Google Netbook Specs Leaked 176
Foochee noted that specs have leaked for an alleged new Google NetBook. Coupling this with the HTC Google Phone, it really appears that Google is going to be pushing into new spaces in the next few years.
10" screen?? (Score:5, Interesting)
At the same time, having a bundled deal so that one gets phone service with the netbook isn't that much of a benefit, IMO. You can already do this with a HTC Hero/Android device or even an iPhone.
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> what benefit having a solid-state drive with a 10" screen will be
Perfect silence, negligible random seek time and I can lob it onto the couch without worrying about data loss.
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It helps if it's a very small computer. =)
I huck my EeePC across the room (into soft landings) frequently.
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That is actually one scenario where you wouldn't want Google's netbook. Chrome OS requires an Internet connection to do anything useful. Not only is wifi access not available (or hideously expensive) on a plane, but extensive document editing is going to be painful in the extreme on such a cramped machine.
Google's netbook is meant
Odd (Score:2)
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HTML 5 supports offline caching and I think even Google will allow it. other than that 64GB SSD's are probably the smallest you will find next year
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Last year I bought a 16GB SSD for roughly $140. I wouldn't be surprised if a 64GB SSD (even next year) would be as expensive as the rest of the chrome-book's components put together.
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Toshiba just doubled the density of their NAND chips. flash memory prices are plummeting on a per GB basis, just like hard drive prices 10 years ago
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I can't, because then Google Native Client wouldn't run on it.
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For a minute there I was wondering how you get table salt to run on an arm, but then I just turned my arm up and it ran. Thanks for the tip. As for bugs...the only problem I've had is ants, and they don't like salt to begin with. They seem to prefer the coffee.
In A.D. 2010 (Score:5, Funny)
Orwellian Society was beginning. ....
User: What happen ?
Router: Somebody set up us the banners.
Computer: We get wi-fi signal.
User: What !
Operator: Main screen turn on.
User: It's You !!
Google: How are you gentlemen !!
Google: All your browsing history are belong to us.
Google: You are on the way to spam.
User: What you say !!
Google: You have no chance to hide make your time.
Google: HA HA HA HA
User: Download every 'Linux Distro' !!
User: You know what you doing.
User: Install 'Linux Distro'.
User: For great justice.
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SHOCKING! (Score:2)
...it really appears that Google is going to be pushing into new spaces in the next few years.
Sorry for being a smartass (blame it on me being at work for one day during the holidays...) but, really, who didn't already know that? Especially if you're even a casual reader of slashdot. It's clear that Google is an expanding company who's focused on a wide offering of products and services that are internet- and information-related. Anyone who doesn't know that Google is planning on pushing into new market segments hasn't been paying a hint of attention.
Google in New Spaces (Score:2)
You could have said this at any point in Google's history. It's almost to the point that all Google stories should be marked dupe.
Very interesting. (Score:5, Insightful)
This can be interesting, why:
IMHO one of the core reasons all consumer PCs come with Intel compatible processors is that Windows runs on them. Equip them with other processors and you can not sell your product with Windows. And that is an absolute suicidal business plan at the moment. Google may get this going, get non-Windows and non-Intel computers to the masses, opening up a lot of space for competitors.
And if it doesn't work, well we can always continue dreaming.
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Except I doubt most people would buy these as desktop replacements. They expect the limitations of the device because it's small and portable. But on their desktop or full size laptop people expect more functionality and software options.
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No, not desktop replacements. But they are close to that in terms of power: the only things I can not do on my EEE-PC (1st generation, Linux) are because of the limited storage space, and the small screen size. I'm not a gamer by the way, except online card games which don't need much in the way of computing power. Modern computers have plenty of that, the slowest on the market is fast enough for most of the tasks we do. Remember "winmodems"? Where the emulation was done on the processor? It became possible
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and how will these things do all the things people expect of a normal computer? import photos, family movies, download music and movies, video chat with family, games, etc?
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My 1st generation EEEPC running Linux can do all that (I know it can: I've done all that and more). Also doesn't run Windows. So I wouldn't see any difference when that would have been a non-Intel platform. Except for Flash maybe.
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I have never paid Google anything
Selling a soul to the devil is free. For some time, at least.
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I'm all for opening up the playing field t
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There's bucket loads of potential and capabilities in ARM on netbooks but Microsoft will not let that grab hold if they have any say in it.
