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HP Unveils Small Commercial Linux Laptop
Ryan writes "HP had unveiled their version of a miniaturized laptop for school kids. The tiny device boasts speeds up to 1.6 gigahertz. They haven't yet decided on a name, but 'netbooks' is one possibility. They will be used for surfing the Internet and doing other basic tasks like word processing. The company plans to have 50 million units available in the marketplace by 2011. Optical drives have been left out to prevent kids from playing 'unauthorized games.' Weighing less than 3 pounds with a tiny 8.9 inch screen, the machines start below $500 for a Linux-based model. Prices are expected to be higher for Windows Vista models."
Try again.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Won't someone really think of the children for once?
They must have some massive orders lined up. Unless that number is wrong, no WAY do you talk about figures that large without clear knowledge of huge orders already in the pipeline. That'd basically be one for every schoolchild in the US by 2011.
Could they be in talks with, for example, the folks in charge of the education changes that will be coming with the changing of the guard from republican to democrat White House administrations? Or with foreign governments (in both developed and developing countries)?
A-Bomb
a core2duo laptop with a 120gb HDD and a DVD rewritable drive... not to mention a 15.6inch screen -_-
This kind of language reminds me of this great xkcd.com piece.
... of making inexpensive, simple and rugged laptops for world education? I do believe it's been co-opted by the idea of "small", but not necessarily "inexpensive", "rugged" or "adaptable" to hard environments. For instance, $500 is way above the original marks set by OLPC, I believe, and even the marks above the other OLPC clone manufacturers. Can anyone weigh in on this? $500+ is bizarre, given how inexpensive fully-featured laptops are these days... --Dave
Right, cause we all know how many games there are floating around out there for Linux... on optical media no less...
"See? See? It's a feature, not a deficiency!"
The tiny device boasts speeds up to 1.6 gigahertz. They haven't yet decided on a name, but 'netbooks' is one possibility... Optical drives have been left out... Weighing less than 3 pounds...
How about 'NetBook Air'? Catchy, I think.
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But they say many schools requested the drives be left out to prevent students from playing unauthorized games.'
That's a good thing since games can't be distributed on USB drives, SD cards or downloaded from the internet.
Better known as 318230.
From TFA: HP executives say the only major feature its Mini-Note lacks is an optical drive for ingesting DVDs and CD-ROMs, which can be bought separately. But they say many schools requested the drives be left out to prevent students from playing unauthorized games.
.SWF file, which one kid will figure out how to do in 5 minutes and the rest will know 2 seconds later.
Um, what? Every time I go to the library, all the computers are occupied by kids playing a million different Flash games online. None of them are playing games that involve CDs. And plenty of small games can be run locally by saving the
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It's called the Mini-Note. It's aimed at the education market in general as well as "mobile professionals", not just schools. It can be configured with SuSE, Vista Home Basic, or Vista Business, and storage goes from 4GB SSDs to 160GB 7200RPM hard drives (accelerometer-based drive protection features are included for the HDD versions). The Netbook is something else entirely, and is made by Intel. There are dozens of reviews of the machine out already with better info than that Yahoo article. The HP press release is a good start.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I just discovered a secret. Most schoolkids don't even live in the US. Shocker!
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Optical drives have been left out to prevent kids from playing 'unauthorized games.'
Of course, being kids, they will require ~30 seconds (maybe less) to figure out a way around this. USB optical drive / keychain drive? Check. Daemon Tools and ISO image? Check. No-CD Patch of whatever game they want to run? Check. Web games, bittorrent, whatever else their little hearts might desire? Check.
I have a vision of 1,000s of kids sitting in school, on school-approved laptop, all endowed with MAME and console emulators... "and god looked down, and saw that it was good."
Heh.
Unless it has a math co-processor slot. Heh heh.
Anyway, for the cost of any of these small notebooks, you can buy a used IBM Thinkpad X31 or X32 and have an Intel Pentium M (Banias/Dothan) CPU, top-quality components, and Thinkpad fit and finish.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
I have worked for HP and have always been proud of the past HP. It was a VERY inventive company. It always had a bit if NIH issue, but it also lead to interesting and new ideas.
Copying other sub notebooks, almost to the T, but charging nearly double is NOT innovative. They are claiming to want to sell a 500 notebook into classrooms, which is way too expensive. The classmates are about 350 and the XO are 150-180. Heck, even the Asus are 299. It is slightly greater power then these, but still can not compete against other $500 notebooks (which have diskdrives, DVDs, Ram, 14-16" monitors, 2.2G and bigger CPU, etc.
IOW, this item is either hopelessly overpriced or underpowered. That is NOT innovative and for me to call it for what it is, does not make me troll.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Anyway, after looking at some of the early reviews you can see that the Linux model is almost the perfect machine for a writer. It's small and under 3 pounds. It has a nearly full-size keyboard so you should be able to type for hours on it with no problems. The 1280x768 screen lets you see how things look on a full page and do some editing work (which is why something like an Alphasmart doesn't fit here). It seems likely to be fairly rugged and has a solid state drive of some sort, meaning drops won't kill your work. The performance of the poky VIA processor is almost irrelevant; all you need to be able to do is type in Open Office without noticeable lag. (Or fire up a tty session with vi or emacs if you want to totally minimize distractions.) $500 isn't as nice as $400, but it won't kill you either.
The only problem I've seen is that at least one of the reviews goes on about the heat the thing generates and the accompanying fan noise. A small quiet computer is the scribbler's holy grail. There's some hope for the HP, as the reviews have all been of the $750 model running Vista off a spinning hard drive. Maybe, hopefully, the slower processor being taxed less by a lighter OS combined with a solid state drive will make the Linux model quieter. Still, if not, we've almost got a writer's computer. And hopefully someone else will come out with a perfect one soon.
I think PR should have gone with the real, better excuse for not including an optical drive:
This notebook is really small, and optical drives are going the way of the floppy disk.Is it too conservative to point out that you don't introduce new technology to a culture by selling it to the poorest of them, or even the "average"?
Is it too liberal to suggest that in some cases governments might invest in technology for students to improve their nation's future position in the world?
Is it anti-american to point out that $500 today isn't any more than $250 was three years ago to the rest of the world because their currency is up and ours is down? Those GDP numbers need some serious adjustment for recent changes in global currencies.
Whatever. There are cheaper options but the more diversity in the market the better from my point of view. Just keep the watts down. I don't want the third world burning 350W of carbon per schoolkid just to join us online. The gamers with their >1HP monster gaming rigs are bad enough.
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Netbooks/Nettops sounds so sterile and focus grouped. How about Crotchtops?
-Charlie
I thought classical mistake number one was "don't get involved in a land war in Asia"
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
What happened to "Never go up against a Sicilian when Death is on the line?"
Remember Apple's eMate? I always thought it was a terrible shame that this device wasn't allowed to live through a couple more versions. The OLPC arguably is better, but if the eMate were still around, I believe it could actually fulfill the promise of a $100 machine and that would be very cool.
Is that it can install the OS, standard apps, open office, and a whole bunch of this free stuff in 1/10th of the minimum required for Vista, and it still looks this good.
Wait. No. It doesn't surprise me at all. Never mind.
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The reversal of the trend is one thing that makes it new. Also, it's not just price. It's also weight and watts. Those two considerations in combination with the low price transform what people are willing the do with the thing, where they're willing to take it and hence how much they're able to take it for granted. It's not "The Precious Notebook" any more. It's just another ubiquitous appliance -- a lifestyle accessory like an iPod or satellite radio.
Besides, if the folks that get these things didn't have PC's before its "new to them". Don't try so hard to pick a nit.
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