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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.
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.
No flash? That's a feature, not a bug!
Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
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.
The iphone doesn't run flash and it costs twice as much. No one will ever buy one!
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.
Most flash can be simulated. Most people can do it by banging their head hard on a desk three times. For IT people it is easier - get somebody to stand behind you to repeat the incredibly stupid term "interweb" and your head will hurt just as much as if you've seen nearly any flash content on the net.
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
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
Indeed! Phones and netbooks will help us eradicate Flash from the Web!
Out of interest, it's a 32-bit XBurst CPU from Ingenic Semiconductors.
http://www.ingenic.cn/eng/productServ/XBurst/pfCustomPage.aspx
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
Which is even MORE amazing since the dollar is worth HALF what it was 5 years ago!!!
Ignore my retarded parents. I was adopted.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, watch it -- I'm huge!