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Sub-$100 Laptops Have Finally Arrived
Roman Phalanx writes "OLPC had promised that it would be possible to mass produce a sub-$100 laptop. The folks at OLPC tried to realize that dream by re-imagining what a laptop looks like. How large of screen and keyboard it has. What OS runs on the laptop. Now that OLPC has decided to super size their systems to run Windows XP, the $100 price point has slipped beyond their reach. A Chinese firm has realized that dream. Taking the best from both the OLPC and EeePC. They ditched x86 compatibility and switched to a MIPS architecture to further reduce production costs. HiVision has managed to create a UMPC that sells right now for $120.00. They say they have refined the manufacturing process and have learned from building this laptop how to mass produce a laptop that will sell for $98.00." (More below, including a link to a video of the device.)
"The new HiVision MiniNote is due out in October of 2008. TechVideoBlog has footage of one of these Mini Notes being shown off at a trade show in Germany. They have managed to borrow a unit overnight for a while and have done a quick review on it.
Overall it looks pretty good. MIPS based processor, WiFi, 1GB flash storage, it runs Linux, has 3 USB ports, Ethernet, SDHC card reader, audio in and out, multi-tabbed Firefox browser support and Abiword for word processing. Running a custom Chinese Linux distrubution named Xip.
Overall performance seems snappy and no problems connecting to WiFi. Other than the lack of a webcam and the Adobe Flash Player it seems perfect. For $98 it looks like quite a value."
Overall performance seems snappy and no problems connecting to WiFi. Other than the lack of a webcam and the Adobe Flash Player it seems perfect. For $98 it looks like quite a value."
Here is a quick link to a youtube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKQbN6tpYXw
And I promise, it's not a rick rolling.
looks like 800x480 is becoming the new 1280×1024.
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
Strange times.
A pc for under 100$ and a shiny phone for over 400$. both made in china.
I think from past experience (Linux 64-bit) that we'll be waiting a long time for Flash on this one... other than that it seems like a great idea to do what they did!
Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.
Yea, this laptop is so good with WIFI I got first post!
If it doesn't run the Flash plugin, it's out of the Interweb game for most people. I'm sure someone will port GNU Gnash to it, but that's hardly a substitute. If the buyer only cares about some specific function like word processing, this might not matter. But the usual idea of netbooks is that they are more or less fully web-enabled.
No flash? That's a feature, not a bug!
Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
it only has a 1GB HD. I think the idea is it's an appliance, not intended for you to really add apps to it. Theoretically it comes with what you need for what it's intended to do. It may or may not find a mass market, but only a subset of geeks will try to see what else they can run on it...
So... "Sub-$100 Laptops Have Finally Arrived". And yet... they haven't. It'd be nice (although, apparently, unrealistic) to think that we've learnt by now not to give credence to vaporware. Color me unimpressed.
The best newspaper in the USA: the Anderson Valley Advertiser.
OK after watching the video i can only say: totally want!!
Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.
Yeah, the spec says 30Gb.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
OLPC was a noble idea, but one that was fundamentally flawed; this is because the specs did not originate from the areas of the world that would be using it but were spun out of a pie in the sky engineering lab. The scale of the OLPC was immense and impractical and the fact that they attempted it at all they should be given alot of credit for dealing with the political, economic and technical problems.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Windows CE runs on MIPS. There are plenty of WinCE programs compiled for MIPS. And so does linux, X, KDE, GNOME, etc. Are you implying that KDE/GNOME/X/GNU/Linux sucks?
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
If they really start selling it for $98 I expect a *lot* of geeks to adopt it, and in that case I think we can be sure someone will start a distro(-fork) for MIPS for this device.
Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.
So, you've never heard of Linux before, eh? Welcome to /.
apt-get, yum, and the like will function just as well on MIPS as they do on x86, automatically downloading the pre-compiled binaries for your arch.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Is that a sure thing? If you make a lot of cheap useful mini-computers and include good developer tools, why won't the users make their own? Don't think of it like a PC, think of like an open PDA or phone. Done right they could have a very healthy community app selection quickly.
Just don't be surprised if most of the apps are in Chinese first.
(We can call it the Little Red Notebook!)
It's a head in the cloud.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Actually....
This looks like a perfect platform for Angstrom
angstrom-distribution.org
Lots of apps, and more machines like this the better. Fro $98 I expect this will sell like crazy. Beats the crap out of a Sharp Zaurus....
It's about time we ditch the deranged lunacy that is x86 instruction set, especially when even Intel is going on multiple-core strategy. I'd love to see ARM- or MIPS-based multi-core chips take over.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Although the laptop is probably a great piece of engineering for something that has a sub-$100 price tag, the decision to go with a MIPS processor is probably going to relegate the device to niche markets - census taking, for example, or maybe something along the lines of inventory control.
The lack of official (and I emphasize "official") Flash 9 and Adobe PDF support would probably be a deal breaker for Joe Average Home and Business user.
Granted, a most of the PDF spec is now available royalty-free, and an FOSS Flash plug-in has been released (and is under continuing development), but I doubt that is going to put sway too many folk's purchasing decisions.
The MIPS processor will probably doom it forever to the realm of Geekdom...
I will admit now that I know next to nothing about MIPS processors. However, if it isn't compatable with x86 apps it will need quite a large repository of pre-compiled apps or MIPS will be it's downfall.
Funny. I'm running a full linux on a MIPS machine I have here. I can install binary packages of everything I have wanted to install by just doing "ipkg install ". Check out OpenWRT if you're interested.
c++;
No precompiled apps to download,
Yeah, there's only a little over 20,000 precompiled MIPS packages here. (Well, technically, somewhere in here, with an index located here.) I tend to think that 20,000+ is a little bit more than zero, but maybe that's just me. :)
Sooo... where are they available? A quick google search yields nothing on either the currently available models or this one.
