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Intel Sonoma UK Launch Party
Benny writes "Intel held it's UK Sonoma lauch party last night and TrustedReviews have some pictures up of the machines on display including new models from HP, Dell, Samsung, Sony and Asus to mention a few."
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Does it run Linux?
:)
This time it is actually appropriate.
"But seriously, is that what laptops look like these days?"
Actually... That's what the UK looks like these days... and the rest of the world 10 years ago
Seriously, you geeks just won't be satisfied until all computers look just like seven of nine, geez.
Dude. There's only so small you can shrink a laptop before it becomes unusable. Lighten up.
Man, ought to have the party in Sonoma!
http://www.sonoma.com/
And comparing Intel's financials to AMD's financials last quarter what do you think made better business sense
Is this just like the computer industry's equivalent to the auto industry's international car shows? Because this doesn't seem all that much like news to me, just a bunch of random laptops. Still pictures really don't show off processor capability, so what's the point? And couldn't they have wiped the fingerprints off of the screens of the ones at the bottom of page 2? Maybe it's just because I live in SEC country, but I first read it as Intel having a University of Kentucky Sonoma launch party, which made absolutely no sense.
They're not ALL bad.
If you go to the third page of photos, they have two shots of Samsung's entries (X25 and X50). I have the Gateway-branded version of an older model of these (X20, I believe), and I can tell you, it's pretty nice. Slim and light, bright screen, and with enough oomph to get the job done.
Of the models shown, the Samsungs take the cake.
This is all well and good, but fundamentally, what is the difference between Sonoma and older versions of the Centrino chipset? It seems to me that Sonoma hasn't had much of a buzz up to now, and all this article says about it is that it's a"new Centrino platform". If this is just more of the same, I'm not interested . . . but if there's a real difference, could someone point to what that might be?
And when our computers do look like 7 of 9... Many of us will likely be electrocuted.
Sonoma = California Wine Country
I guess it's a step up from the "Mad Dog" release of 2002. (Or the "Weasel Dust" release of 1999.)
1. take the basic case form from 1993, be it laptop or desktop
2. add many small pieces of another shade of grey plastic
3. add many buttons and ports in places that scream "well, the motherboard guys told us that it was *impossible* to put them anywhere else!"
4. complicate simple design features with additional plastic bezels and bezel-bezels.
5. Add LEDs to describe various pieces of information that are either unnecessary or made redundant by the OS.
6. add obligatory windows, intel and graphics card stickers in a conspicous place
7. poke speaker and vent holes everywhere, and call it a day.
Sonoma, soon to cause insomnia.
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
Yes, and these are nowhere near that.
The limit, I think, is right around the level of the Pana Let's Note Light. Sharp Mebius (the one that docks in a cradle and becomes an external hard disk) is pretty slick too, though underpowered with only a Crusoe in it.
I saw some guy on the train with that Sony thumb-driven "laptop", but it just looked ridiculous. You might as well just get a PSP because you're not going to get any work done on the Sony anyway.
This is amazing. All these are products of different companies, bigger and smaller, from different countries and yet none of them really stands out from the crowd. Doesn't HP or Acer or anything have a design department? Or maybe it's a mindset of these companies that doesn't value the aesthetic perception?
Anyone else notice that NONE of these laptops had visible scroll wheels or 3rd mouse buttons? I consider those to be absolutely essential, and it boggles my mind that so few laptops include them, even when you pretty much can't buy a new mouse without one.
I'm happy with my T40 at the moment, but if an upgrade is coming soon, I have to wonder which of the Great Satans I will have to choose from, now that IBM won't be making ThinkPads anymore. Just on looks alone, and with my own highly subjective analysis, I'd give these models the "sex appeal" award:
994-dell2.jpg
994-hp.jpg
994-samsungx25profile.jpg
iBook-a-like award goes to (BTW, nothing wrong with that, I think this looks interesting):
994-sonyvaiof_1.jpg
The Samsung model sounds interesting, in that it appears to be "thin-and-light" but will sport a nice ATI card. I can only hope IBM will start making Sonoma-based systems before the sale of their PC division is OK'd by the US government.
I would think that some of these manufacturers could spend an extra $100-$200 and add a digitizer and Windows Tablet PC Edition to their models of notebook/laptop computer.
I have sworn off buying a laptop until a TabletPC comes out that has the features and price that I'm looking for. The most appealing thing about a TabletPC is that they can actually fit opened on a coach class airline if the person in front of you is reclining without breaking the screen, or making it really hard to read...
I can't be the only one who is disappointed at seeing this new CPU for laptops without a single Tablet PC...
Oh man nothing like showing off the differences between consumer and business models by this: http://www.trustedreviews.com/article.aspx?head=80 &page=2225.
(scroll down towards last two pics about Toshiba)
For those who are too lazy: consumer model and business model.
This space is not for rent.
yeah, your momma has ears, and she's white -- that must mean she's identical to my momma... obviously, you're the type of mental drivel that perpetuates this type of lackluster industrial design.
Lackluster only in the eyes of a mac addict. A dell is a gem of engineering and design to a dell addict, and a thinkpad is the be-all and end-all of industrial design to an IBM addict. It's all nothing but opinion and each will try to lord it over the other like theirs is the only true way. It's all nothing but opinion.
In the end most people are not like that. What matters is how it performs, and too much time spent on what a computer looks like needs to be paid for. It just adds cost and takes manufacturer focus away from what matters, speed.
RST
"Intel held it's UK..."
How many times? It's means it is, its is possessive. Unless you meant "Intel held it is UK...", you've used the wrong one.