Exactly, they will try and defend their monopoly with all they have (like any sensible business would of course). And that is why I see it as interesting that Google is behind it. I don't see much direct leverage from MS against Google: making Google's apps not work on Windows computers will give MS a lot of backlash, Google is just too big for that kind of tricks.
Google's software services are platform-agnostic already, for being Internet-based. That is their advantage. Netscape was dependent on Windows,
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PPC is alive and well in the consumer market, just not in the general purpose computing market...
PPC is currently dominating the games console market, and such devices are very much targeted at consumers.
Speaking of which, Sony could have done much better pushing the linux options on the PS3 - if setup with a good linux distro it would make a good browsing/mail/im platform that could have satisfied most people's computing requirements.
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and of course letting an installed Linux distro access to the graphics chipset would also help.
Arm is already a viable desktop (Score:2)
Opening up the processor market:
I ran Debian's ARM distro on an NSLU2 a couple of years ago and running on ARM was identical to running on X86. I would argue, ARM viability has been there for quite a while. Nokia's N800 is an ARM device. Now that Google's name is attached to it (for now) it benefits from the Google Reality Distortion Field.
we could start seeing really lots of non-Intel compatible computers around, first of all of course ARM based, and maybe a revival of the PPC in the consumer market.
The
Linux Portability (kernel and apps) (Score:2)
And porting Linux/*BSD/Chrome to those architectures, if not done yet, will be relatively easy.
With high probability, it's already done. For most applications, a simple recompile should do.
See for instance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_supported_architectures [wikipedia.org] and https://buildd.debian.org/stats/ [debian.org]
You might have to write a bit of arch-specific code to get Linux running, and fix a few portability bugs in some applications, but it should be easily doable to get something going.
Carrier plan bundling (Score:2)
This has failed before and will fail again. (Score:4, Interesting)
Okay, let's see if I've got this straight...
#1) Google will SUBSIDIZE the cost of the netbook (aka NetPC, which was hacked out of existence).
#2) Unlike NetPC, they won't be using an intel processor, locking out Windows.
--- so when joey or jane try to download and install their favorite game or chat client, it will fail.
--- so when grandma can't load in her quickbooks document for the church, it will fail.
#3) As someone who has lurked in many a netbook forum, I can tell you the number one question will be "How do I install Windows XP on it?"
#4) Someone will figure out how to install alternative OSes on it, maybe even write some kind of intel CPU emulator, or real-time recompiler, and then hack Windows into running on it, and then the lawsuits begin.
#5) As soon as people get bored with it, into the trash heap it goes.
Google will lose money on this deal. Chrome will not take hold, in fact, most early adopters will be spending their time trying to get Chrome off of it. When the masses get it they will be disappointed by it's lack of backwards compatibility, and start searching (ironically using Google) for websites to show them how to "jailbreak" the thing into running what they want. Adblocker apps will appear as will other hacks to thwart Google, so people can feel they got a "free netbook".
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About trying to run applications, is supposed to be an internet device, no local applications, just the browser and most that runs on it.
But will be 2 potential problems:
- Games meant for internet, with local/nat
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- Plugins. Ok, you surely will have flash...
Not on ARM. Which is probably why Google is moving towards HTML5: the single most popular flash-dependent site on the interwebs is YouTube. Moving it from flash to the video tag will give ARM a chance.
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#1) Google will SUBSIDIZE the cost of the netbook (aka NetPC, which was hacked out of existence).
Something will be subsidizing it, yes. Probably a required monthly fee for the 3G.
#2) Unlike NetPC, they won't be using an intel processor, locking out Windows. --- so when joey or jane try to download and install their favorite game or chat client, it will fail. --- so when grandma can't load in her quickbooks document for the church, it will fail.
People who want those things will most likely be informed at some point that this machine can't do that. Macs aren't failing, and they can't run Windows software. Neither are smartphones, which can't run Windows software. So long as it isn't marketed as a generic PC, it's not really an issue. It's targeting a limited audience, yes. This won't be replacing all laptops everywhere. It wasn't intended too.
#3) As someone who has lurked in many a netbook forum, I can tell you the number one question will be "How do I install Windows XP on it?"
The people who go
Not So Fast (Score:2)
Remember that MS already has the experience of building a platform for XBox 360 with PowerPC yet they built a platform for game developer to port the game between PC and 360 with relative ease (dispite the fact that most ma
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I think you make excellent points, and may actually be proven right-- but I happen to disagree with your conclusion that this is doomed to failure.
This thing is a netbook. Gramma can't even see a screen that small, much less aspire to getting frustrated because it won't install Quickbooks. Moreover, since it's a netbook, the vast majority of people will be using it as a secondary surfing/email device.
Sure, some cheapos will be dumb enough to try and use something with a 10.1 inch screen and a reduced size k
Re:This has failed before and will fail again. (Score:4, Insightful)
If they're targeting the sub-$300 region as TFA says, they won't have to subsidize much, as similar netbooks (albeit with more expensive chipsets) already sell for less than that. And, uh, it's Google. A company run by hackers doing interesting things with cheap hardware. They're expecting a certain number of them to be hacked or repurposed. Also, they're not selling a separately-purchased subscription or anything with it. All they want is for people to keep using the web and this netbook helps them achieve that.
This won't be marketed as a general-purpose computer. The things that you mentioned won't work on a Linux netbook either and that hasn't stopped netbooks from being shipped with Linux preinstalled. (Dell Mini 10, HP Mini 110, Acer Aspire One, MSI Wind, etc.) Most people just want a web browser, an email client, and instant messaging. That's the market that Google's netbook targets. Whoever buys this thing expecting to put their Windows XP Pirate Edition on it instead, deserves whatever complete lack of support they get.
An the #1 answer will be, "You don't. You just use it like it is." Not so hard, is it? Again, it's not meant to be a general-purpose computer. It's a specific device with a specific job: getting you on the web. Asking how to install Windows on it will make about as much sense as asking how to install OS X on a Nintendo Wii.
Uhhh, what? The only "alternative" OS that a hacker can port to ARM is Linux or maybe one of the BSDs. Emulating an x86 CPU with any reasonable speed is simply not going to be feasible. And if it were, where would the lawsuits come from? Microsoft does not care what kind of computer you install Windows upon. And I highly doubt that Google will include an Apple-esqe EULA stating which kinds of software you can and cannot install.
Also, the Chromium OS is open source, is very well documented [chromium.org], and Google encourages external hacking and development [chromium.org].
If you get bored with it, you either didn't need one in the first place, or you're just bored with the Internet in general. I don't think there's a lot that Google can do to prevent either of those.
The whole thrust of your thinly-veiled argument is that nobody will want it if it can't run Windows. What you fail to realize is that:
1. With the notable exception of hardcore PC gaming, there are really not many computing tasks that absolutely require windows any more. Despite Microsoft's best efforts, Internet content these days is very much OS-independent. We're to the point where most people can do e
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Why do people forget that google isn't even trying to compete or replace Windows
Two reasons:
(1) Because if we kept this in mind, we wouldn't have anything to complain about.
(2) This is something somewhat new. It's hard for people to grasp changes, even small ones. It's easier to just assume this is another netbook (heck, that's what TFT/S/A refers to it as) and rate it on those grounds. The fact is, it's not a netbook as seen by the current market. Although the name seems more fitting for it then other "netbooks."
Re:Cool. (Score:5, Insightful)
No kidding, TANSTAAFL.
Pick (at least) one:
A - All of these [rumors] aren't true.
B - You're going to be forced to watch ads.
C - It's going to be bundled with a monthly wireless bill.
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Actually, when you take out windows margins (cost of windows software and also royalties, etc), it's not that much of a surprise what they are saying they will offer.
Bullshitus Netbukus (Score:2)
Chrome Netbook Specs Stretch Believability---Interest in Google's Chrome OS is heating up with the emergence of new rumors about specs for an upcoming . The device would supposedly have a 10.1 TFT HD-ready multitouch display; 2GB RAM; and WiFi, Bluetooth, and 3G connectivity. As if that wasn't enough, this netbook would also have a 64GB solid-state drive, according to IBTimes (more on that source in a minute). By the sound of it, the Chrome OS netbook sounds like a great device, but there's only one problem: in my view these rumors aren't very believable.
It goes on from there, and I think this "news" is moot. I for one hope the 2010's will have less of this rumor frenzy on the monkeysphere.
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so, by citing an editorial, that's fact?
honestly, do better than that. Hardware/manufacturing/assembly costs are *significantly* lower than what retail goes for. The rest being $300 is basically a low margin hardware cost. Considering no cost for operating system, it's probably quite cheap.
EEE pc's and other nettops that cost $500 plus do not cost anywhere near that margin. The reality is they cost around $100-125 to make, and the rest is retail/asus markup. So for google to find something that costs them p
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the site (appropriately called, because it's not exactly factual as a cite), doesn't have anything of hard substance itself. So, what am I missing?
