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Sony Switches To Its Own Processor For Handhelds
Pointing to this Associated Press story carried by the Miami Herald, Jorkapp writes "Sony has announced that they will be using Processors manufactured by themselves in their next generation of CLIE handhelds, which are due to ship this Semptember. This is only the first step though, as Sony is planning to use its own line of processors for the next generation of Playstation systems. This new processor will give users 16 hours of battery life (impressive!) and the ability to play video at a smooth 30fps."
And jake writes with a link to a story at mobilemag.com which also describes the new handhelds (the UX50 was mentioned the other day), and says "both the CLIE UX50 and UX40 handhelds will be available through American retailers in September for about $700 and $600, respectively, but can be pre-ordered now through Sony's website."
Even if the hardware is better, proprietary hardware is bad. It limits the choices of what you can do with the devicce you own. It goes beyond the "can I run linux on it", hell a valid question would be "am I able to run windows on it?"
Beta was technically better than VHS. Look what won. Popularity is important. (possibly a bad example, I had a valid point, but I might have lost it to inebriation)
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Squirrel
I still don't understand this. At this price, you are in direct competition with a laptop, and the laptop can do a lot more. I think that HP is moving in the right direction by offering sub $300 ipaq units that are actually quite nice.
This new processor will give users 16 hours of battery life (impressive!)
Huh? Maybe 16 hours is impressive for a laptop computer or a Windows mobile device but this is a Palm OS device. My current color Clie gets at least that with backlight on most of the time.
700$ seem expensive, but if you get the top-o-the-line zaurus and throw in a WLAN card, you get about the same price. However, this thing has a bigger screen, and it sounds like the sony may have much better battery life.
Marketing claims, however, aren't... we'll see when it gets independently reviewed.
Proprietary processor though... Hmmm... that might be a red flag.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Slashdot is not a united front. It's a website. You don't see references to "self-respecting Chicage Sun-Times readers" in the editorials of a newspaper do you?
Why not fork?
" the ability to play video at a smooth 30fps"
That is pretty vague. I assume he means 480x320 mpeg-2?
Yes, you can create open generic CPU, and everybody would be able to build an alarm clock or server out of it. Yet if you have a chip for alarm clock that is proprietary, but suits just fine alarm clock builders, 10 times smaller, 5 times cheaper, consumes 13 times less energy, what would you choose?
Being proprietary vs. being non-proprietary and being generic vs. being specialized are unrelated qualities.
The question is not whether you'd use a non-proprietary generic processor or a proprietary specialized processor to build that alarm clock. The question is whether you'd use a proprietary or non-proprietary alarm clock chip to build the alarm clock.
The original poster also appears to be confused about the word "proprietary". A proprietary design is one that someone owns. The design of Intel microprocessors is proprietary - just try fabbing your own chips from copies of Intel's masks and see how far you get. x86 clones exist because, while the implementation is proprietary, the instruction set and behavior are still _documented_, and these documents are available for anyone to view. While you can't build your own copy of an Intel processor, you can build another one that does the same thing as far as programs are concerned (possibly better than Intel's does, possibly not).
Similarly, whether or not you can write your own software for a device has no relation to whether the device's design is proprietary - it relates to whether the device's programming specs are public or not.
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"We have the capability of injecting wonder, joy and levels of customization into a portable device so it becomes more like a companion or a friend to a lifestyle that uses digital technology."
-- Masanobu Yoshida, president of Sony Corporation's Handheld Computing Company
both the CLIE UX50 and UX40 handhelds will be available through American retailers in September for about $700 and $600
I'm awfully sorry Sony, even though the Clie is cool as hell, $600!!!!
Dell sells complete desktop systems for around $400 - $500. With monitor.
Substitute portability for sensibility.
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Noting in your newspost that Sony will be adopting this technology into the "next generation of PlayStations", I'm going to guess that this means the up and coming PSP. If that is the case and these handhelds are getting 16 hours of battery life with a solid 30fps, I think (for the first time) Nintendo has something to worry about. Of course, games will make the processor a bit more busy than keeping your address book updated. Also, the motor for the game disc itself. It will be an interesting battle regardless. There is only one thing that looks pretty clear to me, the N-gauge is going to be left in the dust.