Slashdot Mirror
Handtop PC Announced Using Transmeta Processor
Cyberllama writes "Like many people on Slashdot, I've been wondering when all those transmeta-based products we were promised were finally coming out -- then I saw this. It claims to a be a fully functional laptop-like device with a 5.6 inch screen that can fit into the palm of your hand -- smaller than many laptop batteries. The specs are a bit last year (256 megs of ram, 1 gigahertz processor, 30 gig hard drive) -- but the size of the device is still pretty impressive. Unfortunately it looks like they won't be shipping until the end of the year."
It won't be out till next year and it is already pretty unimpressive. Time to market in the PC world is king.
Stay tuned for new sig...
The article simply says "pricing is not yet available."
Argh, what does it matter. Whatever it is, it won't be worth it because laptops are getting more and more prevelent. This will simply be more geek eye candy, something geeks will show off to other geeks.
It's a good thing I have a big hand :p
Anyway, my main grip with this (it's not the only product I see doing the same) is still keyboard design. You are supposed to write with your thumbs while grabbing the thing, why not arrange the keys around the thumbs then? It's not like anyone will be able to touch-type there anyway with that size.
Also start using some fucking trackballs again, I'm sick of these useless annoying touchpads. It'd be specially annoying in something that size.
---- Take the Space Quiz!
That seems a bit short. Considering you can buy a 15" scrren laptop that gets 4 hours life. I guess they have a tiny battery powering that thing. Too bad, it looks like a nice halfway between PDA and laptop.
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
The Compaq T-1000 TabletPC has. And I can tell you from experience that WindowsXP on that thing is A DOG. Pack a lunch if you plan on using this thing for anything more than IE and Freecell.
Haven't we all seen this before? I remember back in 2002 when OQO claimed they would ship something very similar (an "Ultra Personal Computer" or uPC) by the end of 02. Haha. What a laugh. Here we are 1 1/2 years later and nothing yet.
I'll believe it when I have one in my hand.
What will matter is the price they can bring these units down to. The big deterrent to a lot of companies that could use PDA's (construction companies, stores, etc) is their high cost. If this machine can help lower the prices of other machines, it is good, even if it is not the fastest or most impressve device in the world.
stuff |
Well, what's popular in the PocketPC market? Personally, I'd see a wireless device that you could use for what Steve Jobs has been touting. That is, replace the mini-tower as a central hub with a ballsy PDA. It would still need an optional keyboard but...
Since cell phones are become more PDA-like, and PDAs are offering better multimedia capability, perhaps the new line of products will be somewhere in between. Personally, I'd like to know what the PocketPC sales have been like over the past eighteen months. How viable is this market?
In the world where laptops are getting smaller and smaller.... I like this handtop. It is a good bridge between my ultraportable Averatec Laptop and my Palm PDA. This would be great also in the business environment. It won't fit you all and it is nice that you have your opinions, but we don't need to hear about it not running something you want or being too slow. This is a product just like any other and suited to work for a group of people being nonspecific as possible and yet covering their needs. This would work perfect in hospitals.
Does anyone smell another Vapoware???
Look at the last item on the features page.
Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.
I think this little device has great potential. Specifically, it has a hard drive and runs Windows XP. I bought an HP 680 Handheld PC, which I thought was great, but ran Windows CE. Finding software for it when a new version of Windows CE/Pocket PC came out that was incompatible with the previous version.
Now I just hope they have the budget to do some advertising. No one wants to waste time on a product that will be discontinued in a few months, as was the case with my HPC.
I think the more important question is can it run StarCraft? :-) This looks like just another over-sized PDA to me. Right now, it is faster than current PDAs, but, right now, it is also vaporware. By the time it comes out, 1 Ghz will be the minimum.
They apparently built in a 1.3MP digital camera. That seems a bit odd to me. The fact is that without a flash a 1.xMP camera is pretty bad except outdoors. And despite this being smaller than a normal laptop, I'm hesitant to say I'd want to hold it up to take a picture.
That being said, I do see how this device would make an excellent companion for a real digital camera. My wife and I spent over $1000 on our digital camera but don't do any editing/compiling/uploading until we get home to our desktop. I think it would be cool to be on vacation, shoot some video, hook it up to this via USB 2.0, make some edits, and then upload over 802.11 to a site for relatives/friends to view it.
If I were them I'd kill the built in camera to keep price down. Bluetooth and/or USB will provide access to a camera. People talk a LOT about convergence and all in one device, but I do not want to use a full computer to take pictures, regardless of the size.
Come play Moral Decay!
You need a fairly strong processor to play MPEG-4 (xvid, divx, etc..) videos, especially with multi-track encoded audio. My 200 mhz e310 PocketPC can play very specifically made divx videos, but the frame rate is low. This kind of device would be perfect if for taking very large amounts of high quality video around with you, since it has optional TV-out (according to the specs).
Look folks, don't think of this as a very small PC.
Think of this as a PDA that can run standard applications.
For example, one of the main uses I have for portable computing is running trip planning software like Delorme's MapNGo products. Currently, such products are pretty much Windows-ia32 only. I really don't NEED a full-size laptop for this, and the software was designed to run acceptably well on a 25MHz 486 with 32M of memory fercrissakes! Running this on a 1GHz Crusoe with a quarter-gig of RAM will be child's play.
Yes, it would be nice if you could run this software on an XScale or MIPs based PDA. It would be nice if I didn't have a mortgage payment, too. But I do and it doesn't.
So having a PDA that can run ia32 code is not a bad thing.
www.eFax.com are spammers
I really don't care if the company supports Linux, but so often these devices use such obscure proprietary hardware that there are none, or at best buggy drivers available for Linux. This really bothers me. I hope that the device will at least use some common components which will work well with Linux!
(Of course not having to pay for a Windows license is always nice, but no doubt a pipe dream.)
A friend who works for them had a prototype of the OQO. Neat device. Certainly these devices will only get more powerful as time goes on, and components continue to shrink.
My impression / comparison:
Speed : Tie
Memory: Tie
Networking: 802.11b only on the OQO, but g should be coming
Bluetooth: Built-in on the OQO
Size : The OQO seems a little smaller and leaner physically
Screen: The screen was very high-quality on the OQO. One major drawback to it is that it doesn't flip down, meaning you'll have to protect it a lot. The FlipStart works more like a laptop, self-protecting the screen. Also, the resolution is smaller on the OQO. But the wacom-style touch-pen is very nice, and a lot more flexible and powerful than modern PDA styluses.
Expansion: The OQO has ports all over the outside edge. It's really kind of impressive. However, only USB 1.1. It does have firewire, which I think is great for external drives and fast peripherals. And the OQO docking station looks really useful on the website.
Sexiness: The OQO wins hands-down. The look and construction of it is much more in line with very sexy Apple-industrial design standards, than cheap Toshiba-notebook plastic-molded awkwardness. That'd be a main selling point for me.
I don't want to say anything about price, because I don't know what's public knowledge yet, but I will say that the price I heard for the unit was well below what I thought it'd be. So you might find these units being aggressively priced and marketed to gain traction early on.
Anyway, it was neat to see one of these things in person finally, because I agree: they've been a long time in coming!