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War Brewing on the Inexpensive Laptop Front
The Christian Science Monitor has an interesting look at the war brewing on the inexpensive laptop front. With everything from the Eee PC to the OLPC, the trend in slimming and trimming seems to be continuing. "The market segment is so new it doesn't have a name yet or even an agreed-upon set of specifications. Intel, the chipmaker, calls the category "netbooks," recognizing that much of what people do on their laptops involves going on the Net. The new machines are also being called ultra-low-cost PCs, mininotebooks, or even mobile Internet gadgets. In appearance, they have the familiar clamshell design, but they're smaller, with seven- to 10-inch screens. They offer full keyboards (albeit with smaller keys) and weigh less than three pounds. Perhaps most important, the majority cost less than $500 - some as little as $299. Intel says it expects more than 50 million of these netbooks to be sold by 2011. It's introduced a tiny, low-power processor to run them called Atom, which puts 47 million transistors on a chip about the size of a penny."
These devices serve a need - web surf, email, document edit, spreadsheets. If you exclude gamers, thats 80% of the market for a laptop. Personally, lugging a big heavy laptop is a no-go for a lot of us.
www.effectiveelectrons.com "chips that work" Analog, RF, Mixed Signal
Remember the NEC Mobile Pro, or the HP Jornada? Practically the same formfactor, reborn.
To me that the natural directions - chips are getting smaller, consume less power, so getting ultra-portable gets more affordable.
Now the limiting factor in usability of those devices seem to be not the processing power, but human interaction.
Both the keyboard and the screen are inevitably small, which makes typing and reading a challenge.
Some say that the future is in portable projectors and virtual keyboards, but that doesn't seem to be the ultimate solution - you need two flat surfaces and some headroom for those, which seems not to be the case for instance in an airplane.
I think challenges like efficient voice commands, or even brain waves (aka NIA) are the solution for input.
For the output again a direct interface to the nerves or to the eye, or else, there will still be need for full sized peripherals, so it won't matter how small can the computers themselves get.
I personally find a full-sized fully-functional laptop much better. You can get them around $500 right now, and most of them will browse the Internet and write up simple office documents quite well. The mini-laptops are nice as a third computer (desktop, laptop, mini-laptop), but like the SMART car, are only useful to those who can afford to have the third one as a luxury.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
From the article, "Many run on an operating system called Linux, favored by the technorati but little known among most computer users."
Is this really a problem? I think that most of the people who don't know Linux aren't really aware of what Windows is either. They'll probably call any windowing system "Windows". As long as there are pictures to click on and it opens windows, it will be of little or no concern.
Have you looked at PalmOS or Windows Mobile? They suck as operating systems. PalmOS isn't even multitasking. Windows Mobile has numerous restrictions relative to desktop Windows. Furthermore, no, they don't offer "every type of application". Many applications for those systems are designed for tiny screens and don't scale up. Also, having two different kinds of apps on the mobile and desktop system is a major headache. If that kind of stripped down OS and application appeals to you, get a keyboard for your phone.
Fortunately, it's not an either/or choice: Linux actually scales really nicely from mobile to desktop devices.
Contravening my sig again, but how much did intel pay you to post this comment? Products have existed in this space since the 1980s from GRiD computer. The market for handheld computers was created by Palm Computing. Nokia brought out the first credible, modern webpad. Intel is an also-ran in this area.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It seems like when you're dealing with price points of one to several hundred dollars, this is a big deal for free software, specifically Linux. When you're talking about adding anywhere from 25% to 100% of the cost of the computer just for the operating system, it paints things in a different light. That, and you'd have to put an older (soon to be non-supported) version of Windows (XP) on the thing. I can't see these running Vista anytime in the near future.
Should be interesting to see how this impacts the OS playing field...
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
I love my Eee PC. It's great for note taking and web browsing. But it's not good for programming and would probably be a frustrating first computer.
If your goal is to get your brother interested in programming, don't make him use a tiny monitor and keyboard, get him a low-end desktop PC with a real keyboard and acceptable screen. If you're on a budget, you can pick up a used monitor for almost nothing and spend everything on the box.
Who are 'they' and 'them' and why are you assuming you know what they need? Seems like ASUS Eee's success suggests that it nailed what 'they' and 'them' need.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
IT fails M$. Today, you can buy a laptop for $300 that works great for what you want or the same thing for $400 that runs XP poorly. The choice is obvious and it's going to become more obvious when it's $200 vrs $300 and the performance and feature gap widens. M$ only dominates because they have preloads and subscription or begware replacements won't work. No one is going to buy a $200 computer that's coin operated or advert crippled when they can have the same thing without those problems. Face it, it's over for the Soft.
