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Ultra-Thin Laptops To Be Next Intel-AMD Battleground
FinalAnkleHealer sends along an IBTimes article proposing that $500 ultra-thin laptops, capable of multitasking and editing multimedia content, could be the next market contested by Intel and AMD. "AMD partnered with Hewlett-Packard Co. in January to launch the Pavilion dv2. Intel launched its rival CULV (Consumer Ultra Low Voltage) chip this month and Acer Inc. and Asustek Computer Inc were among those that demonstrated laptops based on the new technology at the Computex trade show in Taipei. ... With more people gravitating toward mobile and wireless technology, consumers want smaller laptops — and most of those people would prefer doing more than surfing the Web, which the no-frills netbooks now excel at. ... Acer, the first company to introduce a cheap Intel-powered CULV laptop, expects revenue from that segment to account for 15 percent of its total sales by the end of 2009. Asustek, which pioneered the netbook in 2007, plans to launch five consumer-priced ultra-thins this year."
Of all things about notebook (weight, performance, size) thickness is last I care about.
839*929
FinalAnkleHealer sends along an IBTimes article proposing that $500 ultra-thin laptops, capable of multitasking and editing multimedia content, could be the next market contested by Intel and AMD.
Good to know they are not running MSDOS, DRDOS, CP/M, RSTS, RT-11, Windows95 or MacOS9.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I hope they are promoting slimness with performance. I wonder why today's computing power with 1GHz machines and 1GB memories does not feel snappy at all.
I remember using computers years ago with Windows 95 that were quite fast on systems with 200MHz CPUs and 64Mb RAM modules.
I hope they will not forget performance...maybe the ARM systems will deliver on this.
hope amd will be able to deliver better oss support for such an intergrated system, than via have been able to wirh the NC20 system, the drivers for X are flacky be it the openchrome ones or the closesource one. brough a Nc20 without really having checked how well it preformed under linux, a shame that such a nice little machine is being holded back by via inability to delived the needed infomation to make better drivers.
Thickness will be limited by large ports such as VGA, USB annd ethernet, unless they make everything wireless.
If you can make a thin laptop, just add on a massive battery and make it as thick as a regular one. I don't care how thin it is, but a laptop that can survive normal use on battery for 8 hours would be an amazing thing.
seriously, laptops have so many problems, we don't need to add EDIBLE to the list
Yeah yeah, totally offtopic but is it just me or is Slashdot becoming some sort of forever beta test like Google stuff? The site is slooooow like a glue and weird bugs all over the place. I'm using latest version of Opera.
As a happy Acer Aspire One user (running Fedora 11), I'd appreciate a 10" (maybe 12", at a push) version for easier, mobile working, but it's clear that the netbook market was a double-edged sword for the manufacturers because the units were popular, but margins were crap.
I've slowly watched the decent netbook products migrate towards 12" screens at price points that make me think "I might as well get a low-end laptop for that" and although "ultra thin" would be nice, it's not top of my list. The 'regular' technology in the netbooks/slim laptops is 'fine for me'.
Fair enough, I am not 'everyone', but how many are willing to pay a premium for ultra-thin cases, batteries etc. when the kit on the market today isn't exactly hernia-inducing? This smells of a marketing angle designed to keep margins up. We're not all like Mac sheeple that will buy it simply because it's shiny and made by Apple/Acer/Asus etc.: http://www.theonion.com/content/video/apple_introduces_revolutionary
AT&ROFLMAO
Say, with a project-able display and project-to-any-surface keyboard?
Bonus if it weighed no more than today's smart phones and lasted all day between charges.
I know, I know, "dream on," at least for this decade.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
This whole 'mobile-portable' computing movement is a ridiculous marketing blackhole, IMHO. My ultimate concern with any laptop I've owned over the last 10+ years has been weight, performance, battery life and usability. Like the majority, I could care less about how 'thin' my mobile computing device is, and without being contradicting with my concern about weight, not having a bit of depth to the device would make any type of the most basic computing skills (e.g. using the touchpad mouse or typing) on your lap, sitting in a chair or at a table kind of difficult without a bit of vertical depth to rest your hands on. Apple Airbook and it's PC competitors just never felt all that comfortable to be to begin with. I bought into the netbook hype and I really it's design purpose driven around portability. Not so sure I'll be doing this time around. What seems was "Ultra-small, portable netbooks for $199" last year, will be this years "Ultra-thin laptops for $500". This is almost like a hot super model debate.
rather then worrying about thin, how about the hardware and software people get to gether and have a std for web pages, so we don't have these awful problems of landscape screens and portrait pages (even worse for most pdfs - people edit them in word for portrait display, which never happens on screen, can't adobe make a pdf that auto changes the format of the file to fit screen or print mode ?)
