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VIA Introduces A New Laptop Motherboard

Posted by timothy on from the treasuring-diversity dept.

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."

23 of 211 comments (clear)

  1. Finally... by Kai_MH · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Via CPU + Linux = Sweet stuff. Seriously, it's about time there was an inexpensive Linux Laptop. I might even consider getting it instead of a new mini-ITX system. Whee!

    1. Re:Finally... by tomstdenis · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I remember Cyrix MI and MII processors as the "I can buy this on a retail job part-time salary when I was 16" processors which wickedly out performed any economical intel processor of the time.

      In fact I recall my 486SLC/66 had desperate troubles playing mp3s yet my MI/133 [or 166 I forget] would sail through them with power to spare. My 233Mhz MII was even sweeter.

      At the time I could put a mobo+cpu together for like 200$ or so.

      My current processor cost 225$ alone [iirc].

      Oh yeah and as another poster pointed out the Cyrix cores were much better with heat than intel/amd. The C3 is even better.

      Tom

      --
      Someday, I'll have a real sig.
    2. Re:Finally... by JCholewa · · Score: 4, Interesting

      > Since when is a VIA CPU sweet?

      Since they started using solid, low power cores based on Centaur team designs.

      > Remember Cyrix anyone?

      You mean the team that VIA disbanded when they decided to go with primarily Centaur-derived technology? What about them?

      --
      -JC
      http://www.jc-news.com/coding/SFi/
      (the above contains exaggerations, but less so than parent)

    3. Re:Finally... by dalslad · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Well, the secret is out. But guess whose been making all those Linux white box systems? VIA, same people. Wall-Mart, Fry's Great Quality, Sam's, Microtel, Wintergreen, Sub300, Neo Computers, Galaxy, Tranquil and Newron all have VIA motherboards and processors. I won't forget that VIA was once Cyrix. I bought three of them and they work great. They came with ThizLinux - an RPM based OS from Hong Kong, but they took everything I threw at them: Slackware, RedHat, Gentoo, SuSE, Debian, Xandros and Solaris 9. Hat's off to them for engineering their systems for Linux. I put XP on one and it worked OK, but not like it does with Linux. So off came XP.

  2. 800 bucks by blackmonday · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Check out Got Apex. You can get a full featured 14 or 15 inch-screen Dell for less than 800 bucks when you use the numerous discounts and rebates available. Or even better get a refurbed iBook for a little more.

  3. what i wonder... by intermodal · · Score: 4, Interesting

    is how overall performance compares. I can get a refurbished IBM ThinkPad coming off corporate lease with a Pentium III circa 700MHz, and know for a fact that the motherboard is fast. I've seen too many motherboards not able to handle their speed to give it a lot of credence without proving it. Thinkpad, on the other hand, has been consistently rugged and reliable for me.

    --
    In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
    1. Re:what i wonder... by rsborg · · Score: 2, Interesting
      I can get a refurbished IBM ThinkPad coming off corporate lease with a Pentium III circa 700MHz

      Not that I doubt you, but where have you found these off-lease deals? Usually for $800, you get a P3, 500 to 650 Mhz, with a used battery (on average my experience has been 50% charge) and possibly some case defects (nothing functionally wrong, but definitely used). I've had to replace both battery and keyboards on all the used laptops i've bought, within 1 year. (3 dells, 1 thinkpad, 1 toshiba). These are not commodity parts, and that alone costs on average $100 per laptop per part... if you can find them (usually, for old laptops like the Dell CPI-R series, you can't buy them from dell, you can only find used ones on ebay).

      With this system, you get a small form factor laptop (The only think that I could think of that would make a difference is the warranty... which is often similar from various providers (and probably don't support linux).

      --
      Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
  4. Real men build their own refrigerators... by poptones · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Very cool. So I can buy a laptop motherboard separate from the laptop itself? So I could, in theory, pick up a cheap(er) used laptop, machine a cool new case from plastic, and roll my own transportable PC?

