Intel's Atom — First Benchmarks and a Full PC Review

Barence writes "PC Pro has received, benchmarked and discussed the first Intel Atom processor to be seen in the wild. A full analysis of the Atom processor itself is accompanied by a full review of the first PC — yes it's a PC, not a laptop — to use one. The benchmark results are pretty much as expected, but it's the power savings that really excite. And as a rep from the PC maker, Tranquil, joked — they could have left the Atom CPU uncooled if they'd really wanted to prove a point, as it's the old graphics chip that produces 70% of the heat coming from the motherboard. Exciting times ahead for the upcoming Atom-based Eee and friends." MojoKid was one of several readers, too, to mention the upcoming Eee Box mini-desktop from Asus (also Atom-based), which is supposed to start from $299, writing "although the actual dimensions are listed, the image from ASUS' booth really gives a sense of scale. In the picture, the Eee Box is standing next to a paperback book."

Comments

Echoes of the "Sidewinder"

[JSBiff]

Ok, I don't remember for sure if I have the name right, but I remember, back about 1998 or 2000, there was a company showcasing these tiny, power efficient PC's which had a form-factor somewhat similar to that Eee mini-PC in the linked image from the article. I think they used an ARM, or maybe it was Alpha, RISC processor, and came with some Linux distro.

I think the main downfall of that endeavor was that 1) the computers weren't Intel compatible, or Mac compatible, so you had to use Linux or BSD on them (and would have needed an Intel emulator on top of that to run any binaries compiled for Intel), I think, in order to keep them small and relatively cheap (they were still, I think, like 600 bucks, so kind of expensive, considering you could get generic PC's for about 400) and 3) the company that produced them was too small and simply lacked the funding necessary to survive in any case.

Still, I've always thought tiny-form factor PCs were nifty. If you could get one that was powerful enough, with decent enough video, you could use them as the basis for your own set-top boxes, routers, and things like that, or even just a small, low-power, inconspicuous server.

Microsoft as Hardware Cop?

[BACPro]

From TFA

Microsoft won't allow PCs to be sold with > 80GB HDDs preloaded with Windows XP and thus the top end configuration is only available with Linux.

Anybody have any idea why Microsoft would want to limit the amount of HDD space on a machine?

Re:Microsoft as Hardware Cop?

[RManning]

Anybody have any idea why Microsoft would want to limit the amount of HDD space on a machine?

I have no URL to back this up, but I know M$ only allows XP to be preloaded on low-end PCs. This is to keep the Vista numbers up. Maybe that's why?

Re:Microsoft as Hardware Cop?

[zoward]

Anybody have any idea why Microsoft would want to limit the amount of HDD space on a machine? They want Vista on all larger machines. The only reason they (reluctantly) extended the life of XP was to have something to put on a UMPC-class machine to prevent Linux from becoming the de facto standard OS for that entire class of PC's. To prevent PC builders from using this as a loophole to keep pre-installing XP on full-blown PC's, they're limiting the HD size on which it can be installed. I expect this to change once UMPC's start shipping with >80GB HDD's though.

Re:Microsoft as Hardware Cop?

[Jellybob]

Windows XP is now only available for UMPCs, and other low-spec machines that can't run Vista.

Presumably Microsoft's idea of a low-spec machine is something with 80GB of hard disk space, which is why they won't sell it to go on machines with more.

Re:Me too!

[gad_zuki!]

I believe the MSI Wind will eventually roll-out with some 3G card. There was a prototype earlier. Not sure which/when. Just keep a look out at gadget sites.

Transmeta - Crusoe

[kcdoodle]

Hey, Intel is beating Transmeta at their own game.

You remember Transmeta. Linus worked there. Stock started out around $20/share. I bought $4000 worth. The darn thing tanked, reverse split, and tanked some more. I have about $35 worth of this company now. Yep, rode it all the way down.

But now that Intel is making a realllllly low power processor, it is big news. I hope Transmeta gets some new orders because of this.

Oh yeah, Transmeta claims about a dozen or patents have been infringed upon by Intel in the production of this chip. So we just might have a new SCO. (At least I never bought any SCO stock.)