"Sub-$100 Laptops Have Finally Arrived"
Tagged !arrived...
Speaking of MIPS, isn't that something you measure x86 chips (or any chips) with? As in millions of instructions per second. I've never heard of an architecture based off a speed rating.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
This shows on the YouTube video at 03:58:
400MHz/32bit CPU
128M/64M RAM
1GB NAND Flash
Linux or WinCE
7" 800x480 display
Wireless LAN 802.11b/g
10/100M ethernet
...when there's a link to BUY ONE. Now. Right now. I have my credit card at the ready. Where can I buy one, even at the $120 price point that they are supposedly selling "right now" for?
Well? Link or it didn't happen. Otherwise, this is just another fucking slashvertisement.
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
No, of course not.
It's the fact that:
it's trivially to compile for MIPS once you've got it compiled for every other major architecture.
the likes of Debian and other non-commercial distros have policies to ensure that all possible architectures are fully supported.
MIPS is an extremely popular architecture (Embedded, PDAs, SGI systems, etc.) ...that means there's tons of MIPS binary packages available for download.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I take it you never heard of Debian? They have precompiled binaries for pretty much every current processor architecture, including MIPS.
What are you talking about, 20,000 has 4 zeros in it!
No? Have you heard of acronym collisions before?
Millions of Instructions Per Second
vs.
Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipeline Stages
And don't get me started on "POWER"/"PowerPC", because, of course, those terms would never refer to anything other than a CPU architecture...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Just because Aptitude works doesn't mean there's any MIPS packages to download.
True, but all it takes is a source repository, a cross compiler, and a huge botnet to turn things around.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Out of interest, it's a 32-bit XBurst CPU from Ingenic Semiconductors.
http://www.ingenic.cn/eng/productServ/XBurst/pfCustomPage.aspx
I think it's extremely safe to say this is completely vaporware hype, with no substance at all.
Laptops that just about exactly match the specs and description of this supposed $100 machine, currently retail for $250:
http://www.compsource.com/pn/3KRZ40074GB/3k_Computers_2340/
I fail to believe it's being sold at a 100% mark-up, or that any magic they can do in the next couple years is going to half the materials and production costs of a laptop.
It looks like a decent bit of hardware, but don't count on it getting significantly cheaper while you wait. Even if the price of the chips (Flash, CPU, RAM, etc.) suddenly drop dramatically (which is highly unlikely), you've still got to deal with the base cost of NiMH batteries, plastic, lights, keyboards, touch pads, power supplies, LCD displays, assembly (man hours aren't getting any cheaper), etc., etc.
If you want a low-end system, pay the $250. Don't wait for the vapor to clear.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
No precompiled apps to download, since no one has download links for MIPS and no proprietary company would bother with such a tiny market.
Are you kidding? What are you planning to do with this, have it as your main desktop?
At $98, I'll buy 2 or 3 of them to throw around the house for quick browsing. If they can get Flash, it'll be full-blown awesome.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
There's plenty of folding USB keyboards, like this one. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000EU01GO/?tag=googhydr-20&hvadid=2380150919&ref=pd_sl_21k505pcmf_e
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
Now an even wider demographic of computer illiterate dullards will be able to stumble their way into our arms for inane tech help.
looks like you can get one now from geeks.com http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=ALPHA-400&cat=NBB
And four zeros is more than (one) zero. I rest my case. :)
To the grandparent, I think you'll find lots of precombiled binaries to download for MIPS.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Speaking of MIPS, isn't that something you measure x86 chips (or any chips) with? As in millions of instructions per second. I've never heard of an architecture based off a speed rating.
MIPS was one of the first successful manufacturers of a CPU chip with a reduced instruction set (from which of course the RISC acronym arose) as an alternative to the Intel x86 complex instruction set (CISC). The idea was that you could get a faster computer by being able to execute an entire instruction in a single clock cycle, rather than accept the overheads in silicon required by an architecture that takes more than one clock cycle to execute a single instruction. If you can do it in one clock cycle, it means that the whole instruction must fit within the instruction register, that is operation code, address, and any modifying flags that go with it. CISC instruction sets have to make a branch decision based on the opcode as to whether there's more to read into that register before the operation can complete. Less silicon to navigate meant more efficient structures, thus higher speed.
For many years, this worked quite well. Intel had to work very hard to make their CISC instruction set as fast as it is; market forces meant that MIPS couldn't keep up in the prime PC market, thus settled out into the small, high efficiency and inexpensive niche. You still see a lot of embedded systems using RISC chips.
This is also the basis of the controversy you encounter when using the term "MIPS" in it's meaning of "Millions of Instructions Per Second" as a fundamental metric of computer speed -- it's hard to compare a million RISC instructions with a million CISC instructions, in the same way that it's hard to rate an engine by the number of cylinders it has. Myer-Drake Indy cars had a lovely 4-cylinder engine that burned pure alcohol (the "Offenhauser", or "Offy") for many years that had a much higher output than your commercial V8. It's difficult to find a good standard metric some times.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
There are lots of MIPS Linux distros (Main Page), but that doesn't invalidate the GP post. The only apps you get are the ones in the distros. No one compiles for MIPS, since the market is miniscule. This means it is a crap shoot as to whether the source compile works, and you get nothing if the source isn't available. I had the same problem for PowerPC back when I had Linux on my old Mac, and I would wager that PPC is at least a big a market as MIPS would be.
One of my favorite bug hunts was when I found out the implementation difference in varargs between x86 and PPC: in x86, it is a pointer, which means changes in a called function don't propagate, while it is a pointer to a struct on PPC, which means changes do propagate -- thus the missing va_end only affected things on PPC.
