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Sharp Debuts New Transmeta-based Laptop
kpogoda writes "Transmeta's new Efficeon processor will debut today within a new trim and slim Sharp notebook. In case you don't remember, the processor family is known for its extremely low power consumption and blazingly high computing speeds."
I thought these chips were supposed to have "good" performance while consuming a lot less power.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Somehow Transmeta will always have a warm place in my heart. Don't know why, but I really like the company and praise them for what they are trying to do.
:)
1 Ghz is not that fast, but for normal work, it's more than enough.
This is the sig that says NI (again)
While I love their products, the slashdot title of "blazingly high" clock speeds is a little misleading.
From the article: "A base configuration of the notebook includes the 1-GHz Efficeon processor, 512MB of memory, a 20GB hard drive, and a 10.4-inch display for an estimated starting price of $1499. Sharp will take preorders for the notebook as of Monday, and it will ship in April."
So we are looking at around 1ghz.
Seriously, though, this practice shouldn't be rewarded with more free publicity for these products or their "reviews".
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
gotta love sites that have more adverts than content,sure gonna miss them when they die
anyway here is the text
______________________________
Sharp Shows Slim, Trim Notebook
New Actius MM20 is first to feature Transmeta's new Efficeon chip.
Tom Krazit, IDG News Service
Monday, March 15, 2004
The first notebook available in the United States with Transmeta's new Efficeon processor will be announced by Sharp Systems of America on Monday.
The new Actius MM20 is an improved version of the MM10, says Terry Hanly, product marketing manager for Sharp Systems, a division of Sharp Electronics.
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The MM10 used Transmeta's older Crusoe processor, which was praised for its miserly power consumption but panned for its performance.
The new Efficeon TM8600 is designed to improve performance while maintaining the low power consumption required by ultraportable notebooks--such as the 2-pound MM20. Sharp's tests showed that Efficeon delivers about 1.4 times the performance of Crusoe, Hanly says.
Sharp also improved performance in the MM20 by adding PC2100 (266-MHz) DDR SDRAM. The notebook now comes with 512MB of memory, up from 256MB in the older MM10.
The notebook's standard battery will last three hours under normal conditions. An extended battery will add six more hours of computing time and 0.6 pounds, Hanly says.
Portable PC
A base configuration of the notebook includes the 1-GHz Efficeon processor, 512MB of memory, a 20GB hard drive, and a 10.4-inch display for an estimated starting price of $1499. Sharp will take preorders for the notebook as of Monday, and it will ship in April.
The MM20 is designed as a second notebook for corporate executives or frequent business travelers that prefer something lightweight when traveling, Hanly says.
Sharp will include a base station and cable with the MM20 that allows users to connect the notebook to their regular PC through a USB port and use the notebook as an external hard drive.
Specially configured software from Iomega allows users to make changes to documents on their regular PC that will be automatically synchronized with the MM20. Conversely, if a user makes changes to a document on the road, the updated version of that document will automatically replace the older version on the regular PC when the units are connected, Hanly says.
A version of this notebook has been available in Japan, Hanly says. She does not know if a version will ship in Europe.
& wi-fi vdo conferencing, etc....
Since Linus Torvalds used to work for Transmeta, I would like to know if Linux is well optimized for this processor.
...a laptop with a dedicated "portable" architecture. I can definately see Intel saying "More transistors, more power, more clock, and it'll be okay" - which is questionable on the desktop but not at all adequate with laptops. Transmeta's departure from this is an interesting turn of events - Will we see two separate processor lines, one for the laptop, and one for the desktop? And I don't mean the M-series, which just added variable clock and PM, but something like two different design philosophies.
:)
And damn, that's a sexy laptop...
toresbe
I first expected it to be some kind of super Zaurus but no...
it just seems to be some bigger Vaio C1xx.
Now, I do not see who they want to sell this to if this at least present no consistency with the rest of their offer.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
How does this chip compare with that other energy-saving chip, the Celeron?
And more importantly, is there any reason you'd choose a Transmeta-powered rig over an Intel one?
Patriotism - the last resort of scoundrels.