I did read your article link before replying, but I hope you noticed it was a blog post (editorial). comparing cellphone components to netbook component costs is not always accurate but in case you're wondering snapdragon netbooks [product-reviews.net] that could possibly be chosen for chrome os [slashgear.com] have been spotted before.
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Interesting, so you're saying that the netbooks would in effect run a mesh network of sorts? It would certainly reduce Google's overhead.
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sorry, anon is right. you're looking at retail cost of 64GB of SSD flash, not OEM or manufacturer cost. Capslock isn't going to help you prove your point.
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what the hell are you talking about dude? people want to store crap. Not everything should or has to be stored in the cloud. You think google wants to store every one of your MP3s' "in the cloud" and make itself liable for all sorts of ridiculous stuff? Think again, legally and business wise. How many times do I have to state mp3s for you to realize? or Video? Or gaming?
You are absurd if you think people are not going to take a computer in any incarnation to play a game, even if apparently your definition o
SUBSIDIZED (Score:3, Interesting)
$300 price tag due to the device being subsidized.
And since Google is not a charity organization, that means there will be other costs.
Most likely a wireless contract.
unless Google is willing to promote its new OS so hard, that it intends to sell these at loss just to gain a market share. Sounds extremely unlikely but knowing Google and its wild ideas (free 1GB email with POP3 anyone?) not entirely impossible.
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Meh. I could care less about their new version of the I-Opener business model.
Smart move using an ARM for vendor lock while allowing geeky workarounds.
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I'll be happy if all of those are true... and I can install my own god damn linux distro on it.
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We already know that the bios is locked down, and it only runs approved web apps. It's a welfarebook, not a netbook.
Attempting to change it will trigger a re-imaging.
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Re:Yeah, but what's the catch? (Score:5, Informative)
Can I take the device, nuke ChromeOS and load my own GNU/Linux distribution
It has a Tegra chip, so probably not at all easily. Tegra is currently only supported with Wince, not with Linux. Google may have persuaded nVidia to give them some blob drivers, but it's quite unlikely that have provided open drivers. Google may simply be using a generic ARM11 kernel and ignoring the GPU (although then you'd wonder why they bothered going with Tegra instead of a cheaper ARM SoC), or they may have a blob driver. If it's running Android then this driver will integrate with the Android display server, so you won't be able to use it with X.org without a very complex shim (if at all) and it will depend on the kernel ABI, which will probably change immediately after the device ships if the Linux developers' track record is anything to go by.
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the article states that in the US you will probably have to sign a 2 year contract with a cell phone carrier as well
check out www.abovethecrowd.com for a nice write up of Google's revenue sharing model. They pay people to sell their products like MS pays others to use Bing.
Re:Yeah, but what's the catch? (Score:5, Funny)
After reading the other replies here, I'd say the best bet would be NetBSD, since it's been ported to everything else.
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You got whooshed... here's the joke:
http://www.embeddedarm.com/software/arm-netbsd-toaster.php [embeddedarm.com]
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No kidding, NetBSD runs on all my ammo, so that netcraft can officially confirm when the deer dies while I'm out hunting.
Re:smartbook is nice, but where are the ARM nettop (Score:5, Interesting)
The advantages, IMHO, of ARM are all tilted for use in the mobile space.
Being 5, 15, whatever watts more efficient than an Atom is a high price to pay for breaking x86 compatibility when you're hooked to a wall outlet, considering your choice in monitor likely has as much impact on your final power bill as your ARM/Atom choice.
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The advantages, IMHO, of ARM are all tilted for use in the mobile space.
Being 5, 15, whatever watts more efficient than an Atom is a high price to pay for breaking x86 compatibility when you're hooked to a wall outlet, considering your choice in monitor likely has as much impact on your final power bill as your ARM/Atom choice.
I don't get this. Mind you, I first used ARM powered desktop machines [computinghistory.org.uk] (running BSD) in 1989, so it doesn't seem that new or revolutionary to me. But unless you're tied to legacy proprietary applications, what does it matter what the processor is? The ARM processor family has always been a competitive alternative to Intel, if you were not tied to Windows. And with Debian and Ubuntu available for ARM, I shall be very keen to have one of these babies as a useful mobile workstation.
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If power usage is not limited by battery life, ARM hasn't been truly competitive with Intel (or AMD or IBM) for a long time. I don't think there any ARM CPUs that are even close to having as much performance as a dual-core Atom, let alone something based on the Core or Nehalem microarchitecture.
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The ARM processor family has always been a competitive alternative to Intel
Not entirely true. This was certainly the case in the early '90s, and is again now in the portable market, but it certainly isn't in the high end (ARM has nothing that competes with the Xeon, for example, and certainly nothing that competes with something like IBM's POWER6) and not really much that competes with desktop chips (maybe a quad-core 2GHz Cortex A9, if you can find one). For much of the intervening period, ARM and Intel were in entirely different markets - Intel had nothing that came close to A
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It isn't just being tied to legacy proprietary applications, it is also being tied to proprietary drivers. Ubuntu developers estimate 70-80% of Ubuntu users are using close-source drivers and/or software. Run on anything other than x86 and your options decrease quickly.
You're making mountains out of molehills for a company of Google's size. If you're shipping the hardware to customers as well as the OS, the whole business of proprietary drivers virtually vanishes. External hardware is just USB or Firewire. Internal hardware you supply the drivers for. You lose a little upgradability, but if you produce a popular hardware platform overall, you'll have enough leverage to work around any issues with the third-party suppliers, even if it requires some give-and-take. (If nothi
What is 'the price?' (Score:2)
Being 5, 15, whatever watts more efficient than an Atom is a high price to pay for breaking x86 compatibility
What is this price that end-users would supposedly pay? Debian has an ARM distro I've used and it's equal to the X86 distro in every way. My HP all in one printer/scanner device works perfectly on ARM. SANE is a nice way to get *fully* networked scanner. Cameras mount as mass storage devices. media players do the same thing.
The necessity to be on an x86 platform is gone in the consumer's use case
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You can't find thousands of packages in one repository and not in the other?
Does anybody want those "thousands of packages"? If not, the point is moot.
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considering your choice in monitor likely has as much impact on your final power bill as your ARM/Atom choice.
Not likely. LED backlit LCDs can consume well under a watt. OLED doesn't consume much juice either. These 10.1 inch LCDs probably consume a few more watts - perhaps 2-5 watts? I'm not sure if they're LED backlit.
So if this arm chipset uses 250mw at idle, and 1.5 watts during use, how many times more efficient is that than an Atom? 4x? 10x?
Not to mention SSD vs HDD... I'm sure all these changes will have a big impact.
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That was already mentioned in the first AC's post.
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For less than $100 more you can get a much more capable x86 system. The Dell Zino HD starts at $249 and comes with a 1.6 GHz Athlon, 2 GB of RAM, 250 GB HD, and Radeon HD 3200 graphics.
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This is true. We're seeing fewer with SSDs, they're becoming slightly bigger but still have shitty little atom processors.
So now they're not as portable, more expensive and irrelevant. The EEE's were awesome (typing this on my 901 in bed), cheap, r
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Because Windows doesn't run on it. I saw a piece on Google news about the netbook fad dying. The premise is that they lost sight of their original goals and are just becoming low powered laptops. IMO, this is mainly down to trying to get windows on netbooks.
I think just the opposite - Windows (especially XP) runs great on atom-based systems, so people are buying them as a primary computers instead of secondary gadgets. (The crowd around the netbook counter at the local Best Buy certainly did not look like the kind of people with multiple PCs.)
If the netbook fad is "dying", it is because WinTel killed it to protect their margins.
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For instance a Lenovo IdeaPad U350 can be had for £390 and a Lenovo 3000 G550 for £455.
The latter is only $65 more and you get a DVD drive, larger screen, faster processor (and dual core) and it'll be easier to type on. The netbook loses any energy or portability advantage by removing the SSD. It won't take that much longer until people realise they're better off with a low-end laptop whi
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I'd love to see something like Beagleboard that I could mount on the back of an LCD.
Et voila! [alwaysinnovating.com]
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Fear and because it is bad business.
People that sell Windows machines probably make as much from the crapware they install on each machine as they do on the machine. Once you leave the windows world you loose that money and throw in that they will have a razor thin margin and you have a high risk situation.
I am not jumping up and down about Chrome. I have seen the SDK on the Pre and I am convinced that the idea of HTML+javascript is NOT a great development platform. Yes Web apps are very cool but I wouldn't
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Very interesting points.
