Video Review of Hivision's $100 ARM-Based Android Laptop

Charbax writes "The Android laptops are coming. Thanks to cheap ARM-powered laptops made in China, and the latest, most optimized Android software, we can soon buy usable $100 laptops in all the supermarkets. In this video, I test the web browsing speed on the new Rockchip rk2808 ARM9-based PWS700CA laptop by Shenzhen-based Hivision Co Ltd. Web browsing on AJAX-heavy websites is surprisingly snappy, and could only be even faster if ARM11, ARM Cortex A8 or A9 processors were used and if it was configured with slightly more than 128MB RAM. How soon will Google release the $100 Google laptop?"

Comments

Re:Obligatory

[future assassin]

But does it fit in a pocket http://hemoblaster.com/ipad.jpg

Cheap Enough

[Nerdfest]

My $350 netbook is still expensive enough for me to be somewhat protective of it it. At $100, it becomes something that is tossed somewhat casually into a backpack, or if it's small enough, a coat pocket. I'd buy a couple.

Re:720p playback on a 800x480 screen??

[tchuladdiass]

Sure. You can download a 720p video, and play it on the device. You don't have to pre-convert it to 800x480 (or 400x240, like I have to for my n810). That's all that spec means, is the source video can be 720p.

I'll believe it when I can buy it.

[langelgjm]

We've been hearing about ARM laptops/netbooks/smartbooks for over a year now. They were demoed at CES 2009, and promised to be delivered during 2009. Nothing came. They were demoed at CES 2010, and promised to be delivered during 2010.

I can't wait to slap down $200 to $300 for an ultralight, long-battery life, ARM-based netbook running Linux. But until they make it out of video reviews and trade shows and into stores or online for purchase, what good are they?

Lenovo Skylight is pretty much the first firm offering we've seen, but it ain't cheap. The Touchbook seems to be a Beagleboard in a nice case, and isn't being mass-produced like other netbooks. Now that the iPad is out (with an ARM-based processor) and MSI et al. have ARM offerings in the pipeline, with manufacturers finally grow some balls, realize they can offer a non-Intel machine and still use Intel on their other machines, and offer us some cheap ARM netbooks?

Re:I'll believe it when I can buy it.

[rahvin112]

I thought everyone knew what happened in 2008. At the 2008 CES dozens of ARM "netbooks" running Linux were displayed and a big hit at the show. They were produced on ARM and Linux because Intel didn't have Atom yet so no cheap x86 processor with any horsepower, and Microsoft charged $89 for XP. The Linux netbook was heavily hyped at CES that year and MS took notice. They went to the netbook makers and asked what they needed to do to make sure every netbook came with windows. The Netbook makers said give us windows for $10 and we won't produce the Linux Netbooks. As a result MS priced windows for netbooks at $8 (ask for a windows refund on a netbook, they will offer $8, this has been documented). Intel at the same time produced the atom because they didn't want mass market ARM netbooks hitting the streets and eroding the x86 monopoly. They were able to produce it so quickly because all they did was basically die shrink the original pentium processor (didn't want it to be fast or it could erode regular notebook sales).

So you ask what killed the Arm Netbook? The answer is the WinTel duopoly got involved and killed it to prevent it from eroding the X86 Windows monopoly. MS and Intel work VERY hard to make sure ARM/Linux Netbooks aren't produced in volume or at prices that will hurt them. Cash incentives, marketing help and all sorts of bad behavior is going on to prevent this market from developing because they KNOW everyone wants a $100 cheap little web tablet/netbook that doesn't weigh much and gets great battery life and that the first one to market will set sales records. Hell the half-assed netbook that has crappy performance set sales records because of price, weight and battery life. The first person to hit good performance, under $200 and with at least 8 hours of battery is going to sell hundreds of millions of them. MS and Intel will do almost anything to make sure that it's not an ARM netbook (MS because the only OS they have that runs on ARM is windowsCE and Mobile, which are both very dated and very crappy compared to Android or Moblin) that's the first one to that goal.

Mark my words, you won't see mass market ARM netbooks produced unless a large government gets involved in an Anti-Trust action against both MS and Intel at the same time.

Re:Other distros?

[Sasayaki]

Other distros? Sure would be nice, but the fact that they're ARM means it probably won't be ready just yet. This, by the way, is fantastic news.

The greatest thing about these laptops is, if they're as good as the article claims, the fact that they're ARM processors means that there won't be a version of Windows out for them for ages/ever.

That means that Microsoft can't just use its market share to bury the Linux versions by heavily discounting the OS, while using their deals with retailers to make sure they only stock the Windows versions, all the while pressuring the laptop manufacturers to increase the specs on them so they can run Windows 7 instead of XP which they're selling for so cheap (to compete with 'free') they're not making any money off it.

Android really fit for Netbooks?

[data2]

Ok, so Android is pretty resource saving. It is pretty impressive that it can display 720p videos.
But now to the problem. Android is optimised for a touch screen. So, just to give an example, as also shown in the video in the article: When scrolling while browsing, you have to grab the page and "throw" it upwards. Also, there are buttons for zooming in and out.

So it will be interesting to see how some other minimal linuxes would fare.

But anyway, for that price, it is probably still worth it.

Milestone

[sonicmerlin]

I've always felt that $100 was the magic barrier for turning a netbook into an impulse buy, and that if the barrier was ever reached it would truly become a mass market phenomenon. What I want to see now is an attempt to make the screens a little larger and obviously specs a little faster over time, all while maintaining that same price point.

Re:720p playback on a 800x480 screen??

[deniable]

800 > 720, so turn it sideways. And now for the humor impaired...

Not a $100 laptop

[fm6]

TFA uses a simplistic economic fallacy to argue that the price will be around $100:

The price has not yet been announced officially... But you can understand that if Hivision was able to sell those types of laptops for $98 to distributors more than a year ago (when I filmed my popular video from IFA 2008), then surely the mass manufacturing price has not gone up since then. My expectation is that if a giant consumer electronics reseller such as Walmart or Best Buy approaches Hivision today to order huge quantities of this laptop, it could be sold below $100 to end users.

He's assuming that any given tech drops in price by a huge percentage every year. If that were true, IBM would still be making 8088-based PCs and selling them for a few bucks. (Take the $2K 1981 price and divide by 2 about 15 times.) Instead, you can't buy a new 8088-based system for any price — it's not worth Intel's while to even manufacture the chip, never mind somebody else to build a system around it.

There's always a certain minimum cost to any manufacturing process. Scaling up reduces costs, and so does Moore's law, but only to a point. You'll always have to pay for materials, factory space, workers, shipping, marketing, etc. Some of these things are cheaper outside the U.S., but again, only to a point.

I'm not sure what the minimum cost for manufacturing a computer is, but I very much doubt that it's much below $100. When manufacturers reach that minimum, they can't keep cutting prices, no matter how much the electronics improve, bang-for-buck-wise. So instead, they find a good price point, and provide the best product they know how to for that price. The result: low end products don't get cheaper, they get better.

I couldn't begin to guess how much these new ARM laptops will sell for. It will have to be a lot less than the competing Atom-based systems, or else no one will buy them. But I doubt if the retail price will ever go below $200, not if they're sold by anybody who's in it for the money.

Of course, even a $200 laptop would be damned popular. And a couple years after they come out, you'll be able to buy used ones on eBay for a pittance.

Re:Interesting, but not the iPad-killer

[Thud457]

I thought the iPad was the iPad-killer.