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Mandriva Joins the Netbook Market With the GDium
AdamWill writes "Lately it's hard to avoid the buzz about netbooks — the small, cheap laptop systems that were popularized by the Asus Eee PC. Mandriva is providing the innovative operating system for the upcoming GDium netbook system, produced by Emtec. The first GDium will be a netbook with a 10", 1024x600 resolution display and a battery life of four hours, weighing in at 1.1kg. The innovative G-Key system stores the Mandriva operating system and all the user data on a USB key — nothing is permanently stored inside the GDium. You can use your own desktop and data by plugging the G-Key into any GDium."
That's great, Mandriva is my ever fav linux distro, if I just want something that's readily prepared for me... Those guys have a lot of innovative ideas, and I'm glad to see there's something better than my EeePC's tortured Xandros....
From the site:
10.
1024×600.
1.1Kg.
4 hours.
Mandriva Linux.
G-Key.
Gayaplex.
I understood the first six things on the list. But what the heck is a "Gayaplex"? I'm going to assume that it doesn't mean what its spelling implies...
It is headed the opposite direction, they are getting more expensive, not less, and gaining in size. When that first eeePC hit I thought "cool, pretty soon now the hundred buck blisterpack small notebook". Man, I was wrong.
From a cursory glance, I'd say I like this. It seems the first Linux distro that is actually tweaked to run from Flash RAM storage, rather than just a somewhat leaner generic Linux bolted on top of a SSD-based computer. Less logging, less unnecessary data to and from the storage, more stuff loaded into RAM. This is what I was hoping from the Eee PC's Xandros, but was disappointed (Xandros on the Eee PC is every bit of a normal Linux distro, with some of the less useful logfiles annoyingly and dangerously often updated).
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Use MANdriva Linux to login to our Gayaplex using your Gkey?
Come out with your Gdium!
Humbug.
I can live with cute, small, slow & quirky if it's CHEAP.
I can live with cute, small, fast & innovative if it's CHEAP.
$420 is refurb "normal" laptop range. I REALLY want a cheap laptop/notepad/"wtf is that thing?", but I want cheap.
On the other hand, you can't have a x86 distro on the flash key you use with your GDium, pull it out and plug it to your x86 desktop machine, and boot it. Deal breaker for me!
What's worse is that USB keys are generally unreliable. If you're running your OS off one with all of the data I can easily imagine some important blocks becoming unaccessible in 6-12 months. As it is, I won't store anything I don't have backed up on one of these things.
As I understand this, the root partition is stored on the machine's internal ROM. The user's home folder sits on the USB key, along with something that somehow links to /etc/passwd to provide authentication. The key is automatically mounted when inserted. Correct me if I'm wrong.
This doesn't sound particularly promising - it would be very easy to lose the key. I also fail to see why, when most ultra-sub-notebooks are bought by a person for their use, and their use only.
Also, will the home folder on the key be accessible when plugging into another computer, say, a desktop running OS X, Windows or another Linux distro? If so, it would kind-of defeat the object. Emtec would be entering the market very late, so they can't expect this to take the market by storm. If it doesn't, it kind-of defeats the object of sticking everything on a USB key.
Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
Yea of course it's anectodal, but I lost my data off 4 of them within 6 months, used for taking files to/from work. That's enough of a reason for me not to store my OS on one.
These devices fit in the bag I use to and from work, and about 1-1.2kg extra doesn't bother me. A "normal" laptop doesn't fit with all the other stuff I carry around, and weigh too much. The size difference also means a great deal when traveling in terms of how much extra space I get in my carry on for other items (which means less likelihood of having to check in a bag, which means less time wasted at the airport, which makes me a hell of a lot happier about business travel)
ya, but already at the same price or getting more than a regular 14 inch laptop I can snag at local wallyworld off the shelf, and being a regular manual laborer, a pound or three difference means absolutely nothing to me, just not that big of a deal with me when it comes down to it, I carry around more weight than that with various tools stuck in my pockets all the time, 2 lbs or 5 lbs, meh, I don't care, 50 lbs sacks of mineral are at my low end of crap I have to move by hand all the time. I was more interested in portability with the built in battery and wireless connect action and low power and low price and comes with linux pre installed. Power goes out all the time here and my backup to run off a truck battery right now is an ancient powerbook, just thinking of getting something a little newer and more powerful for when that happens. Laptop size of today or smaller, just don't care that much as I'd be sitting right on top of the screen anyway, it can be smallish. Re; the keyboards..I wonder why they don't have a full size one that just folds out? Keep the small form factor but have a keyboard twice as big once it is opened up. Flip screen, left fold out, right fold out, done, full size. Yes it would have to be some thicker, but overall that would be nice. But...anyway..first the mega XO disappointment now these things right back up to expensive again (this new one in the article I don't see a price for yet). I'll wait, no biggee, no giant need for one, except once they get to a hundred bucks I'd get three of them-one for me and two for gifting- but at three hundred and higher I want none of them, I'd get a used newer laptop or a new one on sale at Christmas.