  5. We've got Linux laptops now, but... by usotsuki · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Where are the BSD laptops? :)

    Seriously though, this is a Good Thing. But I know and you know that larger companies aren't going to go for Linux because the "GPV" bothers them.

    I think there ought to be a BSD laptop (no, MacOS X on a PowerBook doesn't count!), if only because I think every Linux needs to have a corresponding FreeBSD - light, truly free, and just as powerful in most cases as its GPL'd competitor.

    Why not?

    -uso.

    --
    Dreams, dreams, don't doubt dreams, dreaming children's dreaming dreams. Sailor Moon SS
    1. Re:We've got Linux laptops now, but... by macshit · · Score: 2, Interesting

      But I know and you know that larger companies aren't going to go for Linux because the "GPV" bothers them.

      I certainly don't know that -- in my experience larger companies don't really care what OS it runs, as long as it runs their apps and gives the user experience they want (whether this is true for lindows or not, I have no idea, but linux and freebsd are probably comparable).

      In many cases they like linux because it has a buzz (freebsd doesn't, really, despite OSX), and that makes them feel less nervous about it.

      --
      We live, as we dream -- alone....
    2. Re:We've got Linux laptops now, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Take one of the "Windows" cli network tools (ftp.exe, netstat.exe etc.) and run strings on it. If "truly free" means giving away my code to huge companies that will make a fortune on it but will no way and never do anything for me in return, I'll stick with the "falsly free" GPV; thank you very much.

      The whole point to the BSDs as well as to the GNU project was to create OSes that aren't owned by big companies, so the code-proliferating traditions of unix hackerdom can continue. Donating code to big companies that publicly state they won't be part of the proliferation process is stupid, contraproductive and against the spirit in which the projects were created.

    3. Re:We've got Linux laptops now, but... by aardvarkjoe · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The whole point to the BSDs as well as to the GNU project was to create OSes that aren't owned by big companies, so the code-proliferating traditions of unix hackerdom can continue. Donating code to big companies that publicly state they won't be part of the proliferation process is stupid, contraproductive and against the spirit in which the projects were created.

      If this was true, the BSD license would never have been written.

      You don't have to allow your code to be used in this manner, but there are those of us who feel that giving our stuff away with no strings attached benefits more people.

      --

      How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
  6. Cool - a neat BSD laptop. by ColdGrits · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Might be interesting to buy and have as my BSD laptop - reasonable power and a good secure OS woudl suit me fine for portable computing, and this sounds as though it could be just the thing!

    --
    People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
  7. Re:Who needs hardware DivX... by bmidgley · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Until there are better vertical blank synchronization methods, anyone with an eye for detail will insist on a hardware decoder.

    I see a lot of motion artifacts under every player, even after employing the syncfb module on a matrox.

  8. Motherboard? by binaryDigit · · Score: 4, Interesting

    VIA just came out with a new laptop motherboard

    I can't find any info on any motherboard. Everything they have is only about the cpu. Maybe I'm just not seeing it, but can anyone point me to where the VIA site discusses the actual motherboard. I was getting very jazzed thinking that I might be able to purchase a motherboard and use it for some projects (low heat, low power, small form factor, nice).

  9. Is is any good? by roumada · · Score: 4, Interesting

    With all the problems I have with the VIA chipset in my current PC, I'd hesitate before buying a laptop with their motherboard/processor. I'd much rather see nvidia get around to that nForce mobile chipset-- but that probably wouldnt be targeting the low price side of the market.

  10. Nice for the U.S., even better for the rest by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The C3/Antaur may be nive for the US market, but it may be even better for the rest of the world. Because all other x86 manufacturer are US companies (Intel, AMD, Transmeta). Letting a single country control the 99% of all PC CPUs does not feel much better than Microsoft&Apple controlling >95% of all PC OSs. If the US wants to hurt other economies they just need to raise prices for CPUs - or maybe refuse to sell them at all. The C3/Antaur makes the rest of the world depend less on the US.