Here's the thing about software:
Once you standardize the hardware, you compile the software ONCE, and then everyone can copy it.
Expect a website to appear to collect all of the compiled apps for this thing. From then on there's no effort or cost for new users to obtain new software.
Of course, there are a hundred security issues with this, but for $89 retail you aren't going to get a secure platform.
The deranged lunacy turned ranged a long time ago.
The core instruction set has had multiple sets of custom enhancements over the years, and can now do some pretty amazing stuff "in a single instruction."
It's the RISC methodology that can no longer keep up except under specific constraints to the problem set. That's why Apple switched to keep up in general-purpose and multimedia computing, and you'll find PowerPC only in embedded and HPC any more.
We always knew Comcast was corrupt, here's the proof: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1909890&cid=34545432
I am hoping that some day soon, people that offer free WiFi (and other places) have a couple of tables with a basic pc built into them, kind of like those old table style video games. The trick is that to use it, you have to have a thumb drive (or something like it) that plugs in, providing storage, OS, personal files etc. There are several distros of Linux that could do this, and there would be some performance issues, but it would certainly turn just about everything (with these or similar systems) into Internet cafes... or whatever you like to call them.
When you are mobile, you plug it into your PDA/phone or other mobile device. When you arrive at home, just plug the thumb drive module into your desktop and you're off.
Yes, I realize that anyone could poke technical holes in that description. I'm just trying to give the basic idea. As storage physical size shrinks, this will become more possible. I'd like to see it. It would not work for absolutely everything, especially storage intensive applications, but for a lot of things it would work. Who carries their porn collection around with them anyway?
I'd also be happy with a mobile device/phone that allowed not only this module to plug in, but additional storage USB devices (mp3 etc) so that the modules become common place. usb storage module for your mp3 player can be plugged into your phone also, as well as your mobile computing device.
you should get the option of phone sized pda, or maybe sidekick style option etc.
Again, I know there are a lot of reasons that this is a problematic goal, it's just a wish list top 10... for me anyway.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
The sub $100 dollar notebook niche appears to be a bit too specialized for the needs of most people. They have all had a couple of good features or component choices here and there but, at least IMHO, none of them has yet hit the sweet spot. The use of the MIPS processor is an interesting play and the 1GB flash drive is also interesting but perhaps not the most appropriate choice given the current cost and rewrite performance of solid state drives. There are also the usual complaints about keyboard and screen size. I think that they could do better by increasing the screen and keyboard size a bit and substituting a good magnetic notebook disk (~80 GB would be cheap) for the flash drive. The ideal price range would probably be somewhere between $250 - $500, anything less than $100 generates too many compromises to be of general purpose use (or at least that has been true thus far).
Editorializing from the headline, Roman Phalanx wrote
There's nothing "super" about losing one's software freedom. The XO was originally an educational project where even the computer the kids learn on could be part of the lessons. Switching to proprietary software means placing barriers on that education by telling the user that there are some things you weren't meant to know and shall be forbidden from learning, sharing, or changing to suit your needs. There's nothing good about that for the user, whose concerns outrank any proprietor. It is not society's job to placate software proprietors. The free software movement welcomes businesses that treat us as partners, not as a market to exploit. The free software community certainly gives businesses lots to work with and make money from.
Digital Citizen
Which is even MORE amazing since the dollar is worth HALF what it was 5 years ago!!!
because Windows CE used to exist for MIPS based mobile systems. So it can run a MIPS version of Windows CE or MIPS based Windows Mobile.
MIPS is one of the platform targets of AROS which will help turn it into a sub$100 Amiga laptop. I think the MIPS based AROS will have 68K emulation to run the old Amiga 68K programs on it via an emulator.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
The OP is absolutely right.
To all the people posting about MIPS support in Debian (the only Linux distribution with generic MIPS as a target): Do you have a working GUI? I couldn't get anything but pure X to work on MIPS. Most Linux MIPS development is for headless systems, so absolutely no effort has been put into porting GUI apps as far as I can tell.
How many major graphical distributions (Fedora, SUSE, Ubuntu) have MIPS versions? ZERO. Debian is it, and Debian doesn't work right. Gentoo will probably also sort-of work, just like Debian.
The OP is absolutely right.
To all the people posting about MIPS support in Debian (the only Linux distribution with generic MIPS as a target): Do you have a working GUI? I couldn't get anything but pure X to work on MIPS. Most Linux MIPS development is for headless systems, so absolutely no effort has been put into porting GUI apps as far as I can tell. I suspect the GUI apps that come with this laptop will be all you'll ever get, and I bet they're buggy as hell.
How many major graphical distributions (Fedora, SUSE, Ubuntu, etc.) have MIPS versions? ZERO. Debian is it, and Debian doesn't work right. Gentoo will probably also sort-of work, just like Debian.
At $350 per unit, It's not cost effective as a Sony PSP or Nintendo DS, but competitive to a mix between a QWERTY PDA with usable RAM/TV-out/redundant-expansion. In other words, it's a trade-off of a better Motorola A12000 CellPhone without the lock-in, more battery life, and better than the bulk of a laptop.
Did you miss the entire freakin' point of the story or what?
How we know is more important than what we know.
So, what's stopping Sugar from running on these things?
Hmmmm, now I'm confused. TFS says 1GB, the HiVision website lists the NB0700 as it's cheapest laptop, and a quick google search says the NB0700 is the "First $100 laptop." However, the specs on the NB0700 are very different than TFS.
Here's a link to the gentoo handbook for mips: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-mips.xml
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
Damn kiddies with that infernal extra one in front of their #.