The CPU is just one component that eats electricity in a laptop; the other big hog is the back lit screen.
Do you really need much compute power in a walk-about machine to do email, web browsing, word smithing ? In a trade off give me battery time over machine horsepower every time.
I think that many people have a laptop for ease of use (all your files not backed up in one place that moves with you) and expect the laptop to do everything. What I like is those laptops that drop performance in battery mode.
Sharp Shows Slim, Trim Notebook
New Actius MM20 is first to feature Transmeta's new Efficeon chip.
Tom Krazit, IDG News Service
Monday, March 15, 2004
The first notebook available in the United States with Transmeta's new Efficeon processor will be announced by Sharp Systems of America on Monday.
The new Actius MM20 is an improved version of the MM10, says Terry Hanly, product marketing manager for Sharp Systems, a division of Sharp Electronics.
Advertisement
The MM10 used Transmeta's older Crusoe processor, which was praised for its miserly power consumption but panned for its performance.
The new Efficeon TM8600 is designed to improve performance while maintaining the low power consumption required by ultraportable notebooks--such as the 2-pound MM20. Sharp's tests showed that Efficeon delivers about 1.4 times the performance of Crusoe, Hanly says.
Sharp also improved performance in the MM20 by adding PC2100 (266-MHz) DDR SDRAM. The notebook now comes with 512MB of memory, up from 256MB in the older MM10.
The notebook's standard battery will last three hours under normal conditions. An extended battery will add six more hours of computing time and 0.6 pounds, Hanly says.
Portable PC
A base configuration of the notebook includes the 1-GHz Efficeon processor, 512MB of memory, a 20GB hard drive, and a 10.4-inch display for an estimated starting price of $1499. Sharp will take preorders for the notebook as of Monday, and it will ship in April.
The MM20 is designed as a second notebook for corporate executives or frequent business travelers that prefer something lightweight when traveling, Hanly says.
Sharp will include a base station and cable with the MM20 that allows users to connect the notebook to their regular PC through a USB port and use the notebook as an external hard drive.
Specially configured software from Iomega allows users to make changes to documents on their regular PC that will be automatically synchronized with the MM20. Conversely, if a user makes changes to a document on the road, the updated version of that document will automatically replace the older version on the regular PC when the units are connected, Hanly says.
A version of this notebook has been available in Japan, Hanly says. She does not know if a version will ship in Europe.
Will it run Linux?!
The new Muramasa has been out in Japan since January. It has had some nice reviews and keeps up well with Pentium-M modells of similar clock speed (see this Japanese review). And it is much cheaper.
***Quis custodiet ipsos custodes***
I don't know what everybody is complaining about with these being slow chips. THey should really start to look at the trade-offs. Do they want to lug around an 8 pound laptop, with 3 hourse of battery life, just so they can say they have a 2.4 GHz laptop, or would they rather carry around a 2.6 pound laptop with 6 hours of battery life (weight with extended battery), and have to run things just a tinsy bit slower. I've found that provided the system have a good amount of memory, a pentium 2 is good enough to run most applications.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Your post contains some errors, I believe.
IIRC, the Pentium-4 die was stripped of extraneous chip functions in order to maximise the clock speed. These more efficient parts of the chip were re-introduced in Pentium 4M, to enable the system to run more efficiently at lower clock speeds. Perhaps the actual transistors themselves are on both chips, but only enabled in one format or the other.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned this, Transmeta's tend to run alot cooler then Intel/Amd...
I know personally after sitting in a class at university with my Dell my legs feel like they are about to melt. Anyways Transmeta has exact stats on the site but its somewhere around 1/4 of the heat output, personally thats why I am considering a Transmeta next round....
what these processors are known for. Benchmarks show that. That's not to say it's a bad processor, and maybe the Efficeon will turn out a little sweeter. Meanwhile, there isn't a whole lot about Transmeta's stuff that stands out. Except the wacky design.
REM Old programmers don't die. They just GOSUB without RETURN.