As I understand, Ubuntu plans to add support for paid apps in their Software Center. http://arstechnica.com/open-source/reviews/2009/11/good-karma-ars-reviews-ubuntu-910.ars/8 [arstechnica.com]
A revenue sharing system on Software Center sales could give computer sellers a serious reason to promote Ubuntu.
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But here is the "problem" with too many Linux supporters.
"I think that dropping the "store" name was a good move. One of the most important advantages that Linux has to offer end users is the availability of a rich ecosystem of free and open third-party applications. It's important to emphasize that advantage and avoid using language that downplays it."
Guess what? Windows has probably got just as much free software as Linux does. Just about every major project has ported it's software to Windows as well as
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Ok?
Buy a 3 beagle board and strap it to the back of an LCD. Revision 3 has pinouts for direct lcd connection, other versions have dvi output through an hdmi jack. You then have exactly what you are looking for. You could probably even do it for $200 (using revision c, a small cheap lcd and a case crafted from spare parts).
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There was one called the Pepperpad. It was ~$700 and ran a java gui on top of montavista linux. It was end-of-lifed and replaced with an x86 compatible chip. It was slow, and a marketplace of apps never really surfaced for it.
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What, like an openRD client? It's like $250 currently.
If you want cheaper and don't care about lots of ports and local storage, you can use a USB video card with a Sheevaplug for $100+cost of the USB dongle.
Re:smartbook is nice, but where are the ARM nettop (Score:2)
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google gears today and html5 "tomorrow" allows one to use services like gmail while offline, in the same way as one would use a offline mail client.
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Then why not use an efficient offline mail client today? I still don't see the point of everything being in the browser, and I'm a web developer.
It's not like we all use kiosks when away from home. Our portable data devices can all run applications besides a browser.
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It is probably because you are a web developer that you don't see the point of having everything web based...
The major problem with offline applications is an issue of distributions and updating them.
The problem with updating software and distribution is a problem across all os's sure they all take innovative approaches to the problem to help relieve it But the issue still exists, and especially for smaller applications or ones who do not fit the OS ideals and third parties who cannot get on the OS approved
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and the major problem with any client/server app is that most of the bugs are in the server piece. when i supported MS Exchange most of the problems were on the server side, not in Outlook or IE. when a developer codes an app today most of the work is in the server side part. When Blizzard releases their new games like SC2 and Diablo 3 most of the maintenance work is going to be in running Battle.Net 2.
the theory that all issues are magically going to vanish when everything is in the cloud is false. in fact
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It is probably because you are a web developer that you don't see the point of having everything web based...
I was a custom client/server developer for 10 years, and a web developer for the last 5. I still prefer dealing with software distribution and maintenance problems to get a "real" app than have everything web-based. If the system is meant to (almost) always be online anyway, and one company is controlling the distribution, then it's relatively trivial to update the client applications.
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I believe they are probably working towards a system similar to Zero Install.
http://zero-install.sourceforge.net/faq.html [sourceforge.net]
Apps would run on the device, but be initially loaded from the web. There is no installed, only cached. When net connectivity isn't available, they run from the system cache. Syncing is done when connectivity is restored. I mean, if it was 100% web based then there wouldn't be much of a need for a big SSD, would there?
It actually has a lot of potential.
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i played with Wave and think it sucks. it's slow, it's a resource hog and no one is on it. I joined a few public waves and now my Chrome RAM usage goes up to 600MB of RAM.
I played with Chrome OS and think it sucks as well. you can't do anything without an internet connection.
even my iphone can do a lot more without an internet connection in places like the NYC subway
It sucks now, but they have one year to refine the experience, which is hell of a lot time considering that they already have the major components in place. If they have the will, they have the resources necessary to pull this off... Think android a year ago, and see what it can do now for example (T-Mobile G1 vs HTC Hero). Not to mention that this isn't going to be a random install on random hardware - they'll have hardware built for their exact specs!!!
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I played with Chrome OS and think it sucks as well. you can't do anything without an internet connection.
Google can't send you ads if you aren't online.
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Regarding Chrome OS not doing anything without an internet connection, is mean to be an internet device, no more, no less. Is like complaining that car sucks because can't do anything without gas or batteries, or desktop computers sucks because they can't do anything without electricity. If you want something to work with in places wit
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I'd rather not see the internet become cable TV.
The whole idea of this product is that you'll be doing things online most of the time if not all the time so yes ads will play a large part of the system's life even if it doesn't show ads when it's offline.
Just by a normal non-subsidised netbook and deal with the same adverts on the same websites anyway.