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Dell Considering ARM-Based Smartbooks
wonkavader sends us this quote from an article in PCWorld:
"In an effort to expand its Linux offerings, Dell is researching new netbook-type devices and will soon offer netbook Linux OS upgrades, a company official said on Wednesday. The company is researching the possibility of offering new Linux-based mobile devices called smartbooks, said Todd Finch, senior product marketing manager for Linux clients, at the OpenSourceWorld conference in San Francisco. The company will also upgrade its Ubuntu Linux OS for netbooks to the latest version in the next few weeks ... Smartbooks with Arm chips have inherent advantages over x86 chips like Atom, such as lower power consumption and longer battery life, according to Finch. The chips are also becoming more powerful, as indicated by the growing number of applications on smartphones, he said. 'I think it's natural and reasonable for us to begin looking at them as they begin scaling their processors up.'"
These are rough times with shitty sales. I'm sure Dell is just trying to stay afloat by what ever means. The days of exclusive deals between the industry giants is hold for now at least.
Life is not for the lazy.
At least now Microsoft can't object to Linux sales on the claim people are wiping them to install bootleg Windows - not on an ARM.
The very applications that keep a lot of people running Windows instead of e.g. Linux also keep Windows firmly locked to x86.
Take away the third-party closed source applications/games, and suddenly Windows is looking pretty crappy even to your average consumer.
Apple handled this with emulation, but they were moving to a faster chip.
"Just"? Negotiating tactic is most certainly at least the consolation prize, but they seem to be doing well with their Ubuntu systems.
It seems to me that this is more a case of not keeping all of one's eggs in the MS-x86 basket. Using Linux now gives them a head start in developing a polished interface over their competitors and experience in migrating platforms.
Using ARM now gives them time to work the kinks out of the hardware integration so their ARM laptops can be more stable than the competition's when everyone else starts jumping on the bandwagon.
No.
Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
"...but it also has a huge disadvantage - it does not run x86 programs."
You are missing the point, this is only an issue when using Windows and the point is to get rid of Windows.
There are already a huge amount of applications moved to other CPU architectures and many others need just to be recompiled.
Yes I do know that it may not be "just recompile" but the Linux community is much faster to adapt than Windows community.
Or does x86 inherently consume more power at the same performance level?
Difficult: ARM has traditionally had a very clean instruction set which eliminates a lot of the junk that an x86 requires in order to function, and it's much easier to take a chip designed for low power and increase the performance than to take a 100+W monster like an x86 and scale it down for low-power use. The modern 'x86', at least from Intel, is basically an x86 emulator wrapped around a RISC core.... the ARM effectively eliminates the emulator and just runs the RISC core.
If I remember correctly, the dual-core ARM chips I was working on a couple of years ago used about 1W of power to play 720p HD... an Atom has trouble doing that even with several times that power usage.
Actual netbooks will come. All current netbooks are small laptops, this is something else which is better.
Microsoft is planning to build "Microsoft PC" products that are Microsoft Software+Hardware.
You think Dell is just going to see back and watch that happen and not have a plan B?
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
I have been raptly awaiting Pegatron's $200 arm netbook with an 8 hour runtime:
from January
from July
If Dell is willing to ship what is practically the same device, then this competition can be nothing but good for everyone who wants one.
Debian has a complete ARM distribution including all of those things you describe. It wouldn't be hard for Ubuntu to shift their distribution efforts to ARM. In fact, it's just changing a few lines in a shell script.
Ubuntu will have an ARM-architecture for their new release: Karmic Koala, scheduled for release in October 2009
New things are always on the horizon
Why not ? Their has been a version of Flash for Linux on ARM for years already (see Nokia N810 for example).
Luckily it's provbably the only non-opensource-program you'd want to install on such a device anyway.
New things are always on the horizon
...does it run RISC OS?
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
At the bottom of Mathcad's Wikipedia page you'll find 9 open source options.
Windows Mobile isn't even a contender for phones.
If ARM-based netbooks become popular, you will see an ARM port of Win7 in a few months, with a thorough porting guide for applications, tools to check for potential problems, etc (most cross-architecture quirks were already ironed out when x64 and especially Itanium support were introduced).
People kinda miss the fact that most applications are just a recompile away from a different architecture, so long as OS is the same - and not just FOSS code. Yes, you cannot do the recompilation/porting yourself, so there is some disadvantage, but you can be sure that, if there's market, all products that are still being actively developed will be ported.
I honestly don't think Microsoft are this stupid. Getting into the hardware game will give them absolutely no advantage. If anything, it will isolate them from their strongest allies who will definitely begin to step up a unified Linux agenda if MS were to make such a mistake.
Participatory Governance : The only feasible option for a real democracy, where everyone really does have a say.
> Microsoft is planning to build "Microsoft PC" products that are Microsoft
> Software+Hardware.
We can only hope they are that stupid.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I just bought an Acer Aspire One AO751h.
It has 6-8h (wlan/no wlan, depending on brightness). it's got an Atom z520 and the GMA500 graphics chip (very low power) which has PowerVR which can accelerate 1080p videos. There's some driver issues ATM (jumping through hoops with special settings in KMPlayer) but h264, AVC1 play great. VC.1 plays as well, but I have use DXVA checker to get it to play without dropping frames-- showing that the capability is in the hardware, just needs some driver work.
It weighs 3lbs, has a 11.6" screen (1366x768) and a full-sized keyboard. It's the perfect size for a netbook; the 10.1" screens don't have enough vertical viewing resolution and you end up scrolling up/down all the time in Excel spreadsheets and Firefox/Chrome, especially if you roll with the taskbar on the bottom like most people. 768vert is 28% more viewing area vertically compared with the 10.1" models.
With Win7 on it and 2GB RAM, it flies; I love it.
There's really no need to wait.