I would really love a portable computer with the size of the Kindle 2 and the screen covering the whole thing.
There are two main problems with notebook form factor right now, one is the screen and the other is the keyboard. The screen is something can't be dramatically modified. However, A lot of the time Keyboard is unnecessary, and when needed a good quality rollable keyboard could be plugged (as well as a mouse) via USB port.
That idea could be further extended by designing the screen in a kind of accordion, such that the borders of the screen rest on the top of the "center" when it is "folded" and when you want to use it you "pull" both screen borders to extend them (something like putting two PSP Go togheter, but instead of showing the control pad, it would expose the other segments of the screen, of course all the segments of the screen should end at the same level).
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
As much as I love AMD, I would like to know what the submitter was thinking calling it a battleground. It's only a fair fight for AMD so long as Intel's not interested - AMD (and their manufacturing partner née subsidiary) can't match Intel's manufacturing abilities. AMD doesn't have an Ultra Low Voltage chip; Intel has a 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo that runs at 10W, meanwhile it's murky at best for AMD's competing chip line, the Neo. The only specs given out to the press for the new fual core version, which is 18W for the 1.6GHz version, with the chip still being built on the 65nm process which hobbles AMD from the start. Bear in mind that the Neo is Athlon 64 based, which means that it's not clock-for-clock competitive with the Core 2 Duo (you'd need a Phenom II-based core for that). In other words, the Intel chip eats less power and gets more performance at the same time.
So if Intel's serious about this, it's only a battle so long as they don't decide to crush AMD with products and pricing. Intel is light years ahead of AMD in the mobile space due to their process technology advantage. Even TFA points out that they expect 8 hours out of the Intel CPUs, but only 5 hours out of the AMD CPUs. It's entirely lop-sided in Intel's favor.
Now TFA does mention AMD will have Congo later this year, but even if that's 45nm (AMD has not commented on that matter), it's unlikely that they'd be able to meet Intel's power envelope. When you look at the desktop chips this stuff is derived from, the Phenom II takes more transistors and as a result power than the Core 2 Duo, and that's only to reach a clock-for-clock parity. Congo wouldn't change this.
I'm sure Intel would like all of that pie and unfortunately for us, they are willing to do anything to get it. Including strong arming Asus when they showed an Arm based chipset running on Qualcomm's Snapdragon platform (running Android no less). A quick intervention from Intel and Microsoft and Asus was saying that 'the project is on hold' while sharing a stage with a VP from each of Intel and Microsoft.. Story on slashdot a couple days back.
Oh and these arm based devices can run all-day(apparently), nevermind 8 hours.
http://gizmodo.com/5273723/asus-demos-snapdragon+based-eee-pc-with-android
If you want it lighter, but still have a decent sized keyboard and screen, then the only way to do that is to make it thinner.
AMD can win on video alone hear as intel gma sucks and amd has good on board video.
It uses an AMD Turion X2 35W TDP CPU, not quite CULV, but it's pretty much the best value tablet around, and nice and portable at 12.1", only complaint is the somewhat washed-out screen, but that's a given for tablets with both a touchscreen and active digitizer.
Anyway, if CULV is the new 'battleground', I think on one hand Intel would have an advantage because of their typically lower TDPs (thermal design power, heat that needs to be removed) for a given performance level, however on the other hand, AMD usually has the avantage of costing less coin for a given performance level (eg the tablet above would cost about 35~40% if it was on an Intel platform), so who knows really who's going to lead.
"OSS" stands for "Open Source Software", of which Linux is a fine example. "OS" is what you were probably looking for, which stands for "Operating System".
\\//_ Live long and prosper.
Does AMD compete on audio too?
Ah, you've already covered that. Apologies.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
I just purchased a Dell Mini 12 with Ubuntu pre-installed. I love it, light (3 lbs), 5.5 - 6 hour battery life (48wh battery), and thin too. Great secondary Laptop for travel, working in bed. My other machine is a 17" Powerbook.
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
Of course, 10w is not what we are targeting at USD 500 and below.
Which kind of eliminates INTEL entirely, unless they buy Marvell back.
They do?
My ATI Radeon Xpress 1100 begs to differ.... That card sucks on both Windows and Linux. Yes, surely because it has no dedicated memory, but you did say "on board video" which pretty much never got memory of its own.