Debian has a mips port, where you can likely download precompiled packages just fine. http://www.debian.org/ports/mips/
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
I can type on my EEE - I only miss "c" 75% of the time, and I can't reliably hit ctrl-anything without dedicating an index finger for ctrl. And wtf was with putting the only function key on the opposite side of the keyboard from the keys you use it with?
But aside from that, I do love the thing. Use it all the time. I've typed hundreds of pages on it. With numerous corrections, of course. But it's usable. And it bounces. That's really the main selling point.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
.
OLPC sold less than 700,000 units by May 29th of this year. 80,000 of those sales were give one - get one promos.
--- almost exclusively targeting the Linux Geek.
The third world education minister simply wasn't buying into Linux, Sugar and a constructivist philosophy of education.
The "Give 1 Get 1" donation of $399 had a tax-deductible portion of $200 under US tax code as the XO-1 laptop delivered to the donor was valued at $199 by the OLPC Foundation."
One Laptop per Child
If you take OLPC at its word, then they never had a $100 Linux laptop - at least not at the "direct sale" price.
Or, you could buy a cell phone. Those can be had for ~$100+ in forms that do about as much as a $100 laptop would. Plus they call people.
In any case, it's no surprise - this has been possible for a long time. The question is whether the result is marketable. Will people want a 7-inch screen? Can they live with only 1 GB of storage? Each year, the specs of what you can buy with $100 get better - at this point, they're high enough that several companies think the product has become marketable.
Ignore my retarded parents. I was adopted.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, watch it -- I'm huge!
I've been wondering the same thing and I suspect that I'm going to do something weird. I did a lot of looking around for portable keyboards with good action, light weight, big enough keys, etc. and having looked at everybody from Adesso on up, I've concluded that I'll probably buy a UMPC of some sort with a not-quite-good-enough keyboard, get by with that when I really want to travel light, and carry one of the new Apple keyboards when I expect to do a lot of writing. The buggers are amazingly light and the action is sweet, though I neither want to pay eighty bucks nor have to trust Bluetooth. But, realistically, at some point in the next few months I'll be gritting my teeth and giving yet more of my money to the folks in Cupertino.
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.
... can it run IRIX? :)
We apologize for the inconvenience.
Seriously. Give me a basic Laptop with wordprocessor/spreadsheet/internet access and I'm in. Add a working VGA out and I'm in heaven.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
You mean the "subset of geeks" who constitute the likely half million or more users of these types of boxen in another six months?
Things are changing fast, my friend.
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.
No sweat. I've got a 4GB flash drive and a 20 GB Little Disk. Beyond apps and OS, what do I need or even want an internal HD for? Using external drives is far more secure and modular.
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.
Thanks for finally getting around to the car analogy. I really didn't understand all that MIPS CISC RISC stuff, but that cleared it up!
Unless they're lying in the video, they've already sold over ten thousand of these puppies, or at least something that's about version 0.93 of it. That doesn't sound like vaporware to me.
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.
http://mobile.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=954031&cid=24879831
With purchase of an expensive laptop.
"standard metric"
Heh.
How does that make any sense? The internal instruction set of a modern x86 processor (AMD/Intel) is RISC and further more Apple switched for two reasons: IBM not meeting capacity and deadlines and leakage; Apple wanted badly to stay competitive in the laptop market. The G5 ran hot and had leakage problems even in its deepest sleep state which hindered it from ever being brought to market in a powerbook.
Type how fast? I can type on my Zaurus SL-C3000, not very fast but fast enough to pound out rough drafts of poems and essays while on the go. It's about the size of a pack of 3x5 index cards; I would love to find something that size with a more standard architecture. I guess the Nokia 810 is the closest thing in current production; but that sliding keyboard looks like the suck, the Z's clamshell formfactor blows it out of the water.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Although the laptop is probably a great piece of engineering for something that has a sub-$100 price tag, the decision to go with a MIPS processor is probably going to relegate the device to niche markets - census taking, for example, or maybe something along the lines of inventory control.
Sony went with a MIPS processor for the PlayStation, PlayStation 2, and PlayStation Portable. Are they niche?
The lack of official (and I emphasize "official") Flash 9 and Adobe PDF support would probably be a deal breaker for Joe Average Home and Business user.
PSP has a MIPS processor and can run SWF.
Formfactor-wise, nothing beats a Sharp Zaurus SL-C3000 (or 3100/3200). It's pocketsized, clamshell, with a QWERTY keyboard usable for two-finger (or thumb) typing.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
True, but all it takes is a source repository
Not all software is Free or even available as source code. For example, what major retail video game has a Free engine?[1]
[1] I'm talking about games that are Free upon first publication, not id Tech based games that go Free half a decade later.
1 for a server and one for each kid.
And only one non-zero. Making it 80% zero, and 20% non-zero.
int total = (0 * 0.8) + (2 * 0.2);
So there we have it. 20,000 == 0
That's why Apple switched to keep up in general-purpose and multimedia computing,
I can't speak for the larger issues of RISC vs CISC and whathaveyou... but Apple almost certainly did not switch because of those. Apple switched because IBM did not have the interest or capability to pump out cheap, high-performing chips like Intel can. The G5 was impressive, but useless in a notebook.
I don't see why a RISC chip would be inherently harder to build than a CISC chip... Hell, the current Core chips from Intel are RISC chips with a big honking translator slapped onto them.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Answering a bunch of things in one post. Firstly, there seems to be some people on slashdot who think that x86 is required in order to be a 'usable' platform. Well, it isn't so. Makromedia flash may or may not be available for MIPS, but that doesn't mean that users will not be able to use 'the web': because of limited bandwidth and censorship, much of the 'target demographic' for this computer won't be needed such functionality anyhow. But I believe a few things: 1) it behooves Macromedia to release players for a variety of architecture, lest they be left behind. 2) proves that open-source, and its ability to be compiled for a variety of architectures, has much value. 3) Perhaps we need an INSTRUCTION SET which is completely unencumbered by "intellectual property". I guess virtual machines can handle the translation, and later be put into silicon - remind you of Java? Hrm.
