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HP (Re-)Announces a 14" Android Laptop
PC Mag reports that an upcoming laptop from HP (one that was prematurely announced in April, and now official) has decent-to-good specs — under 4 pounds, battery life more than 8 hours, Tegra processor, and a 1928x1080 touch screen — but an unusual operating system, at least for a laptop. The SlateBook 14 will run Android, rather than Windows (or ChromeOS, for that matter), which helps keep it relatively cheap, at $400. According to the article, Android is "a lot cheaper for HP to implement in a laptop; ChromeOS, in contrast, comes with more stringent system requirements that would cost HP a bit more." Ars Technica's mention in April includes a screenshot taken from a video (note: video itself appears to be disabled) which shows the keyboard layout and which reveals some Android-specific changes. Update: 06/01 19:23 GMT by T : Here's an alternative link to the promotional video.
ChromeOS, in contrast, comes with more stringent system requirements that would cost HP a bit more.
In other words, this thing is going to be really slow if you try to use it for serious work. Why? Because HP is cheap and doesn't want to shell out for decent components. That and/or they like their locked down bootloader.
So lets pretend that we've just completed writing this code, as opposed to having just completed sabotaging it -Altera
HP always made the best far back, like the HP-35, 45, 41cx and then PCs of high quality.
Now HP apparently seeks to blend in with the masses of the cheapest laptop designs on the Asian continent.
Who is going to match Apple for top-of-the-line laptops, which a professional can use for 5-6 years before replacement?
In Nov/2012 I bought an HP 15.6" AMD based laptop (notebook?) with 8GB DDR3 RAM, 500GB HDD, USB3, Win7 Home Premium, and Beats Audio for $399.00 Canadian. This was retail price.
Upon purchase, I wiped and installed Funtoo Linux, and have since replaced the HDD with an SSD. It does everything I need it to do. I regularly get 4.5 hours battery life of continuous use. Runs a tad warm but I don't use it on my lap so its fine.
My point is, this is android based notebook is limited as a general purpose machine, and costs more than I paid for mine a year and a half ago.
I do understand is had a touchscreen, larger battery and built in flash based memory, and that can drive costs uo a bit, but in terms of general usefulness I don't think it will fly.
They will happily subsidize your hardware. Latest OS available from M$ plus free hardware evaluation and optimization on assembler level.
May be the ChromeOS spec is more stringent, but not on the hardware side. May be ChromeOS prevents HP from loading it up with crapware and nagware. Android might allow HP to insinuate itself in the Apps and marketplace more deeply. The HP bean counters would see it as "value" and "potential revenue stream". What the PHBs never realize is, if enough people do not buy that device the revenue stream will be as dry as a wadi in the Sahara.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
My beef with trying to use Android on a desktop or laptop form factor device is this requirement in the Android Compatibility Definition Document: "Devices MUST NOT change their reported screen size at any time." This rules out use of any nontrivial window manager, despite that the screen of a laptop or tablet is big enough for 2 to 4 phone apps at once.
ChromeOS, in contrast, comes with more stringent system requirements that would cost HP a bit more.
In other words, this thing is going to be really slow if you try to use it for serious work. Why? Because HP is cheap and doesn't want to shell out for decent components. That and/or they like their locked down bootloader.
There are additional hardware requirements on a ChromeBook:
o No COTS keyboard (ChromeOS requires a custom keyboard)
o Work required on the TP bus input lines and power to deal with wake-from-trackpad
o EC modifications for wake-from-trackpad, including some tricky PS/2 state machine work
o EC modifications including additional GPIO pins and a couple of resisters and capacitors, if the parts PS/2 bus is on the C3 power rail (i.e. there's some issues with C-state transitions if the PS/2 or I2C bus for the TP are powered down in sleep state)
o EC state machine modifications for prioritization of traffic from the keyboard matrix "pretend" i8051/i8042 parts to provide a muxed PS/2 bus with e.g. a Synaptics PS/2 trackpad; specifically, HP's EC parts tend to drop keystrokes under certain conditions, and the typical solution to the hardware problem in the EC firmware is to stop TP input for a period of time following keyboard input - same solution used by Toshiba - and it means you can't use both keyboard and mouse in games, unless you use an external mouse in place of the TP
o If the TP remains powered in sleep state, for wake-from sleep, as part of the C1 rail, then there is an associated batter cost, even if you chat with it to clock it way down; this implies either clam-shell it shut to turn off the TP, -OR- a bigger battery to achieve the same battery life. FWIW, that also means that the C1 line to the TP power has to be gated by *another* GPIO line from the EC
o Wake-from-trackpad also has some implications for BIOS default state on initial boot or wake-from-sleep (C1->C3 state transition); most BIOS are broken in this regard (hint: try holding the TP click down when booting some time, and see how long it takes).
o A TPM to implement the "trusted boot" in a way that it can't be worked around in software (Microsoft Trusted Boot can work without TPM hardware, but can be worked around in software if you are diligent).
o There's a known defect in I2C bus sharing on some TPMs when doing back-to-back transactions, which means that they tend to demand their own I2C bus.
o The last HP ChromeBook was withdrawn from the market due to power supply overheating problem (this is public information), which had to do with the charging circuit and the power draw in sleep state, while leaving certain peripherals powered on that aren't on in a normal Windows sleep state.
o CoreBoot and u-boot for the BIOS (technically, you could flash both and select which one in a setup screen, but that means higher NVRAM costs for the storage of the BIOS)
So... a lot of software work in a sensitive system area, a potentially larger battery, a potentially higher per unit cost for the keyboard, a potentially higher per unit cost for the TP, a modified BIOS and other BIOS costs, and a TPM and maybe an extra I2C line, plus a potential mod to the charging circuit.
Full disclosure: I did the EC state machine work and worked with Synaptics and Samsung on the EC and hardware modifications for a number of TP and keyboard issues, as well as other of the above issues, for ChromeBooks from Samsung, Acer, and other companies while part of the ChromeOS team at Google. Basically, they'd need to make my recommended list of partner modifications to their hardware and firmware in order to build a successful ChromeBook.
I suspect that they will find the android OS not very satisfactory as well, but with a standard keyboard and other features, they can use COTS parts for most things, and pop the rip cord and switch to Windows on the thing if they absolutely had to do so.
I doubt it is just the patents. Add in the price point and the fact that this is a relatively minor product, so there are no fancy retooled factories and a minimum of custom components are going into this, as opposed to in a flagship product. Plus a dozen other little issues that fall under those or add to them. It's basically using cheap components for a cheap price point. The Air uses the absolute latest and best to get to the minimum weight and size, but at a high price point. Sony did that for years as well, and had a similarly high price point relative to the general market of the time.
It is quite a bit underwhelming compared to even higher end Android tablets like the $650 Galaxy Note 12, but the killer feature is probably intended to be what will likely be a $300 and change street price with the ease of Android (for those who already have an Android phone). It's comparable to their Pavillion 14" laptop: http://www.amazon.com//dp/B00B...
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien