First Android-Based Netbook, Set-Top Box 114
An anonymous reader writes "China based Skytone famous for making skype headsets have brought out a $100 device, the Alpha-680 netbook running Google Android for its OS. The device has Wi-Fi, Ethernet, USB ports and an SD card slot. After watching the video though, I get a feeling that the boot time is somewhat long. IMO good enough for browsing." Also on the Android front, ruphus13 points out what the maker claims is the first "fully realized" non-mobile Android device (though I think there were some other non-mobile gadgets on diplay at CES), a set-top box from Motorola based on Android. According to the linked post, it's "capable of playing DVDs and CDs, transferring music and video to a mobile device, and ripping and storing files" and "will have a full-featured Chrome-like browser."
Motorola denied the android set top connection (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Um (Score:3, Informative)
A) The default skin is ugly for some WMs. While the default look of GNOME and KDE and even XFCE look good, other, lighter WMs look plain ugly when on their default themes.
B) Licensing issues with some custom themes. Some custom themes may be released under the GPL... But the artwork is proprietary or something so, while its no big deal for an individual, for a company looking to make a profit on them, this is a potential landmine.
C) People these days seem to think like this: XP like theme == Windows XP == familiar, while Grey and blue == Windows 9X == outdated, and Black or other dark colors == Vista == Unstable and new. So XP-like themes are going to get the most positive first looks for potential computer illiterate buyers. And really, its not that hard to change the theme to something more appealing if you know how to use Linux
And as someone working with Motorola set-tops... (Score:1, Informative)
... (posting anonymously for obvious reasons) the browser KreaTV is switching to is not Chrome.
The KreaTV stack uses a browser engine as its default frontend (currently an old version of Gecko) and they're switching to WebCore and JavascriptCore. Sure, Chrome uses WebKit, but it's not the same thing.
Re:Android Java (Score:3, Informative)
JamVM [sourceforge.net] proved that interpreting java can be faster than JIT compiling it. JamVM is the fastest JavaSE-capable JVM for ARM based devices that isn't made by Sun.
It's still way slower than optimized C or assembly, but... GCC is pretty bad at optimizing for ARM, so the difference between C and interpreted java isn't that huge. (maybe 2-4x faster)