2.6 pounds with 3+6= 9 hours of battery life.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Am I really getting so old that the majority of Slashdot readers were in diapers when Transmeta came out of the closet and hence need a "reminder" of what the Crusoe chipset is all about. How depressing. :(
Will Stokes Album Shaper http://albumshaper.sf.net
At CES, they had one, and it was absolutely dwarfed by my Nokia 6360 phone. Take a look:
While the phone is a 'big' one the laptop was thinner, and it weighed nothing. Very cool.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=13578
These ultra-light models don't click until you hold one, but when you do, you look at the standard ultra-lights and wonder how people use them.
-Charlie
Their first chip Crusoe, although saving power, underperformed badly. And the Efficeon doesn't look fast compared to its rivals. The Efficeon TM 8000 can do 1.1GHz consuming 7W. Intel's Pentium M does 1.7GHz for the same power consumption.
I don't think there's anything particularly cool about this news. It is the same as the discovery of the new planet. There are better ones already out there.
Indefinitely Detained US Citizen
Of course both fans spinning will impact your battery performance but it's better than third degree burns on your... lap.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I have been looking at the MM10 (the older version) as a small Linux computer for some months now and the memory was always a hold up. This things solves that and then some.
The older model was small and light, but very usable. You could confortably hold it in one hand for a long time and it never got warm/hot. This was the thinnest thing I've ever seen, and the smallest without seeming to sacrifice on usability (close to sacrifice though).
I might just have get one and see about running Linux on this little guy.
As far as I'm concerned (and lots of people I know as well), the magic price point for notebooks financed from personal funds has become $1000 or less. After all, these are machines that are often "refreshed" every two years or less, I definitely don't want to spend much more than $500/year on notebooks. This Sharp is only giving me a slow processor, XGA and 20GB for $1500? Heck, I can get the ultra-slim Averatec 3150 for $900 (often for $700 refurbished), and it's got twice the HD and a faster mobile AMD to boot. Given that the backlight eats most of the power anyway, I doubt this Sharp will run all that much longer on a charge than the Averatec, Transmeta or no Transmeta.
I understand that the Transmeta family of CPUs use 'code morphing' to translate x86 code into an internal execution format. But wouldn't it be better to write code which targets the true 'native' instruction set of the Crusoe/Efficieon? I mean, wouldn't this help solve the fucking awful performance problems of the chip?
OK, now that's out of the way, I would also like to ask one more question. Here goes:
Will Transmeta sell more Efficieons in the chip's whole life span than Intel will sell Pentium Ms in one day?
I look forward to the community's response!!
Using a wireless network as the backbone for a cluster seems to me to be inefficient, at least right now.
Sure, you've got a lot of power available, but your latency is going to be pretty bad. And your reliability, especially in buildings with a lot of concrete. I don't know how well OpenMOSIX handles faults.
On another note, what happens to a wireless network when you put a whole bunch of computers in the same room? Which will be more important? The number of channels, or the bandwidth per channel?
Again, I don't know how OpenMOSIX would react.
Of course, it is an interesting idea, even if it needs work. Perhaps incorporating mesh network logic with signal strength sensing would improve the behavior of the system.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
supposed to be cool. If you want warmth buy Intel, and if you want to get hot go for a 12" PowerBook
Anyone know / care to comment how these chips compare with apples G3 and G4 laptops? I was under the impression that they were much less power hungry than intel and AMD's chips, which let them be lighter and have better battery life.
I have a feeling the guy writing the summary was blazingly high.
i wouldnt exactly say transmeta chips are blazing.. my friend had a 600mhz tm5600 based laptop that had been marketed as 'gigapro' without any sort of actual note of the clock speed and the performance was not really near that of a comparable 600mhz cpu from amd or intel.. he endedup selling it for the price he bought it for and got an A64 emachines with a radeon m9600.. bit better for games ;)
Could be wrong, but transmeta's I think dont need fans, so they are also very silent.
I own a fujitsu p2040 and it has no fan, just a vent in the back. Although, it has the crusoe 5800 not the efficeons. Most likely it'll not come with one.
My crusoe's clocked at 800mhz, but it's not the same performance you'd expect from an intel or amd chip. But when I had it during school, it was able to a last 2 hour lecture on the standard battery while I was taking notes and browsin around wirelessly with a pcmcia 802.11b card. Plus, enough battery life to listen to mp3s on the one hour train home.
