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A Peek at AT&T's New Browser, Pogo
An anonymous reader writes "Ars Technica takes a look at Pogo, a browser from AT&T with new features like a 3-D history and bookmark view. The browser's currently in a private beta and Ars' comments aren't all necessarily glowing — particularly in the areas where performance is concerned. 'It requires Windows XP SP2 or later or Windows Vista, and its minimum hardware are surprisingly steep: a 1.6GHz processor, 2GB of RAM, and a video card with at least 256MB of VRAM. Seem like a bit much for a web browser? It is, and as we found out, these requirements posed some major challenges for us during our testing.'"
SBC's old browser was lousy too.
And people complain about firefox being bloated? You should not need a dedicated graphics card to check your email.
It's not just made for Vista. It's modeled after Vista too.
Are you saying ATT won't have Pogo Stick?
Since it doesn't run on Linux it will never achieve widespread mainstream acceptance on the desktop.
I want it to report simultaneously to the DHS and the NSA, when I change my vest and underpants.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I don't mind any attempt at innovation, and I certainly welcome competition in the browser market. If someone thinks they have ideas about how to make things better, then let them have a go.
It's pretty clear that this is intended for the home user with a nice new 2008-9 computer, who doesn't really run much else. So from that point of view, the requirements are probably fine, and at least it lets them actually use the computing power that they have. Other people have other options, nothing lost.
Uh, and RTFA? You must be joking.
I work with a guy who believes that the reason Apple succeeds is that they accelerate the graphics with hardware. This gives them the ability to do transitions like Expose on the desktop and the smooth sliding on devices like the iPhone.
Pogo seems to be along the same lines. But where Apple's eye candy is functional, the Pogo eye candy looks like flashy for the sake of flashy. The 3D UI looks nice, but it's about as functional as Vista's Windows-Tab app selector.
I don't particularly like Apple, but they do seem to have strong design concepts. The design follows the function in their products, as far as I understand. But Pogo looks like they implemented it because the technology was cool, not because they had some difficult problem to solve.
Except this is based on Gecko (Mozilla).
Then again, that might explain the bloat
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
On the plus side, it reports all your browsing activity to AT&T.
AT&T
Your world delivered
(to us)
So, I'll need special glasses to see my history?
Walt Kelly was right: "we have met the enemy, and he is us".
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Complaining about a private beta not being fast or working in less than the minimum requirements isn't really fair. The reviewer spends the first half of the review complaining that it doesn't run on hardware less than the requirements, doesn't run on the mac.. and by the way they could of added that it doesn't run on the iPhone, their GPS nor the 1980-era walkman that they own.
It's a beta, designed to show some concepts and trials. The released software can be sped up or modified. Why not review the features that are included. Presumably, importing bookmarks isn't a core feature for a beta.
Although, I'm unlikely to switch browsers (seeing no reason to switch from a fully patched IE 7 running as non-administrator on Vista), it's great that there is still competition in the browser market.
So vista takes up a GB of ram on boot, and the AT+T browser takes another 2?
If I'm not mistaken vista still can only "use" 3GB of it's ram.
Does anyone else see a problem?
I fear the Y2038 bug
..since I'm an AT&T customer, it feels like there are two unasked questions.
1.) What is AT&t going to do to make sure that this is the only browser that I use? Certainly something more than a silly EULA. How about automated litigation if I step a foot off Ma Bell's Farm?
2.) What can Bell do to offer me more choice with their browser? In other words how can they help me by blocking anything other than a heavily proxied port 80. Mail, it should sit on AT&T's webmail, where they own it and copyright whatever I say. FTP, thats for terrorists. We need more choices, you know, like cable TV.
I need more RAM.
I saw it on Slashdot, it must be true!
Typical home systems have 4 gigs of RAM? Last I checked, most systems were coming with 1-2 gigs of RAM, and the majority of systems people have are running between 512megs and 1gig.
Depends on how much memory mapped IO you have. Without or with a low memory graphics card, no soundcard, usb and firewire disabled, and so on maybe.
Lex turns to the clueless paleontologists, "This is Pogo! I know this!"
[
At least 2GB of RAM for a typical home computer? I want some of what you're smoking. Wow...I must live in the wrong area with my 1GB primary computer, which I use to play games on. Guess I should be upgrading so I can run this web browser...
I mean seriously. 1GB is still a perfectly reasonable amount of ram. I can run 80% of modern games (GAMES! We're talking Call of Duty 4 without lag here) and my system isn't up to spec for this WEB BROWSER! And the default response is, of course, 2GB isn't that much. I mean, no one has less than 3 right now right?
Sometimes even those of us who love technology and play computer games can't afford an upgrade (and before you talk about how cheap ram is, my laptop won't take standard ram, and has 2 512 cards right now. It would be ~$60 to upgrade to 2 gigs, and I'd have to either have a tech out or send it in. Yay Laptops) No Web Browser should require more RAM than Call of Duty 4. Ever.
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
Read a little bit harder. The OP said "That's[2GB] up to half the RAM on the typical home system." "up to half" means that 2GB would be at most 50% of the RAM on the typical home system. Which would mean that the typical home system has a minimum of 4GB. It could be less than 50%, say 10% in which case the typical home system would have 20GB of RAM. Obviously this is wrong.
I corrected the OP to say "That's at least half the RAM on the typical home system. "at least half" means that 2GB is never less than half the RAM on the typical home system. Which means the maximum amount of RAM a typical home system can have is 4GB. That's about what most typical PC motherboards accept, and all that can be addressed by a 32 bit OS.
You are right though, 2GB is an insane amount to require for a web browser.
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