China has a lot of 'economic frontiers' left. A great portion of the country is still very primitive, left struggling in the remains of Maoism. There may be an effort in this country to refocus its efforts on internal development, and this PC might be a step towards it. I don't think it's quite there, though, as there seems to be a concentration on western (European/Roman/English) keyboards and displays. I am not saying that I want Red China to win (I actually want them to lose) but I am trying to foresee what's coming.
Lastly, I am not sure how much further the keyboard can shrink and still be practical. Sure, for kids it can be smaller, but even kids grow - and hence their fingers grow too large for the keyboard, and then the mini-laptop they were using starts causing damage to their fingers. That's no way to be - we need full sized keyboards, even in undeveloped countries, otherwise it will be only the midgets which will be able to type effectively.
So what's with the nod tag that's been thrown on the past couple of articles?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
The deranged lunacy turned ranged a long time ago.
The core instruction set has had multiple sets of custom enhancements over the years, and can now do some pretty amazing stuff "in a single instruction."
Any x86 CPU you can buy at retail for at least the past three years IS a RISC CPU. x86 is just a compression/encryption format for RISC instructions, and there's not a single thing you can do with an x86 that can't be done on another architecture with similar hardware, and most likely cleaner and better. $50 million worth of R&D into any CPU design, architecture or instruction set will produce a roughly equivalent speedup. Since x86 is such a Charlie Foxtrot in the first place, starting with something cleaner is likely to produce even better performance.
It's the RISC methodology that can no longer keep up except under specific constraints to the problem set. That's why Apple switched to keep up in general-purpose and multimedia computing, and you'll find PowerPC only in embedded and HPC any more.
The only keeping up Apple needs to do is in IA-32 emulation and price. The same principle (commodity hardware means fewer hardware engineers and lower component costs) drove the commodity-based architecture of the Sun Ultra-5. It's ALL about money. It's always about money.
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
I'm not certain if anyone remembers this? But I remember a Popular Science cover when the Timex Sinclair came out and people were crowing about the first "under $100" computer.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
... you don't recharge it, you buy a new one.
The core instruction set has had multiple sets of custom enhancements over the years, and can now do some pretty amazing stuff "in a single instruction."
Even though the instruction set exposes a CISC interface, some modern chips decompose those instructions down into micro-ops. So internally, the processor could still resemble a RISC architecture.
There are currently NO developers using Beagleboard for MIPS development. They are using it for ARM and TIDSP development though.
and GP Wiz with two D-pads instead of normal fire buttons is better designed as a gaming system? Pandora at least had two analog pads and normal buttons.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
On my SGI Octane (MIPS IP30), I have full X running KDE 3.5.9. Does that count? Gentoo BTW....
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
Just because Aptitude works doesn't mean there's any MIPS packages to download.
True, but all it takes is a source repository, a cross compiler, and a huge botnet to turn things around.
Fix the compile errors and win an ipod?
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
.kr is South Korea (i.e: not communist).
MIPS CPUs are very simple to design, if you're willing to accept the limitation of one instruction per clock. I once met the entire design team for a midrange MIPS CPU, and it was six people. When you look at a picture of the silicon, you can barely find the instruction decode and execute logic; it's a tiny fraction of the chip.
MIPS was overrun by the superscalar architectures, where you get more than one instruction per clock, at the cost of a huge increase in CPU logic complexity. The Pentium Pro design team was around 3000 people. (The Pentium II and III were basically Pentium Pro logic reworked for later fab processes.) It's amazing that x86 superscalar machines are even possible. (Think hard for a moment about what has to happen when you store into code just ahead of execution, which is fully supported by all x86 CPUs.) If you're willing to go superscalar, the simplicity goes away, and so does the advantage of the MIPS architecture.
But if you're willing to accept one instruction per clock, and a 2X code bloat over x86 (making all the instructions the same length means the register-to-register instructions take more bytes than they need), it's a simple way to build a CPU.
Did anyone here consider the fact that the $98 dollar price point is the wholesale price?
You will not be buying it for $98, the distrubutor you buy it from will be paying $98 dollars for it, and selling it to you at a markup.
Just that this appears to be footage of a commonplace wholesaler trade show.
That's really odd. I found this old archived gcc post, saying it shouldn't be a problem anymore with egcs. So yeah, the post is from 1998. I'm guessing that all of those weird differences have been smoothed out by now.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Me being the geek that I am, I would have one of these in my house, I just got the Eee Box and I love it, and with this being different in processor and stuff I would love to tinker with it.
"Arrived" in the title, and "Due in October" in the text.
One of these things is not like the other... one of these things is not the same...
+++OK ATH
One of my favorite bug hunts was when I found out the implementation difference in varargs between x86 and PPC: in x86, it is a pointer, which means changes in a called function don't propagate, while it is a pointer to a struct on PPC, which means changes do propagate -- thus the missing va_end only affected things on PPC.
Actually, you don't have to go as far as MIPS or PPC for that -- I discovered the same thing on x86_64. I reused the same va_list variable in two subsequent calls to vsprintf, which didn't make my program happy at all. I might suggest reading up on va_copy(3).
I don't see why a RISC chip would be inherently harder to build than a CISC chip.
That's not the problem because RISC CPUs *are* easier to build. The problem is in *using* RISC CPUs. Each instruction is simple, so you need many instructions to do the same thing that one instruction does on CISC. So the code size grows. Also instead of fetching one MOVSx and chewing on it until you transfer the whole block your RISC CPU may need to sit in a tight loop and load/store word by word, and fetch the instructions also - hopefully from a local cache but it's still work.
Basically RISC and CISC are ways to optimize the distribution of work between different pieces of a computing system. If your memory is fast and cheap go RISC. If your memory is not very fast then you get a major hit in performance. But a RISC CPU is simpler. I can understand that when CPU of IBM/370 took a large room it was a valid point. But today IC designers literally don't know what to do with the silicon real estate that they have on each die. So it makes sense to throw FETs at the problem and save the precious memory bandwidth for things that truly must be in RAM - your data, or your efficiently packed machine instructions. RISC has advantages only when your CPU must be simple and run cold, and when RAM is faster than your CPU - and that is the case in many embedded systems.
I do not think that word means what they think it does.
Any of pda-phones made by HTC absolutely pwn that hands down (unless you consider running Linux a must-have).
Thumbable qwerty, wifi, bluetooth, sd/mmc, gps, touchscreen, stylus, handwriting recognition, audio io, gsm phone, network projector support, are all base functionality these days.
3laws: No freebies, no backsies, GTFO.
huh? A moderator that changed their mind? Sorry I wasted your point....
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
If cheapo MIPS machines prove popular, you can bet the situation will improve in a hurry.
Shame they're tied to US$100 for this. If, instead, at the time they made the mandate for a laptop at US$100, they actually locked the price to the equivalent Euros or GBP, they'd have a much easier time at it.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
I was starting to wonder what could be cobbled together from all the, perfectly functional, yet slightly outdated/unwanted parts that must be floating around warehouses in Asia. My EEE PC serves me perfectly well. It's really an eye-opener how much you can do with systems that appear "limited" at first glance.
As portable devices get more powerful and more capable, why are PCs even needed in this situation? Forget the thumb drive, plug your next-next-gen phone into your table, flip up the monitor, and use the full-sized keyboard (with touchpad, I suppose).
This laptop is already being sold here for a couple of months in the Netherlands as Trendtac (http://www.trendtac.nl) I'm typing on it right now.
Take a look at http://www.littlelinuxlaptop.com or http://trendtac.hyves.nl to see what it can do.
Gert
So all it needs now is a folding screen and an external drive ? :)
I have a machine that displays in 1024x480 (panoramic before it was trendy) and it did require working a bit differently. The virtual desktop are essential. No idea how you can use it in Windows.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
There are lots of MIPS Linux distros (Main Page), but that doesn't invalidate the GP post. The only apps you get are the ones in the distros. No one compiles for MIPS, since the market is miniscule.
Install Gentoo, problem solved !
Want OpenOffice for MIPS ? Just, uh... Wait, let me get back to you on that one.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
Hey, $120 is the new $100! With the way the economy is going, it'll only take a few days for this laptop to be a sub-$50 laptop!
Windows CE hasn't been supported for years.
Windows Mobile, however, is, and that's only supported on ARM processors AFAIK.
There are other embedded versions of Windows which probably do support MIPS, however, and I'm sure someone in Redmond can figure out the concept of developing code on some architecture other than x86.
Gentoo will probably also sort-of work
That's the whole point of Gentoo, isn't it?
This thing is slow as it is. Do you really want to knock it back to single-digit MHz equivalent with a software CPU emulator?
(Don't know who modded you Insightful)
All x86 chips have a RISC core these days.
The main reason why x86 gives more bang for the buck is because of competition, and is despite it's clunky architecture.
These are not for "general purpose" computing as we slashdotters know it, these are for email, web and writing letters to aunt betty. They're not intended to play Doom 4 or run Windows Vista.
My mother in law is getting a netbook, and I think she's a very good example of a non-geek's perspective on these. She doesn't need to spend hundreds of pounds on a 8kg brick with 10 mins battery life and six zillion GB of storage space that claims to be a "Lap Top" - just to use the interweb, and she knows it, so as soon as she copped eyes on a netbook and found out that they were basically a portable internet thingy with a larger screen and keyboard than her mobile phone she was sold. The £100 (GBP) price range is exactly right for these machines in that respect - from the point of view who has a 19" mono CRT TV and is perfectly happy with that and doesnt see the need to fork out for a 50" 1080P HD Flat screen.
I've said this before on slashdot, too many geeks and product reviewers see these and their laptop-like form factors and treat them like stripped down dumb machines that would sit in the corner dribbling whilst all the supposedly "proper" laptops called them names. When that's not what they are - they're much more akin to souped-up PDAs with keyboards. And as someone who still owns an 8MB Psion Revo i've been dying for this sort of thing for years!
I already have an Xbox, Playstation, Server and Desktop. They're mainly used for watching video, playing games, developing and general-purpose computing, respectively. I don't need one of these mini-laptops to do any of that, i want it so I can check ebay from the sofa, look up recipes from the kitchen and send emails from the garden.
As a final thought it's probably worth bearing in ming that the specs of these inparticular almost exactly match the *development* system I used to use 8 years ago, except I had 8GB of drive space there instead of 1GB - but most of that was empty or taken up with quake 2 and half life modding resources! I managed to run SUSE (5 or 6 IIRC) on it perfectly adequately and email, surf and write letters with no performance issues.
If this is the model I think of it there's a fledgling site dedicated to it and it's siblings at littlelinuxlaptop.com - including how to get root access and such like. I can't wait to get mine!
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
In fact here it is for just $180..
http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=ALPHA-400&cat=NBB
MIPS arch in china? Hmmmmm. Where did we hear about that yesterday.
China is about to gut the EU and American hardware companies. My guess is that the chip will not be a MIP, but will be the Godson chip. In addition, I suspect that the laptop will be available initially with the slow chip, but will increase quickly to the godson-3 as it will be subsidized by the chinese gov. Smart on their part, but foolish on others.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
What other kinds of games are you going to run on a $95 laptop ? Crysis ?
Games with PS1-class graphics, such as MySims and Mario Kart DS, already run on a $130 handheld.
is that XO HAD a chance. By trying to work with MS, they had to increase the size of everything, which brings up the costs to the same as most major companies. Now, hivision is doing on the hardware what XO was suppose to do. And I am betting that some others or even hivision will port SOME of the apps over, and then take control of XO.
Basically, a companies willingness to work with MS is becoming a predictive value of how long the company will last.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Yes those products are niche, they are gaming only
PSP homebrewers would tell you that the big reason Sony computer entertainment systems are commonly considered "gaming-only" is because of the lockout chip that verifies Sony's digital signature on each executable. A jailbroken PSP can do and does a lot more than gaming. I take it that unlike the PSP, this laptop won't have the lockout chip. So what wouldn't you call "niche"?
no it was saying that egcs would support va_copy allowing code that misuses va_list to be fixed more easilly but the code still has to be fixed.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Heck, it could be a control panel for any home automation stuff. Or display a video feed from security cameras. Or hell, be a friggin' _clock_.
I'm going to China in November, and I've already asked my friends there to try to find these. I will report back if I manage to get my hands on one.
I think the 0890 (8.9 inch) would make a great little security testing device.
The 8.9 inch and 10 inch models have 1024x600. It's only the 8 inch and 7 inch that have 800x480.
The 8.9 inch model's specs are identical to the 10 inch except the physical size and the weight. Both have the same size HD, same screen layout (1024x600), 3 USB 2.0 ports, etc.
I'll be in China in early November. I plan to pick up one of the 8.9 inch ones. I will report back when I return.
It sez the $120 is available now. I'm willing to spend an extra $20 to play with it today. How do I get one?
Yes, but a junked laptop is just that: junk. A new laptop with the very same specs is going to have fewer gremlins. Not to mention that the battery will actually work rather than "used to work, but you can replace it with another one that is probably salvage from another junked laptop"
Also, some of the components will likely be manufactured using smaller process size, so they're likely to be more power efficient.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I want one of these for network tech work. I do some in-home networking work, and I would love one of these. Lighter than a laptop, running a full Linux TCP/IP stack, cheap enough to not worry about breaking it.
From my standpoint, these are perfect for field work. Hell if I can get KIAX, SSH, and Firefox to work on it reliably, that's 95% of what I need a laptop for onsite.
Pointing out that there is a comparable alternative available on a one-at-a-time basis is *not a valid criticism of these products.
Pretend that GP, instead of just being a tweakhead who wants to fiddle with a UMPC, is tasked with fitting out 1200 employees with cheap laptops.
I assume you'd suggest that he needs to make 1199 more friends with old laptops?
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
But today IC designers literally don't know what to do with the silicon real estate that they have on each die.
The rest of your post makes sense, but this statement isn't true at all. Die shrinks are constant, and really the major way to save costs. On-die cache is still really expensive because it uses up valuable chip real estate. Hell, even the MIPS literature espouses the small die size as one of the big benefits of the chip. And the amount of circuitry directly correlates to power draw.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Older model during back-to-school sales. Standard everything, but small.
There are currently NO developers using Beagleboard for MIPS development
Oh, I don't know. There might be some. They're probably very confused about why none of their code is working though...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Slap a webcam (with Skype pre-loaded) and the Adobe Flash Player it seems perfect (even if it running a flavor of Linux) and put a price tag of $100-$150 and I would buy it at the drop of a hat. HEAR THAT... Do not just slap it out at sell it at $500! I will be buy a regular laptop at that point.
My Sig indicates the end of the comment I posted.
I am not aware of any PCs ever to include MIPS chips. SGI used MIPS64 chips in their systems for a long time (until they switched to Itanium) as did a few other UNIX vendors, and they are found in a huge number of embedded systems, but they never really aimed for the midrange systems.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
That GP2x Wiz is from a South Korean company, actually there office is pretty close to where I work, I'll have to go check it out. It's great they're running linux, I was checking out an event that Asus put on for the eeePC and it was basically impossible to find one running Linux. The staff all said they sold them with Windows. So while this is offtopic, at least the post proved a little bit useful.
Interesting that you've noticed that trend....
I've suspected the same thing, though I didn't track the visitors to any of the web sites I've put together.
I think one big issue has been the lack of real "resolution independence" in full use in major operating systems. This was promised for OS X before 10.5 Leopard was released, but then never really materialized. And in Windows, you can change the default of 96DPI to something larger, but that amounts to magnifying EVERYTHING drawn on the display - so I'm not sure why that's really beneficial over just selecting a lower resolution (thereby achieving the same effect, while reducing the load on the video card and system - since it has fewer pixels to refresh and draw)?
I know at my workplace, at least 1 out of 3 employees is running in 800x600 because it's the lowest resolution they can use that still fits a "usable" amount of information on the screen at one time. They want everything to look bigger, making it easier on the eyes -- and buying larger LCD displays didn't address their problem, since it just meant higher and higher native resolutions.
From your comment:
"Is the thing not x86 compatible?"
From the summary of the article you are commenting on:
"They ditched x86 compatibility..."
The interviewer is just terrible. How is it that this is the only guy in the internets providing info on this? Anyway, the linux distro in the vid looks like xandros that comes with the asus eeepc 900. I'm not sure it is is xandros but it looks just like that. The first thing I'd do is wipe that crap and install something else on there with an 8gb sd card or something. And once again ... the interviewer was just plain horrible.