No calls now, I'm
The OLPC looked like an awesome product when it started. I was designed for use in the middle of no where for children in under developed nations. There was a buy one - give one program going on but that got shut down for some reason.
Lately Negroponte decided it should go with windows instead of the original open source OS, which prompted Bender to resign. And there is a general sense that they have sold out.
For a while it looked promising, I wanted to pick one up. Thought it would be great for camping. Get some PDF books and read it on the go in the open sunlight with a water resistant clam shell and a hand crank power supply. This seemed much better than a Kindle to me.
There was even a lot of DIY home brew hacks going on at first. People using it along with Arduino for some neat applications.
Alas... why must everyone sell out.
Eschew Obfuscation
I was under the impression the preferred nomenclature was "UMPC". That's what I always hear them referred to as.
Why are these machines so expensive? Just because you can get specs X for $650 doesn't mean you can get specs X/2 for $325. There are all kinds of reasons (size of market, supply and demand, scaling of technology, base costs, etc.)... but the end result is that for most metrics, the "metric per dollar" vs. "cost" graph is non-linear. There is a sweet spot of lowest dollar/performance, with fringe cases (ultra-cheap or ultra-performance) having a price premium.
In the case of these ultra-portables, a significant fraction of the cost also comes from the engineering and components required to make them so small and lightweight. You can of course get a clunky 200MHz laptop for real cheap (old model off eBay, for example), but it will not be as light or slick as the Eee PC or others.
The prices will probably keep dropping. But frankly I'm amazed at how cheap these ultra-portables already are: compare the performance, size, and price to what was available even 5 years ago and see how far we've come!
Seriously, if all you need to do with a laptop is surf websites, then an iPod touch is better since it fits in your pocket when you're not using it. It also has email, Google Maps and YouTube. No it doesn't have a real mechanical keyboard, it doesn't have IM (yet), the screen isn't as big and the browser doesn't support Flash.
A small laptop may be more powerful and allow you to install other applications without limitations, however if you don't always carry it with you it doesn't really matter.
If it can't fit in my pocket, I'm not carrying it around "just in case".
My problem is that I want a full sized screen. Checking email and going through pdf's, doc's, and spreadsheets, I find I do a lot better with a big screen (or two) than even a normal laptop screen.
Do we think this is going to be taken care of by having docking stations all over the place, or will I need to wait for roll-out, flexible screens?
while I can see that some people will want XP on their eeepc (my ex boss for example is adamant that he wants it) I bought mine preloaded with linux before the XP ones were mentioned (although there are instructions in the book on how to go about installing XP on it) I thought I would probably put XP on it as I am an Microsoft guy and work in a Microsoft house and avoid Linux mainly because I am put off by the whinging fanbois all the time but I have yet to find something that it does not do quite comfortably with the xandros install that XP would provide. I use it for surfing the web (I am on it right now) and all those things where you want a device that boots in under 16 seconds (like flicking it on to check the bus timetable, using it as a streaming radio by my bedside and updating my twitter). I can see why people will want to buy the XP version but they should really buy the linux version (which has a bigger HD in the new generation 9in ones) and then decide later if they want to pop XP on it.
Be nice, sponsor me: http://jailbreak.ragabonds.org.uk
> Except every one of these machines is capable of running Windows...
Yes.... for now. It should be obvious by now that OLPC insisted on an x86 compatible machine, even though it raised the cost and lowered battery life, because they realized doing a deal with Microsoft would eventually be a requirement for political reasons. Same with Asus and the eeepc, plus they were building it in a joint venture with Intel.
Yes, any $250+ machine will probably just wave the Linux flag as a bargining tool to get really good prices (and keep XP available, etc) on Windows.
But none of that is interesting longterm. I'm waiting for the less than $200 pricepoint to open up. Moore's Law says it will get here soon enough. Even better is when somebody builds one based on an ARM all in one solution that won't be able to run Windows regardless how much incentive or political pressure Microsoft brings to bear.
It should be obvious though that there exists a pricepoint that Microsoft can't compete at without risking canibalizing their existing monopoly. That market niche will be the wedge that will eventually lever em out of market dominance.
Democrat delenda est
I have an Eee PC for work. It has GCC, Python, Emacs, and the PostgreSQL client programs installed. You say "notepad with spellcheck". I say "tiny development system that lets me telecommute from my backyard on sunny days".