At work, I got an IBM A series and I can watch that battery percentage drop. This was when the machine was idle and I had to dim the backlight very low just to keep it alive.
Now my p2040's got slackware on it and it's running fine with no tweaking. I've yet to tackle the apm config.
Transmeta made a lot of fuss about energy efficiency, but in reality, the Intel LV and ULV mobile Tualatin P3 consumes almost as little power while being much faster. The best power/speed tradeoff seems to be the ULV P3 933mhz, 512kb L2 cache, 1.1V. The typical and maximum power consumption are 4 and 7W respectively.
Intel is now hyping the P-M just as heavily as Transmeta. The P-M can dynamically scale the frequency through a large range, but if you use CPU intensive apps, the power consumption can get suprisingly high (31W for the 1.5-1.7 ghz versions). For more facts and figures, see Sandpile.
Fujitsu 'did it right' with the P-Series.
It would be nice to have a faster processor but the flexibility the P-Series (I have the 2120) is unmatched. 8 hours+ battery life and when you add in a 7200rpm drive it is not as sluggish.
Games are best avoided here but I didn't buy it for mobile gaming just mobile working and notes taking in class.
"Survival of the fittest Max, and we've got the fucking gun!" - Pi
I.T. departments want to support 2 notebooks for every executive user, this is a bad marketing ploy at best. Transmeta makes a nice chip, Sharp marketing clearly doesn't know what to do with it.
I'm still waiting for someone to sell a 10" ultraportable with WiFi, no Windows license, and hardware that has open source drivers.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
-5 : karma whore trollingly asking the obvious
Transmeta makes wholesale changes to the backend architecture of these chips with each release. The x86 frontend is the only thing that they guarantee to remain stable.
A compiler producing native Transmeta code would need to emit (wildly) different code for each different revision. I read a quote from Linus somewhere that the scheduling and parallelism issues are very, very messy.
So that is why you don't see native Transmeta compilers, although I have heard of large customers tweaking the translation software for higher FPU performance.
Obviously someone who's not used the Transmeta based Compaq Tablet. About as blazingly fast as a shackled tortoise. It does have great power consumption stats though :)
Does anybody know if there is a Soekris-like board built with Transmeta?
I'd like to buy a low-power embedded server with something better than a souped-up 486. A micro-micro-ITX system might be cool, too.
And if so, can i change the emulation to lets say.. a PPC, or even a Z80?
Or is that locked down to a microcode level and not 'user accessable'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Centrino guts, 10.4' 1024x768 screen all under 2 pounds! Its made of carbon fibre too! too bad it costs between 3-4 grand depending on options.
I dont want a big disk and screen in my laptop. 10.4 is fine, 12 is the biggest id want. I want battery life and light weight. So i ask you slashdotters, what good slim laptops do you like?
I want 2D games back.
They brag about 7 watts power consumption at about 1GHz... IBM was selling G3 processors at that speed with a 5 watt consumption in October 2001. ..."At speeds of 1GHz, the [750FX] chip consumes only five watts of power"
So the transmetta chip uses 40% MORE power than a similar speed chip that has been on the market for 2.5 years. Hardly something to get excited about.
Providing the text without the ads is a service.
Forgive me if this is a stupid question. I am ignorant.
free speach
Did you mean: free speech
So, the most intruiging feature there was that the laptop/drive could appear as a USB device on the desktop. Anyone know if this is handled through hardware/bios and would be something that you'd still have with a Linux/BSD install? That could be a killer feature, and given the prevalence of the generic Mass Storage profile seems actually possible.
I've been burned on the CD/DVD docking stations, or other hardware specific goodies, far too often to just assume this will work.
I've used kde since the 1.0 days, upgrading all along on my dual ppro-200. Even in the slowest 2.0 days, it ran fast enough on my system. Sure I turned the eye-candy slider way down when I configured KDE the first time, but that is all. It works, and is fast enough.
The only time I have problems is when I hear the harddrive grinding away, swapping. Even then I'm running something heavy duty in addition to KDE, something that can take up most of my memory alone.
