long enough. Now all they need is to work out a few more kinks and get some advertisement going.
I can count to 1023 on my hands. Ask me about #132.
I mean, what good is a laptop motherboard if it won't fit in some random "obsolete" laptop case?
Seems like there are plenty of small "real" motherboards if you want something standard, that works.
Not a troll, really curious.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
vertical blank synchronization
On an LCD?
5 lbs may not cause most people to fall over and die, but if it's something you're carrying around all day, the less weight the better. Even a few pounds can quickly become annoying.
We live, as we dream -- alone....
I think you will face significant problems in the areas of heat dissipation and general cooling.
From what have seen, many retail laptops seem to use custom heat dissipation schemes. I think we can feel pretty certain that work has been put into these custom schemes by professional engineer-types.
I also wonder whether you will be able to purchase some of the components and materials used in these schemes for your own use from companies which supply them, rather than having to buy in bulk. They may simply not be interested in doing busy with you, because it would not be worth their time financially.
While I think it would be quite fun to have, for example, an aluminum or titanium (non-Apple!) laptop case, I wouldn't be willing to risk frying a any motherboards, harddrives, and CPUs while trying to engineer a sufficient heat dissipation and cooling scheme - if I even ever could do so.
If you or anyone else know of solutions to these problems, or know that they are not the problems they seem to be, I am interested.
Also, another important issue (now that I think about it), is support -- there are quite a few large and well-known companies that will sell you support for linux, whereas I'm not aware of any (large, well-known) companies that will do so for a typical *bsd system.
[Companies with in-house support staff want to standardize on as few systems as possible, and since linux currently has a fairly hefty corporate mind-share advantage over freebsd, freebsd is likely to lose out in many cases.]
We live, as we dream -- alone....
Remember Cyrix anyone?
My wifes computer uses a MII 200mhz. She won't let me upgrade it. It works fine for her, browsing, email and mp3s.
My little m10000 Nehemiah mini-itx toolbox PC here chugs along fine for DVD ripping, PVR, video processing, etc. When I get a pretty case for it, it's going into the living room.
I understand that this laptop mentioned doesnt require active cooling, but as it seems everyone is focusing on wow an $800 linux laptop I went to go see what $800 could buy you at dell..
2ghz celeron 20gb hd 256mb ram 14" screen... for $749
While i haven't ever owned one of these i've not had a problem getting linux on dell laptops in the past. If you are looking for an inexpensive laptop to run linux it seems to me you could do a lot better than a very underpowered core processor such as the via.
I don't understand why parent got modded down; that is an excellent point.
I think an ideal license would be one that allowed *unmodified* binaries - that passed an MD5 test - to be distributed with just a Web link to a copy of the source that, when built, produced the exact same binary, but require modified binaries to include the source code.
That would give all the advantages of the GPL without turning off companies.
-uso.
Dreams, dreams, don't doubt dreams, dreaming children's dreaming dreams. Sailor Moon SS
Not trying to troll, but we mention a lot of Via VS Intel here, how about AMD?
I've never been a big Intel fan to begin with, but how does the VIA chipset and Linux support stack up against AMD? How friendly are they to open-source in comparison?
The new EPIA-M's will be supported shortly. VIA released source code for the 2D and 3D accelerator drivers that they've developed and work is proceeding to integrate the code into the XFree86 and DRI source trees. From talking with the people there at VIA, they're not going to just give out tech data for the CLE266 to just anybody and everybody, but they are willing to allow select (as in the people actually working on the drivers...) people access to the tech data to fix/extend the driver sources that they've recently provided.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
By taking out the advertising clause one problem was solved, but another one was introduced. Of course the advertising clause had its problems, but you can't claim the BSD licence we use today is the same licence we started out with.
(Yes I am the same AC as the one that posted the original comment.)