  11. Everything fine but video... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm sorry, but that laptop only has a savage4 video solution which if anyone has ever used a board based on this chip knows, there is no DRI support, hence no accelerated 3D. Hell, even the older ATI mobility M3/4 has DRI support. That laptop is a useless brick until they upgrade the vid.

  12. hardware divx/dvd saves battery power. by aoteoroa · · Score: 4, Interesting
    The more efficient cpu, and hardware divx allows laptops to be created with smaller batteries, and since batteries are one of the heaviest components this equates to much lighter laptop designs.

    blockquote from their site:

    With the workload distributed across the whole platform, rather than being concentrated on the processor, the VIA Antaur processor has to do less work, saving battery life while delivering smooth 30 frames per second DVD playback.
  13. $800! by rindeee · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I can buy a Mobile Celeron 1.2GHz laptop with USB2, CD-RW/DVD-ROM, 12.x" screen, 256MB, 25GB, with WindowsXP Home pre-installed for $799 at my local Sam's Club. Whatever VIA does better cost about half what's out there now (and it easily could). A unit equipped similar to the one above with everything VIA puts on a mobo with no OS installed for about $500 would be reasonable me thinks.

  14. Yes, it is! by Fefe · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Try running Linux 2.5 on an nForce. What, no network driver? Well, who needs one of those these days, right? Or even try running *BSD!

    I own an nvidia graphics card and am happy with it because some lunatics ported the nvidia driver to the 2.5 kernels. But the nforce users are pretty much lost.

    Intel chipsets tend to be well supported as well, but let me mention these: "Winmodem" and "Centrino Wiress LAN". Good luck running OpenBSD on one of those. Apart from that, Intel chipsets are expensive and historically never performed well, especially on notebooks.

    If I had to buy a new computer tomorrow, I would only even consider VIA and SiS. Both chipset companies are usually well supported by Linux and BSD, and their hardware is supported as soon as it is on the market. With Intel, you usually have to wait a few years until the hardware is obsolete and then Intel will release some driver under some non-GPL license (see the e100 driver for Linux, which was only recently released as GPL).

    VIA and SiS may not be the highest performance chipsets around, but they work well, have absolutely no stability issues (except maybe under Windows) and are well supported. And "well supported" outweighs anything else anyway. I'm too old to run around in circles around nvidia or Intel, begging for even a binary only driver to get my machine to work at all.

  15. Suggestions for VIA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Detatchable video display

    a. upgrade the cpu part without buying a new LCD
    b. upgrade the LCD without buying a new CPU
    c. sell a new system with a fast cpu and low resolution monitor to keep costs down
    d. sell a new system with a slow cpu and high resolution monitor to keep costs down

    And a must, get the price down to
    1. cost of lcd
    2. cost of cpu + motherboard
    3. plus $75 or less

    Get the cost to $500.00 or less.

  16. A perverted rackmount cluster by ziegast · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Just a thought for those who like to build sick beowulf clusters out of white box PCs...

    If you stack the laptops closed side by side, you can fit 20 of them in a width of 19". If the depth of the rack is 30", you can fit 20 on one side and 20 on another. The height would be 5 rack units, but you'd probably need 1U for power/network cabling. You'd also probably want a 1U 48-port ethernet switch and a 1U shelf for a total of 7U. Each laptop comes with its own UPS. Each laptop - sans hard drive - would probably suck about 20W while on - and 15W when in powersave mode. With 40 laptops, that's 6 rack units of 800W with 40GHz of processing power for $32000.

    Each box would boot off of a solid state disk (8MB compactflash or 16MB USB thumb drive) with enough smarts to join the cluster.

    Power distribution would be the only real challenge, perhaps some parallel DC bus that all laptops suck 12V off of.

    Ok, enough of that.

    Personally, this could be my next laptop. I've always looked to Transmeta for long-running laptops, but they've always been to consumery/trendy/expensive for me to consider.