I've heard that Crusoe processors tend to do well on relatively compact computing tasks, like CPU-heavy numerical analysis in which a relatively small bit of code is run repeatedly-- a bit that's small enough to fit into the instruction translation cache. One interesting thing that I've noticed is that, compared to most applications, OpenOffice seems to run quite nicely on my P1120. Perhaps that's because the JVM (or its most frequently used subset) is small enough to stay in the translation cache? I'm just guessing, here... more informed insight is welcome.
The extended battery really does last almost 9 hours if you're not using WiFi-- e.g., on a flight. I still had 48% battery remaining after constant use on a 5-hour Orlando-to-LA flight last summer. My WiFi use is mostly at home, and it's still decent-- though I haven't tried to measure it. (Interestingly enough, the biggest battery hog seems to be the tiny DLink USB Bluetooth adapter that I use to sync my cell phone!)
On the other hand, I effectively lose some of my performance on airplanes, due to everyone around me saying, "What the heck is that thing? Aww, how cute..." Then they realize that their Dell laptop's extended battery is almost as big as my whole rig. :-)
FWIW, my P1120 doesn't appear to have a fan or a vent. And I can actually place it on my lap for a while; it gets warm, but not too hot.
Obligatory Linux content: I haven't tried loading Linux on it yet, because as far as I can tell, there is no available touch screen calibration utility. (The screen itself reportedly shows up as a generic USB pointing device.) Anyone know of a solution for this?
As you'll notice this is simply Sharp's MM10 with an Efficion dropped in. Most other hardware is similar meaning you'll only see a battery life increase from the processor. As most of us should know, the processor usually takes a less significant amount of battery power than you'd think compared to components like hard drives and LCD screens.
What they seem to be touting i this upgrade is a performance increase. I own a TM5800 based NEC Powerbase ECO computer and I'll tell you even in a desktop the performance is pretty weak. I downgraded significantly when I went from a P3 933mhz to a TM5800 900mhz. All in the name of a fanless all-in-one design, I guess.
This may be interesting if the heat dissipation is low enough to work in a fanless PC or rack of tightly packed blades. But as far as impressing someone with performance or battery life in a laptop it has already lost to Pentium-M. It is far less powerful and not meaningfully more efficient. It would be interesting to compare it to the VIA C3, though. That product line has reached the point where it needs active cooling and is no longer a viable choice for fanless.
And this weighs 2lb - half the weight. That does make a difference. Some people won't mind paying more for that difference.
For the same reason it's "finish" and note "finash."
lemme check the calendar to make sure it aint april 1st.
Indeed, transmetas have an extremely low power-consumption rate, but one can't say they are fast, especially post-Enron; u can't fudge the numbers. If power consumption was a part of the performance index (let's say for a SpecInt or a SpecFP), then yea...it might be able to compete. But it's like Via's C3; its low power in more than one way.
Just like you can't have a Lamborgini that gets 60MPG, you ccan't expect to have low power with high power; only some balance of the two in between.
I have the older MM10 model, with the transmeta 1GHz. I love the machine though it is not the quickest. The only problem? They seem to be OVERLY dedicate. I had purchased my original last July. After 3 weeks of minimal usage, the screen went bad. Sharp sent me a refurbished unit (though I had paid full price for a new unit just 3 weeks early). About a month ago, the replacement went bad (battery was bad and possibly the charge circuitry went bad as well). They have since sent me a refurbished unit and battery and I've been ok since then. It's a great machine, but you really have watch out for it.
http://www.rayn.net . Funny. Stuff.
Yes, it does.
Now go back to cowering you insensitive clod!
Imagine...a Beowulf cluster of these!
*sigh*
I have a Crusoe based Fujitsu P2110 and it's
been great.... fast enough to do video
production even. But I carry it with me
everywhere and it's starting to wear out.
This looks like the perfect replacement!
Scott Draves
Mod the parent up! Doesn't he/she have a point? Seems to be a pretty fair assessment of the value / bucks ratio: i.e., it sounds like a lot of money for a low-spec piece of kit.
