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Nvidia Lauds Windows CE Over Android For Smartbooks
ericatcw writes "Google's Android may enjoy the hype, but an increasing number of key industry players say the mobile OS isn't ready for ARM netbooks, aka smartbooks. Nvidia is the most recent to declare Android unfit for duty, stating its preference for Microsoft's Windows CE, which an Nvidia exec praised for having a "low footprint" and being "rock solid." Nvidia is busy optimizing its multimedia-savvy Tegra system-on-chip for Windows CE. Such improvements won't arrive for at least a year to Android, which has an inflexible UI and poor graphics support for devices larger than a smartphone, says Nvidia. Other firms echoing similar criticism include ARM and Asustek."
So you're saying software designed for mobile phones doesn't work as well on a little computer like device as software which was designed for little computer like devices?
Wow. Amazing. Incredible.
And they're the same age too!
No, wait, Windows CE is 13 years old. It's had a little more time to design the window manager for different screen sizes.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Isn't this NVIDIA opinion somehow influenced by having Microsoft as customer for their Tegra chips going to upcoming Zune HD?
From TFA:
"The world soundly rejected the first netbooks that came out with Linux," he said. "Printers didn't work, and devices didn't get recognized. The whole thing was a mess."
I'm sure all printers come with WinCE drivers these days. Or maybe Nvidia knows how to install Vista drivers on CE?
This is standard operating procedure for Microsoft contractees. Happened just this last month with Asus where as soon as Microsoft negotiated a new deal with Asus, Asus out of the blue started spouting anti-Linux FUD.
The Zune HD contract with NVidia obviously has the same type of garbage built in.
I was at a conference in 2002 where the chairman of ARM, Sir Robin Saxby, gave a keynote talk on ARM. In the Q&A session afterwards one of the attendees asked what Mr. Saxby thought of Linux - he replied that it was a toy operating system that would never amount to anything, and that open source was a useless strategy for developing software and he didn't see any place for it in the business world. The hall erupted with various PhD students and postgrads raising their hands, and after three people all said basically the same thing - that they use Linux and think open source is great - the chair had to say no more Linux questions. But after hearing what the guy at the top had to say, it would never surprise me to hear that ARM might be hostile to Linux and open source, even when it's running on their own chipsets.
Really, the early success of netbooks loaded with Ubuntu showed clearly that there is no real need for Android. Now, there's going to be netbooks with ARM. GREAT, this is the time to demonstrate (if only it was needed) that Linux is portable, and that distributions like Debian can run perfectly on ARM chips. There WILL be some players in the industry that will understand it, sooner or later. I knew there will be a time where DFSG free OS would start becoming popular just because of the fact it can fit any hardware. It's great if it's demonstrated by using them on cheaper netbooks.
As Wikipedia says, native code runs under Android fine. The Chrome web browser runs on Android. Chrome is not written in Java.
What you might mean is that you can't run native code on some specific mobile phone type device without hacks, and that you can't upload native code to the App Store. That much is true. In the first case, some manufacturers like to lock down their devices - the iphone is also pretty much locked down. In the second, Google want platform independence. But Android itself can clearly run native code - most of the software that it ships with is written in C. And you can distribute and install whatever Java code you want on any Android device, which is better than Apple's "you only load what we want you to load on a phone" rules.
Mike Rayfield:
"The world soundly rejected the first netbooks that came out with Linux," he said. "Printers didn't work, and devices didn't get recognized. The whole thing was a mess."
And how is Windows CE/Mobile any better in that regard? I would think it's even worse.
After twenty years of Microsoft corrupting the industry and colluding with other companies to place their products, how can anybody take such statements seriously? Nvidia has strong ties to Microsoft, and when Microsoft tells them to jump, they simply ask "how high".
Personally, I think Android is not a very good choice for netbooks; Ubuntu Netbook edition is a much better choice. But Windows CE wouldn't even make my list of a usable netbook operating system.
I work for a very large computer manufacture who is coming out with an ARM based PC. We looked at Marvell, Freescale, and NVIDIA. NVIDIA was the only one who has no support for Linux and because of this was marked off right away. Besides there lack of support for Linux there ARM CPU is pretty weak compared to Marvell and Freescale, there only advantage is the GPU. But because of the lack of Linux support we crossed them off right away. There really only hurting themselves.