And tomorrow the stock exchange will be the human race
As a consumer I think naming products with "proper" names is a very good practice. One will straight away be able to remember the type of cpu, cellphone or whatever it is one just bought.
For example, cell phone maker Nokia labels its phones with (more or less) cryptic 4 digit numbers and i think it just plain sucks. "My phone is the new 3567.. no 3675.. err 3765.. or was it 3760..?"
The names, when chosen properly, can even be informative and actually tell something about the product, like the Mac^H^Horris Mini.
I want something the size of a mac mini, but I won't pay for a Mac, I like my operating systems Free and Light.
Then get Yellowdog and call it a day (admittedly not sure if it runs on the Mac mini yet but the hardware there is pretty standard so it should not be long if it's not there already).
Why suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous PC design when you can have a really well designed fanless Linux box for less than you can cobble most mini-ITx designs together for?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
- 'Sonoma: The chip that puts you to sleep'
- 'Sonoma: The chip thats always sleeping'
or for that matter a hallucinogenicI'm still a little peeved that people have not caught on to what centrinoi means. In order to have the centrino label you must
1. Have the pentium M
2. Have a designated intel chipset
3. Have the intel wifi
Basically all non techy consumers/buyers want are centrino laptops. At the launch of centrino everyone wanted the centrino models not the exact same non-centrino model without the intel wifi(some even went as far as to buy the centrinos knowing the intel solution was not a good match and bought pcmcia cards which was higher expense and from what I heard a support nightmare.) Even if the non-intel wifi solution was better for them. This is marginalizing other wifi solution providers. Sure Intel claims you get better power managment with there solution but what percentage of actual battery life does this provide.
At least intel is taking it from behind now that they finally have to admit that mhz really means nothing when comparing different types of cpu's...
---In a time of Chimpanzees I was a Monkey.
You heard it here first!
One of the next 3 stories posted on Slashdot will be about Exeem Lite with links to the story at the Register...
Aero
Please stop hurting America -- Jon Stewart
Apple powerbooks can no way compete against the speed, and lightness of PCs. Come back when you apple has a laptop with a 14" screen or larger thats under 5 pounds like the IBM T Series, dell D600 or other brands. Apple's only sub 5 pound laptop has a pitful 12" screen but apple has always been behind the times, i'm still waiting for a g5 laptop.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
The Sonoma platform will be followed by the Napa platform. Napa will be followed by the Santa Rosa platform (Santa Rosa is a city in Sonoma County, not a wine region). According to Tom's Hardware, the platform preceding Sonoma had the code name "Carmel."
I bet this is all very uninteresting and off-topic. Go ahead and mod me down if appropriate.
TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
Not the kind of models I was hoping to see... Just some boring laptops....
Get your own free personal location tracker
Yeah for a heavy picture website. Come on slashdot! Come on slashdot! Come on slashdot effect! (and a hit is heard over the hill)
Don't name your chipsets after a lousy light pickup truck, i.e. the GMC Sonoma. Same as the Chevy S-10 basically.
GMC recently replaced the Sonoma with the much better "Canyon" truck. It even sounds better.
Sonoma = rolling rust heaps.
Sig for hire.
No. It only lasts 3 hours before all the lights go out and it burns your testicles in the process...
-Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their level, then beat you with experience-
Hey - is that a curved keyboard I see in the first picture? Might laptop makers actually be thinking about incorporating ergonomic keyboards into their design? This is the one thing I've really been waiting for. These new wide-screen laptops have an inch on either side of the keyboard that they just waste. Why not use that space to give me a split, ergonomic keyboard like I use with my desktop? :)
linky
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
And with the new "citizenship lessons" planned in schools, we're going to look like the USSR *60* years ago. All thanks to Comrade Blair.
Bloody authoritarian commies.
What'll be next? Blair's Youth?
The Intel 915 should be a pretty nice Linux chipset.
.asoundrc or /etc/asound.conf configuration with the Dmix plugin to enable software mixing of multiple sound inputs.
Intel (and Via) is actually ver nice to Linux developers when compared to other companies such as Nvidia or ATI.
Both Intel and Via supply data and help out at least nominally with creating free software drivers for their hardware.
With the 915 they supplied documentation to the DRI 3d drivers guys well in advance to the chipsets release. It should be quite nice by now.
With the sound you probably will be able to run it with Alsa, too. Although its likely, like all other cheaper onboard sound cards, that it doesn't support hardware mixing and you'd have to setup a
The questionable bit is the wifi and the ACPI support.
Intel supported free software developement for it's Wifi cards (with seperate closed source firmware files, I am guessing) for the centrino design, so unless they have created something completely new for this generation (which I doubt) it should be working fine by the time we get a chance to buy these things.
If they released specs to DRI for 3d acceleration, I am guessing they did the same thing for the ACPI support for the ACPI Linux guys. This chipset is a extension of the old so that I'd bet for the immediate future you may have to patch a kernel to get full support, but it shouldn't be more then a couple months to get support for it into the mainstreme kernel.
Everything else Linux should support without problems.
Looking forward to the 915 + pentium-m's with onboard video in the desktop arena. Should make great little Linux workstations, small form factor servers (SOHO style stuff), and desktops.
Like everything I wouldn't want to be trying to deploy these over a hundred machines using Linux right off the bat, but after a few months and some personal use of them, I'd be happy to.
After looking through all the pics I noticed one notebook that looks just like the iBook.
I posted a pic on my blog.
Asus makes the iBook. Do you think this is even the same plastic?
...who read "sodoma party"?
Because with a Dothan he could have at least twice the performance for similar cost and hardware he chooses and likes.