When will transmeta come out with a Mini-ITX or Nano-ITX board with ther CPU on it? VIA has done very well at that with its C3 processors. They sell a lot to end-users, and sell a ton to embedded systems vendors. Transmeta could get a piece of that market.
Those server/embedded devices are a lot less demanding of CPU power. Any device, like a laptop, which has direct user GUI interfacing will always need a lot of horsepower.
Is it really all that much faster than the Crusoe? I've got a Sony Vaio C1MW with an 866 MHz Crusoe in it and it's just barely fast enough as it is.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
I mostly agree with your sentiment until you say the Sharp Actius is a "plae imiation of the ... PowerBook."
Ok, you obviously don't own a laptop or know what the fuck you're talking about. The Actius weighs 2 pounds and has one internal spindle (hard drive) with a travel weight not much more (very small, light power adapter). The PowerBook weighs ~5 pounds and has two internal spindles. It's travel weight is more than that still. If there's no difference betwee 2 and 5 pounds... I just don't have anything else to say to that. You're clearly clueless on the issues and are merely plagarising the popular opinion.
It's known for that Torvalds kid that worked there
Exercise caution when modding this message up: the author acts like a jerk when his karma is excellent.
Tansmeta's do have their fans. But rather than being little devices that go round and round inside the case, these fans keep the air circulating by incessantly praising the processor in their new notebook to anyone who will listen.
And they're not silent at all!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I know it is one of their big selling points but I have yet to have used a Transmeta device that actually had a longer run time than my huge Latitude C series with second battery. Why? Because for some reason manufacturers seem to have a fetish for the 2.5 - 3 hour benchmark. Once they reach it, they concentrate on size instead. Surely I can't be the only one who would be happy with a smallish (12-13") notebook with long battery life. I certainly find that more interesting than devices that are so tiny as to be unusable yet have comparable run time to normal laptops.
pale imitation of a 12" g4 powerbook?
huh? this thing weighs -half- as much.
First off, I just finished ordering one, with the extended battery. Now for why:
I use a Laptop virtually all day, every day. I currently work on a Thinkpad T23 with a 1.3GHz processor, 1GB RAM, 14" Screen, etc. I add a 802.11g card when in office and a T-Mobile wireless WAN card everywhere else. I love my laptop, but I have three complaints: 1. Weight, 2. Heat (holy crap it gets hot), and 3. battery life. I also have a Sony Picturebook which address these issues, but it's TOO small and lacks a LOT of connectivity. I use a Zaurus with Opie and love it. I have long wished that I could get a "really big Zaurus" with integrated WiFi, good storage, etc. That's essentially how I view the MM20. Of course that is predicated on my getting Linux on it, but I am confident that given some time, that is quite doable. A 1GHz proc, half a gig of RAM, acts as a USB2 hard-drive when connected to my desktop, integrated 802.11g, 2 lbs. and a 10" screen...it's PERFECT for my needs. Anyone want to buy a Thinkpad?
And yet consumers will almost always sacrifice usability for power. A rational ranking of laptop features would start:
Because: If it weights too much, you'll never have it with you. And there's no point in carrying it around if you can't access anything. And you won't want to access anything if it's a pain to use.
And so most handhelds have enough power, yet consumers continue to have their priorities almost in reverse and buy heavy pieces of crap. And critics continue to criticise tablets because they increase the cost without increasing the power. Why is everyone so stupid?
The tm8x00 Efficeon is much faster than any form of PIII cpu at the same clock speed.
stop smoking crack and look at the benchmarks.
I'd be more excited about this announcement, if I could get my own Actius PC-MM10 to boot from the USB CDROM drive. First, I tried a generic CDROM drive. No go. I called Sharp (1-800-BE-SHARP), and they told me that practically the only CDROM which the laptop can boot from is the Lite-On model which comes bundled with it (I didn't go for the bundle). The tech support guy told me that I didn't have to purchase the drive from Sharp, as long as I got the correct Lite-On model.
