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VIA Open Platform Mini-Notebook Serves up Linux
Vigile writes "VIA is attempting to outdo the ASUS Eee PC with its new OpenBook platform reference design that not only offers up extra features but also supports many more operating system choices as well. The exterior design is pretty damn sexy and is built around (of course) VIA's own CPU and chipset products and can be equipped with WiMAX and/or 3G networking like HSDPA or W-CDMA. What is really impressive is that the device can run versions of Windows Vista or XP, Ubuntu, Suse or gOS." Update: 05/27 13:30 GMT by T :
alphadogg adds a bit more information on the "open" part of "Open Platform," writing "The CAD (computer-assisted design) files for the OpenBook reference design can be downloaded for free and made available to anyone under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 license. The terms of this license allow the CAD files to be freely copied, shared and modified."
http://www.hothardware.com/News/VIA_Unveils_New_OpenBook_UMPC_Reference_Design/
The exterior design is pretty damn sexy
Are you looking at the same case I am? That thing is hideous.
that today we have another articles in the FP about why we should buy computer preloaded with linux. I am just glad that another company is bringing up linux computer preloaded which is a great challenge to windows and i think that is just stupid idea to think that preloaded OS as tax. just as apple's computers run OS X like a charm, a manufacturer should design a computer for linux as well. that is exactly what we needed. i rather have companies design computers for linux, not windows. I bet it is easier to wipe it out and try other distro. this is good news! another remarking event that shaped year of linux.
Yes, but does it run Linux?
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This is the first innovative design that I could actually use in a notebook design. My portable requirements rarely have me typing much. The real estate provided in such a design would make the size very versatile.
But, make make a version with a processor and memory usable for the western countries.
To Copy from One is Plagiarism; To Copy from Many is Research.
but I will wait for the VIA Isaiah version. Then it will be a pretty killer platform *if the chip lives up to the hype*
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Personally I am loving this. The competition is going to keep raising the bar and the consumer wins! I just hope we can get back down in the 300$ price range eventually. These things are getting expensive
I bought a via system for my home media centre, sold by the promises of Linux support and low power hardware - never again! I've got the worst performing badly supported and buggy heap of junk, lots of things simply don't work even with the latest kernels even when you use Via's nasty binary only drivers.
On the other hand the Asus machine will come running Linux, so hardware support will be there from the work go.
If you ever drop your keys into a river of molten lava, let'em go, because, man, they're gone.
[n/t]
Apparently the performance of this CPU is equivalent of a 900 MHz Pentium-M... ( http://reviews.cnet.com/laptops/hp-2133-mini-note/4505-3121_7-32924066.html ) or an 800 MHz Intel A110. However, with HW acceleration of a lot of video formats, this won't matter much while watching video, probably. You wouldn't want to run Gentoo on this thing though. ;-)
I won't buy it until it costs $50 dollars. Damn it!!!!!!
Vista for the masochists like in the article below?
How can people seriously call these things "ultra mobile" when they have to keep getting plugged into a wall outlet? An gee, I wonder why none of the photos show them plugged in. I suppose with a 50 foot extension cord you could be "ultra mobile".
My Lifebook P2120 gets about 8 hours with its dual battery setup and I consider that adequate although I wish it could do better. How many people work less than 8 hours? When I leave the house I grab my P2120, I don't pack a bag with a charger or spare battery. Eight hours can just barely get me through the day if I'm careful to set the screen brightness to minimum and hibernate a couple times.
Call me when an "ultra mobile" gets 10 hours of "typical" battery life, not 3 hours of "up to" battery life.
I'm looking at the Lifebook T2010 as a replacement for my slow and somewhat beat up (dropped it a few times) P2120.
The T2010 is a bit bigger than the P2120, but with 11 hours of battery life I'm probably going to overlook its flaws and its steep price tag.
My typical use is wandering around theatre using software to control the stage lighting via 802.11g. To me "ultra mobile" means the computer comes with me as I move around and I don't have to stop working several times a day to recharge, or carry a pile of spare batteries, or drag an extension cord around.
I think I'd rather have a Notebook that supports a quad-core, XUXGA, can have 2 8800s in SLI, 3 drive bays w/ RAID-5 support, and a 12-cell battery. Please do disable SLI if you are running exclusively on battery power.
make me say a tagline similar to nokia n95......this is what mobiles have become...Just that you probably cannot make calls with the inbuilt 3G
They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me. -Nathaniel Lee
Last time I checked, the only Linux support for Via GPUs was with the aid of binary blobs. Are they opening up their specs with this and allowing real DRI support, or keeping it proprietary. I'm much more interested in open software than availability of CAD drawings for the hardware.
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O.S. Support:
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XP
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Gosh, that just isn't what I call competitive. Speaking of which, what ever happened to the $200 eeepc? Everywhere I look they are > $400. Last "full size" laptop I bought from Dell cost me just over $500 including shipping -- on sale, but still... Why would anyone buy a sub-laptop for a mere hundred or two less than a full laptop?
Meh. I'll stick with my Treo + full laptop until a real laptop replacement costs $200 or until a newer smartphone can completely replace my laptop -- which will probably happen next year anyway.
Caveat Utilitor
but I'm not sure how it's going to work in the end: since they can't compete with the marketing budgets of the big boys, they're attempting to leverage the open source community - they're being "different" to stand out.
Releasing materials under CC license, etc., in hopes that someone else will take it and run with it, make a funny youtube parody video, something like that to generate buzz.
It *could* work, if they don't try to force it.
In the past when companies have tried to do something similar (case in point, Sony with the PSP blog thing), they've always been the ones behind the (seemingly unbiased) blog or website talking about the product - and it backfires.