For me (and apparently millions of others), the Eee PC is the sweet spot for portable computing. It's small enough that I don't think twice about dragging it along wherever I'm going, and yet big enough that I'm not giving up anything. No "portable OS" will ever match the flexibility it offers.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I think you missed the point of 'standard'.... standard != identical.
I choose the best distro for the application:
OpenWRT for my APs - MIPS
Angstrom for my Zaurus - ARM
Debian for my desktops and laptop - Intel/AMD
DSL for my ancient laptop - Intel
Homebrew distro for a dev board I'm working on - ARM
And you know what? They all network, they all talk to each other, they all authenticate against the main server, and they all cooperate nicely. It's not about where some file is, or about the package manager, but about inter-operability. And they all run the same apps more-or-less in more-or-less the same way.
What exactly do you want to "run in Java," mobile phone games?
And as for Flash, the removal of nuisance ads from the web pretty much makes up for the loss of being able to see the handful of visualization elements done in SWF.
I would like to have a BT profile to use a slim keyboard with the iPhone for writing while traveling. That would make a great combination that's much lighter than a typical laptop and more practical than the joke UMPC/tiny laptops that try to do everything by doing it all poorly.
TFA seemed to be an ad for Intel's Atom, which I'm not convinced will uproot the existing mobile dominance of ARM processors, particularly since the only real need for x86 compatible chips in mobile devices is to support Microsoft's inability to get Windows to run on other hardware.
Given that the most interesting and successful small devices are running Linux or Apple's OS X, the need for x86 processors in that space is not at all obvious. Why wait for Intel to catch up when literally hundreds of ARM licensees are now shipping 3 billion parts a year?
Also note that Intel lost something like $5 billion pouring money into the StrongARM business it got from DEC (and rebranded as XScale) before handing it to Marvell for a mere $600 M. If it couldn't beat TI in ARM processors, how can it expect to beat ARM with an inferior and more complicated processor design?
ARM, x86 Chip Makers Fight to Ride Mobile Growth
Will Apple Rescue Intel's Silverthorne?
I want a portable Internet terminal with a full-sized screen, full-sized keyboard, usable pointing device, wireless and wired networking, and sound. Optionally, I want a read/write device for data up/download and a printer. Another desirable feature is "quick reset" which will reset it to either 1) factory condition or 2) the last version I specifically marked as stable.
I'm thinking a laptop with no HD, no CD, but a flash big enough to hold three copies of either DamnSmallLinux or ThinStation. Copy 1 would be read-only from the factory. Copy 3 would be the normal copy and would be a copy of copy 1 when the machine is first powered on. Copy 2 would be the "last known good" version, a copy of copy 3 made while booted to the BIOS setup screen.
I'm thinking maybe 256MB of flash and another 256-512MB of ordinary RAM.
The whole thing should be well under $300.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I believe you should do more research before posting:
PocketPuTTY
Did you even try? http://www.google.com/search?q=ssh+windows+mobile
That some people don't want a full blown laptop with a larger screen and hard drive.
I'm constantly amazed at the difficulty some people have comprehending that not everyone wants exactly the machine they do.
The cake is a pie
Ubuntu has got into the early stages of doing ARM distros, so ARM based systems with Ubuntu ease of use are potentially just around the corner.
Linux is still emerging as the primary portable OS. Unlike WinCE (which is a very nobbled thing that tries to look like Windows), ARM Linux is the real thing - using the same kernel code as any other Linux.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Until these Sci-Fi input devices become mainstream, you could always count on foldable keyboard.
Even since my PalmIIIc period, I've been using foldable keyboard (by think outside and the like).
Note, I'm not speaking about the clamshell ones, nor the rollable ones.
I'm speaking about a box which has almost the same size as the Palm it self. It unfolds like an accordion in 4 parts. Once you've laid it flat, you slide the keys from the outer parts and you get a complete Desktop size ~90 keyboard (only lacks a keypad). This "sliding" locks the keyboard in open position, so you don't need a full flat place to used (compared to laser+infrared virtual keyboards) and you get actual tactile feed-back (not virtual keys. Real keys, which have the same size as those from your desktop).
Did all my note-taking at the university using such systems.
The best part is, now with the advent of common standard communication protocols like bluetooth, they produce one single model that fits for any bt-enabled PDA/smartphone/whatever (unlike back then, when they had to provide 1 model for every different proprietary connector that the market has come up with, and you had to rebuy a new one each time you changed your PDA).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]