I purchased that CDROM drive (not from Sharp, which charges $300 for a simple combo drive) and now I have two CDROM drives which the laptop can't boot from. I'm pretty frustrated, because I'm trying to create a dual-boot installation, and resizing the Windows partition has made it unbootable. Also, I'm not an expert, and so I'm having some trouble installing Linux through the cradle. I think it's a problem with initrd. I'm not too worried about that. I'll figure it out. But, it would be nice to retain a small Windows installation, as well.
I absolutely love my laptop. It's super-portable and has a wonderful bright screen, but not being able to boot from USB CDROM is making my life very difficult.
Resources for installing Linux on this laptop:
Gentoo Linux on the Sharp Actius PC-MM10
Linux on the Sharp PC-MM10
I emailed John Lee from the first link above, and he confirmed that he is able to boot from his CDROM drive. I'm interested to know how Sharp tech support will handle this, because they have so far been very courteous.
Transmeta is going to have to show me a *lot* before I ever buy anything with one of their chips in it again. :)
My Fujitsu 2040 runs at 867mhz, but it "feels" like a P3-500.
Windows + WMP9 on it are basically unusable, as is Mozilla.
The only way I can use it is with FreeBSD + Opera7
I browse at +5 Flamebait- moderation for all or moderation for none.
It comes standard with a wlan chip, AND a wired nic!
I'm very impressed by this little bugger!
If its got a DVD drive, I'm sold. Its still a little pricey for my taste buds, but I'm definately impressed!
think before you write, it'll save me moderator points.
> The tm8x00 Efficeon is much faster than any form of PIII cpu at the same clock speed.
> stop smoking crack and look at the benchmarks.
Of course it's much faster, the ULV P3s are two years old now, the competition at the time was the TM5x00. In the current match between the ULV P-M and the TM8x00, Transmeta seem to fare a lot better.
"Fuel cells also lose most of their capacity within a year (okay, within a month) if used on a daily basis."
Are you referring to catalyst poisoning as the loss of capacity? Is this personal experience or something you read that you could link to? I'm curious. If you are referrin to catalyst poisoning, I wasn't aware the problem was that bad. I've read about some new methods of dealing with catalyst poisoning, but they do add complexity and cost. However, it seems likely a good portion of the poisoning problems could be solved with a little more research.
In addition to energy density, I would like to point out that you can double (or triple, quadruple, etc.) your running time for a fuel cell simply by carrying a fuel refill (such as methanol or ethanol) in a bottle, which is much cheaper than buying a second (or third or fourth) battery. Granted, this adds weight, but you could power a laptop for a full transatlantic flight. That's what I see as the main advantage of fuel cells: they're instantly refillable instead of requiring a long recharging.
It might consume less power and that means its good for battery life, but i've heard no one say its got a power user-processor.
In performance it comes nowhere near a top of the line AMD(around the same price i think).Anyone looking for processing power and getting pulled into a Transmeta processor should definitely rethink and go in for an AMD based notebook or pc.
Lord of the Binges.
I sat there for a while wondering how you get a laptop on a diet. ..."
I read as "Sharp de-butts
I need a break...
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Once again I had a great idea. Not an original idea, but a great idea nonetheless. Maybe I should have specified 'affordably priced'.
Ask me sometime about my other ideas / inventions : unmanned flying things (both heavier than air and lighter than air), electricity, the wheel, and the two stroke internal implosion engine (I don't think this one is being done yet, probably with good reason.)
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
EmperorLinux sells the previous generation laptop, the Sharp Actius MM10,which they call the Meteor, with Linux preinstalled and optimized. I imagine they'll support the newer one soon. Note: they will install Linux on existing laptops if you purchased yours elsewhere.
"Yeah well
I know he did about a year ago. Don't know if he has moved on or not...
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
if you press 'T' while booting a Mac it'll automagically configure itself to be a Firewire hard drive
It might only work between 2 Macs though
Just recently I was shopping for a new laptop, and the one on the top of my list was the MM-10 (which I'd seen at the store a few months ago). Unfortunately, it was discontinued, and the few places that were selling it were charging $500 MORE than it had been selling for before. So instead I got a 12" iBook G4.
And now I get to kick myself for not waiting. Thanks Slashdot (and Sharp)!
P.S - I really do love my new Mac (it's my first one), but it does need to be about 3 lbs lighter...