I wasn't aware that an inch was currently considered "thin" by any stretch. Half an inch, and you're got your "thin". But then it's not "thin" we're using to describe this, but "ultra-thin"? I was hoping for a printed-PC, and they hand me a brick. Maybe it's nice, but if you want the label "ultra-thin", you've got to go at most a quarter of an inch, and even then this is slashdot, so I'd prefer some pie-in-the-sky never-gonna-see-the-light-of-day piece about a notebook that's no thicker than a credit-card.
Still with Broadcom wireless blob? Tanks, but I'll pass. There are already choices that do not tie me to a specific modified version of the kernel (and thus to a specific operating system if I'm not a tinkerer), I'll go with one of those.
When you can get a smartbook that can do all this, runs 10 hours, and costs $100-$200? /., about these [ARM + nVidia Tegra acceleration + Linux] devices coming out in autumn?)
(Remember the article here on
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>My other machine is a 17" Powerbook.
I bet you also put a sticker with that slogan on the back of your Dell.
I hope they will not forget performance...maybe the ARM systems will deliver on this.
Perhaps someone can inform me on this topic, but I am under the impression that ARM is not going to offer this performance in situations where lots of floating-point ops are required.
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A 10" or 12" (4:3) touchscreen (or Wacom-style digitizer), less than 1/2" thick (preferably 1/4", like an iPod Nano), 12 hour battery life, slow processor (good enough for web surfing). It would be perfect!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
With more people gravitating toward mobile and wireless technology, consumers want cheaper large laptops...
There, fixed that for you.
The Radeon Xpress 1100 was made by ATI long before they were bought by AMD. As much as this card sucks, it's still performs better than an onboard Intel made at the same time. Neither chip has dedicated memory. The current generation of on-board AMD/ATi Chips will blow away the on-board Intel chips.
"Frequently wrong, never in doubt."
Well, yes, but people will remember the products they had before and frankly, I've never been a happy camper with ATI. I've seen high-end cards (when they were already bought by AMD) fail to deliver: flakey drivers under Windows, not working at all under Linux.
I just can be freaking glad that I didn't have an Intel chip in that machine, because I just can't imagine any worse performing card. Heck, the Intel graphics chip on my Asus EEE performs better! (Might have to do with the small resolution of the screen of course)
ith more people gravitating toward mobile and wireless technology, consumers want smaller laptops â" and most of those people would prefer doing more than surfing the Web, which the no-frills netbooks now excel at. ...
Not really. Because when you're looking at smaller laptops, you are by necessity looking at smaller screens. Smaller screens - no matter how fast the processor behind them - are not going for doing involved tasks beyond writing documents (if the keyboard suits) and surfing the web. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to finish up some work over SSH on my Blackberry.
I looked at the new Neo based DV series in Costco... nice looking, very light, good battery life, battery doesn't stick way out like with the tx2100. I almost bought but for two reasons, 1) I do like the tx2100 rotating touch screen (if only Ubuntu supported it better), 2) The Neo based system was woefully slow and I could foresee problems getting it to run all my apps acceptably.
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
or less dense?
Always back up, never back down. ---- Think you're cool 'cos your uid is prime? Take mine, modulo the one digit integers
This is a classic case of proposing a completely unworkable fix for a problem that shouldn't even exist in the first place!
The real problem is that most people on the planet have *never* watched a movie on their laptop, and never intend to, but marketdroids aiming for this small demographic (driven by the MPAA, who tell them people actually want to watch DVDs on thier computers) stick the rest of us with increasingly short and wide screens that inhibit all the real work done on laptops. All these things are easier with a portrait screen: Document creation/editing, browsing, reading (especially PDFs, the lingua franca of all kinds of documentation, from datasheets to manuals and books), most (but certainly not all) spreadsheets, graphics/illustration (more like a sketchpad), and many more. Really, a wide screen is best for only three things: Watching widescreen video, working with the occasional really wide spreadsheet, and project planning/flow like Gantt charts. I do the latter two occasionally (I'm finding that Gantt is a poor project management tool anyway, see the many comments on this topic on Edward Tufte's site), and I have never watched a movie on my laptop, not can I imagine wanting to. (Heck, I don't even want to carry the dead weight of an optical drive around in my laptop - Mine gets used maybe once every year or so when I have to upgrade commercial software, or install drivers for newly purchased peripherals. The only thing less useful than a CD/DVD drive on today's laptops is a floppy drive or the still inexplicably-present modem - I know I haven't used dialup in over a decade now.)
My prediction: One of the chief reasons the CrunchPad will be successful, even if it lacks otherwise, is because it has a reasonably-sized screen that can work in portrait mode. That in itself puts it ahead of every laptop on the planet!
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
it is built into the brim of a bowler hat and sharp enough to slice a man's head off.