The CAD files are available once you register, wait for the email, fish it out of the junk folder, click the link, log in, download the four separate parts, click through the CC EULA for each of the four parts. Once it's downloaded stick it back together and you have one ProE part file.
I mean it's a nice try, but how many people here can do anything with it?
Does anyone know if PVX (or equivalent) is easily available these days? The file says WF 2 M150, so it will need to be from the last couple of years.
The eeepc & via pc are not a real replacement for the full desktop pc but more for the ultra small notebook pcs that cost you at least double that price before.
However this via pc lie the msi wind lacks the SSD disk, which makes it much less suitable for people who handle their laptop with less care (schools/kids/light bags)
Nope, I was wrong. What was in my coffee? It's four separate parts.
A is the lid.
B is the inside of the lid.
C is the top cover for the bottom half.
D is the bottom of the unit.
Why would anyone buy a sub-laptop for a mere hundred or two less than a full laptop?
I agree with you with UMPCs are going the wrong way being ever more featured and expensive. I want to see something like an EEE PC in a blister pack at Target for $150. We'll probably get there too but it will require a new manufacturer that has no "big laptop" lines to protect and isn't bound by any sort of agreement with MS that would require crippling such devices.
However there are reasons to want such devices even with the feeping creaturism and ever climbing price point. The size, weight, and ruggedness of these devices lend themselves to being used in a way that I wouldn't use a cheap "full laptop". They can be casually carried in one hand and you can get around quite rapidly with one. They'll survive drops and bangs that would kill their $100 more competition and better tolerate being frequently picked up and put down in funny places. They'll most definitely stand up to kid abuse better. If nothing else, these things are like ToughBooks on the cheap.
They've announced around 1~1.5 month ago that they were going to join the open-source fest of Intel and ATI.
At first, due to the lack of ouput, some called bluff and though VIA only pulled a PR stunt.
But recently VIA finally released huge chunks of code under GPLv2, and thus opensource project like openchrome and unichrome will definitely get a boost.
Specially since the VIA openbook is more based on classical VIA platform (instead of, say, an Isaiah with either their newest chrome chipset with hardware H264 decode [the one for which they where hiring opensource talents] or with that nVidia integrated solution as world's cheapest Vista Premium platform) I think it could benefit from full opensource support very soon.
We need to pay close attention to the future development of the VIA opensource drivers.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
1. You want a powerful yet small computer.
2. You want just a small computer.
From that perspective, I'd buy a sub-laptop, because for less, I can obtain more portability. Rather than buying a toshiba, sony, lenovo or a MacBook Air that give the portability increasing the price in 300% (or more). Now, if you want a powerful laptop / desktop replacement, you're looking at the wrong range of prices. You pay for small things more, like cellphones, mp3 players.
I have to add, that the new trend is having something really compact with a rather large screen.
To me, your question sounds more like "Why would you get an iPhone for $400 if you can get cellphones for free and a $400 laptop?". And my answer is simple, because you want something smaller that does the simple things you want it to do, not what market is driving you to think you need them to do.
Looks like these are just pro-e files of the case design. When I can get gerber files for the motherboard and VHDL files of the ASICS, I'll be impressed.
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
Did anybody notice the Broadcom wireless chipset? This itself is not good news. AFAIK there is now a Linux driver for SLED10 (with the HP 2133 Mini-Note), but it is a non-free blob.
I guess since the design is open, it can be modified to use a Linux-friendly vendor for this too.
Hub
Did anyone else notice that the Vista screenshot in the photos has far more than 1024x600 resolution? Vista would look *terrible* on the lo-res screen it actually uses.
It's obvious it's pasted in (it's even clipped at the edges of the screen), but it still seems a little disingenuous to imply such "big laptop" capability.
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I think they are personally half-assing it with most notebooks. Strange as it may seem, I would prefer if there was an option to buy most laptops without a battery. The damn batteries don't last very long when you do have them anyway, many people use their laptops as portable desktops, batteries tend to make the laptop that much heavier when you change your work venue, they add a lot to the price of the base system, and having one less battery manufactured is most likely helping the environment.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
"Why would anyone buy a sub-laptop for a mere hundred or two less than a full laptop? "
For the same reason people pay three times as much as a standard low-end laptop for a low-end-like laptop in a much smaller format: portability.
People who buy a Eee, a Cloudbook want to be able to carry it around and not regretting it too much.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
Seriously, one of the only reasons I bought my Eee is because it had solid state. Ultraportables need the smaller energy usage, as well as the increased durability. Throwing a faster cpu at this thing isn't going to matter because the next gen Eees are just getting the same thing.
Is the chipset used in the eeepc not supported by the Madwifi drivers? Seems to be mixed:
http://madwifi.org/wiki/Compatibility/Atheros#AtherosAR5BXB63
I don't quite understand it. Why don't all Laptops have Trackpoints by now? I hate those touchpads and so do most pople I know. I hardly see a laptop without a mouse connected, while I even prefer a Trackpoint over a mouse. The availability of a trackpoint in the eee device class would be the most important reason for my decision making. Even more important than the runtime.
At a first glance, this seems to be what several available subnotebooks are based on: Belinea s.book Packard Bell EasyNote XS20
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
I use VIA C7 based motherboards for my small low power (under 30 Watt including a disk), low cost(~250$), servers, and they are absolutely fine. I use them, at home (scale is everything :-), as NFS, ldap, backup and mail servers. No issue there, they only service that gives them a workout is spamassassin, but it's still very reasonable.
I have tried to use them as workstation, but they are not fast/powerful enough for X windows and Gnome.
I've tried other low power solutions (like the AMD Geode), but my conclusion is that the only people who can make a low power processor that has enough oompff to be a workstation is intel - The caveat: it won't be low cost.