Ah, ok I see that now. I'm still not sure why it would be a difference due to processor architecture. Is varargs really implemented on that low of a level?
on a slashdot side note, my previous post didn't appear for hours. I thought it had been lost somewhere along the way. Anyone else experience that before?
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
How in the hell is my above post a troll? It's a completely valid, on topic comment. Search ebay for $100 laptops and you will find ones more powerful then the one listed in the article. this post is a troll. L2moderate.
Hikery.net - The best hiking site ever. Made by yours truly.
Ok, so where can i get one, today.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
In my case, it was a bug in the code that simply didn't rear its head on x86, but did on PPC. Basically, va_start must be bracketed by va_end, and va_start must be called each time you want to run through a function's args again.
void f1(int n,
va_list ap;
va_start(ap, n);
for (int i = 0; i < 10; ++i) {
g(ap)
}
va_end(ap);
}
void f1(int n,
va_list ap;
for (int i = 0; i < 10; ++i) {
va_start(ap, n);
g(ap)
va_end(ap);
}
}
void g(va_list ap) {
}
Sorry, I can't seem to get the above indented.
If we can get a useable 100$ laptop out of the deal, who here really cares?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Some people prefer RISC and wouldn't consider it a limitation.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Looks like a different CPU to me. So id not consider them the 'same bloody laptop'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
That's rather ironic when your UID is over 24 million!
love is just extroverted narcissism
OOPS! looking at the wrong number! No irony found, carry on ;)
love is just extroverted narcissism
note: the below information is based on my knowlage and information I have gleaned from the web, there may be errors in it.
Implementation of va_list is a platform abi (sometimes known as the C abi since C is the standard language on most operating operating systems) issue. The platform abi defines such things as the sizes of standard types and the calling conventions Generally the platform abi is standardised for a particular OS/CPU architecture combination. Changing it would break binary compatibility.
Remember that in C you DO NOT have to declare functions before using them. And even if you do declare them you don't have to declare thier argument list. Therefore a function with varargs MUST have the same ABI as a function that takes the same arguments in the normal way.
i386 linux has a very simple C abi with all parameters on the stack, this allows va_list to simply be a pointer to the first varidic argument and then the retrival function simply moves the pointer by the size of the argument retrived.
Architectures with more general purpose registers tend to use those registers for passing parameters. Since some of the parameters are not on the stack va_list clearly cannot simply be a pointer but must deal with multiple lists of values retrived from different types of registers as well as a pointer to parameters that were passed on the stack.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Its not late, that is not a sub $100 laptop.
You know I was GIVEN an old laptop years ago.
I guess that magically somehow invalidates the fact that they can *make* a new laptop for $100 the same way some deal that requires you to buy a several thousand dollar laptop does.
Unless there is some mass market where people are buying these expensive laptops and reselling the $99 extra ones its not very much use.
Its like claiming that mobile phones cost $0 to manufacture.
cat
I, like many others from what I could gather from a quick google of "digital photo frame driver", was intrigued by the recent news that there is a huge glut of digital photo frame devices and that the average selling price is in the sub-thirty dollar range for the 7" part.
At that price point these things are getting close to the average retail price of a twenty character monochrome textmode LED display for hobbyist electronics projects. The question, of course, is the video driver and my first tentative googling didn't turn up much more than other people wondering the same thing.
With the advent of all these new SOC platforms like the Atom and Nvidia Tegra that include integrated video hardware within the SOC package it certainly seems like we're getting very close to ultra low cost homebrew SOC systems with repurposed digital photo frame video output. These could make for some great devices.
The trick will be in hitching the SOC chips which tend to come in fine pitched BGA packaging to spread-out boards using toaster oven SMT techniques to get to the pins and then identifying the input connections on some common digital photo frame devices. If anybody has one of these and does a teardown to see how they have wired the microcontroller/SOC to the digital photo frame please post links back to here.
No, it's like giving someone a book and then forbidding them from obtaining the knowledge to make their own books or modifying the book you gave them so it can suit their needs.
You seem to misunderstand the point of freedom. Just because most computer users aren't hackers and have no desire to become hackers doesn't mean they should be prohibited from being hackers to the degree they want to be one (not all jobs require serious programming skills, some jobs like translation can be done without editing code at all). Proprietary software always prohibits one from doing what they want with their software, even simple things like sharing a verbatim copy with someone else. Protecting freedom means thinking beyond your immediate desires and your own view of the world, realizing that you can't know what you'll want to do in the future and others want different things than you so you're better off retaining freedoms even if you don't exercise them yourself. In computer software the freedoms you throw away could be the freedoms someone wants when they get software from you.
I wouldn't trade away my freedom of speech even if I happened to agree with what my government was doing and therefore had no need to protest.
As for needing details of food production, you probably need that more than you think. Some people want to know if there is something in the wine that shouldn't be there. This information allows them to find wine that was free of pollutants. Some people care about the plight of the workers and other customers when they buy products, so they will use their consumer power (small as it is) to help shape a better world.
Digital Citizen
Like how the original Apple Macintosh could have everything you could possibly need on one 400K floppy disk--operating system, an application or two, and some space for your documents. You could take that floppy to any Mac, boot it, and it'd be your own self-contained, mobile instance of a Macintosh system.
And if you wanted more applications, you'd make a new system disk and copy the applications to it. You could customize the system to only have the resources (like fonts and desk accessories) you need to actually make your applications run and be useful to you.
And now you're talking about having that on a USB stick? Man, how things come full-circle!
the inverse of 3/4 is 4/3 and 4/3 times $100 is $133.33...