Cheap is definetly part of the appeal of a small portable low specced computing device. In fact it is right up there in the article summary ->""Lately it's hard to avoid the buzz about netbooks -- the small, cheap laptop systems that were popularized by the Asus Eee PC." We had small and light before, but they were expensive. The asus was an immediate hit because the original one was *loads* cheaper than anything else out there, and the OLPC XO project suffered terminal extreme dumbness and couldn't get it into gear to really hit a hundred bucks and get them out onto the market. Asus changed the cheap part of the equation, but then they got weird about it and they started moving away from the smaller part of the equation, and started bumping the price back up and making them bigger and now they are back to getting medium expensive again and are in the same price range as low end normal laptops. Yes, right now people who are buying them want that ultra lightness, but a lot more people would be buying something similar as the price goes down, and they can stay small and low specced. There's a huge market for small AND cheap, not just one or the other. One of those big companies is going to grok this and hit the market with it. Hmm, bad car analogy time! Sport! Tata motors grokked that with cars and came out with their 2500 dollar nano car. They will sell zillions of them because around the planet none of the other car companies grokked that! they were going the opposite direction, bigger, more bloat, worsening mileage, getting way too expensive. Good for some I guess, but not for everyone. Cheap is a prime criteria for a few billion people. At 25 grand, they would never get to have a new car, at 2.5 grand, it starts to get really affordable for a lot more people, and you make your profit in volume sales.
i have a FAT formatted usb drive, and windows XP refuses to format it as anything other than fat, or fat 32...
Go hunt down the command line FORMAT command; you can use this to format the USB key as NTFS. If you're working off one, like I used to do, this makes all the difference. Not only is it much more robust it also supports things like symlinks, proper access flags, compressed files, etc. *And* with an NTFS file system XP will let you turn off the option to flush the cache after every write, which vastly speeds things up. (You just have to remember to unmount it before removing the device.)
The day that VIA claimed its Nano is only for 10"+ laptops...
That and the fact that the HP Mininote has all the potential to be the best subnotebook... But the screen is too glossy (they need to have a matte option), the thing gets pretty hot, the CPU is not very good for the task, and not to mention the exact same laptop (except maybe there's no speakers on the side of the screen for the Dell?) but the Dell happens to be 64-bit and 200$ cheaper... VIA needs to swoop in and supply them with cheap nanos, or they're going to die against the Atom.
This new mandriva laptop doesn't look too great. For 400$+ it's really exorbitant pricing. What advantage does this have over an Asus eee901, really now? I can remove my SSD (I think) and use a flash drive as a boot device... And the only real advantage I can see to having your OS on a stick like this is if you get robbed; but even then if you can yank out a USB flash drive out of a thief's hands as he runs off with your laptop, why couldn't you just hold onto the laptop?
Very good point, surfing today takes a bit more power than ten years ago for sure. That's why I wanted to upgrade my backup machine, that PB1400m that is a 1997 model, just not enough processor or RAM to be of much use for much longer. Thankfully you can still get an iCab browser for it that works pretty fair. Thanks for the link to that new Dell review! Getting closer! I'm still going to hold out a bit longer though, joe cheap here, heh.
No, I meant my story was anecdotal.
That being said, none of the dozens of USB keys I use for work (FAT32) have suffered a single file loss.
...to be known as Gaydar (allegedly)
The processor of Gdium is a Chinese 'Loongson', which is a proprietary MIPS. Anyone interested??