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Asus hopes upcoming Eee desktops are Eeequally Eeenticing (ars technica)
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Asus hopes upcoming Eee desktops are Eeequally Eeenticing (ars technica)
Posted Jan 31, 2008 0:16 UTC (Thu) by rriggs (subscriber, #11598) [Link]
"...the whole 'use your TV as your web browser/computer' concept has never caught on well."I have a suspicion that the "use your TV as a MythTV frontend" might appeal to a certain sector of the geek population.
Asus hopes upcoming Eee desktops are Eeequally Eeenticing (ars technica)
Posted Jan 31, 2008 2:18 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
In the next Gnome release they are claiming that totem will have Mythtv support. Pretty cool stuff there. Combined with the Mythtv web interface for selecting and recording stuff then it should be interesting for those people that don't want to run the Mythtv stuff on they're desktop, but have the Mythtv interface. Then on top of that there is the Linux-MCE stuff. VERY cool. Full house control.. lights, TV, cable boxes, sends remote control software to bluetooth phones, fancy stereo control, multi-room support... everything. Very fancy.
Asus hopes upcoming Eee desktops are Eeequally Eeenticing (ars technica)
Posted Jan 31, 2008 18:57 UTC (Thu) by leoc (subscriber, #39773) [Link]
My MythTV front end is often used in my home as a browser. We enjoy looking up actors and shows, stuff like that.IMHO, the real downside to this "all in one" tv/computer concept (and why I'll probably not get one) is that I upgrade my computer fairly often but I only upgrade my TV once a decade, at the most.
Asus hopes upcoming Eee desktops are Eeequally Eeenticing (ars technica)
Posted Jan 31, 2008 9:28 UTC (Thu) by danielhedblom (subscriber, #47307) [Link]
The biggest reason the concept of using the TV as a computer has never gotten traction is the abysmal resolution of your average TV. Lack of compability with plugins and sites is also not so fun. Given a normal computer resolution and Firefox as the browser i do think it would be useful to many people.
Asus hopes upcoming Eee desktops are Eeequally Eeenticing (ars technica)
Posted Jan 31, 2008 12:16 UTC (Thu) by johnny (guest, #10110) [Link]
Agreed. A friend of mine uses a PC connected to the HD-TV in his living room as his only home computer. I don't like statements like "the whole 'use your TV as your web browser/computer' concept has never caught on well." What's to say that it won't this time.. or next time.. or in 10 years? Just because it hasn't caught on well so far, certainly doesn't mean it never will. "Overnight successes" are often old developments that cross a thresold and suddenly become "good enough".
Asus hopes upcoming Eee desktops are Eeequally Eeenticing (ars technica)
Posted Jan 31, 2008 11:20 UTC (Thu) by NRArnot (subscriber, #3033) [Link]
I wish they'd hurry up and make what I really want. That's the innards of an Eee connected up to a decent-sized high-res notebook screen in an ultra-thin ultra-light (carbon fibre? ) package, at a lower price and weight than a similar windoze hard-disked notebook. With the lower power requirement for a system without a disk, they might look at silver oxide batteries as an option for even lighter weight and decent runtime (and a guarantee that it can't ever catch fire!) I'm sure a lot of people don't care for ultra-mini size but would really like ultra light weight (and a proper-sized keyboard) at an affordable price.
Asus hopes upcoming Eee desktops are Eeequally Eeenticing (ars technica)
Posted Jan 31, 2008 15:51 UTC (Thu) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link]
Second. I don't care about carbon fiber or aluminum, or even if it's very thin, but the rest sounds good. I'd like a 13.3 or 14.1 inch display, a decent full-size keyboard, VIA Isaiah processor, 1 Gb RAM, 8 or 16 Gb of flash memory, no hard drive, and no optical drive. As an aside, I hope Linux devices with modest processing power and memory really catch on. It will force software bloat as a real issue that needs to be dealt with.
Asus hopes upcoming Eee desktops are Eeequally Eeenticing (ars technica)
Posted Jan 31, 2008 16:44 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
Carbon fiber for that sort of thing is good because it can be very thin and very stiff. It won't require the internal bracing a normal plastic and metal framed laptop will need. But there are other issues with that sort of thing. Asus is scared of undermining it's own notebook sales with this low-priced stuff. But the company that may make something like what you want possible would be Everex. http://www.zareason.com/shop/home.php I think that it's quite likely the notebook your describing can be a Mac Airbook killer. A 1.xGhz 64bit Via proccessor with decent video drivers. Ralink wifi and some sort of Bluetooth. 5 hour battery. Fun stuff, very Linux-friendly. The price point is what would matter. If you can make something with the same size and similar formfactor as the Airbook, but have priced out from 700-900 dollars instead of the 1700-3000 dollars for the Airbook and you'll have a winner. Make the thing look physically attractive and it will do even better. With that sort of formfactor performance does not matter a whole lot as long as you got enough. A Isaiah core running at 1.2ghz and 512megs of ram will be plenty.
Asus hopes upcoming Eee desktops are Eeequally Eeenticing (ars technica)
Posted Feb 1, 2008 16:48 UTC (Fri) by NRArnot (subscriber, #3033) [Link]
I've just had a thought - anyone influential from IBM reading? Now IBM no longer has its Thinkpad business, it can afford to well and truly smash the mould (and put another nail in Microsoft's coffin by so doing). Also Linux doesn't need x86. Maybe build it with a Power PC CPU? Even less watts for the same oomph. And harder for Microsoft to crawl on board.
Asus hopes upcoming Eee desktops are Eeequally Eeenticing (ars technica)
Posted Feb 2, 2008 5:53 UTC (Sat) by jordanb (subscriber, #45668) [Link]
IBM sold off Thinkpad to get out of the low-margin commodity hardware business, to focus on services and high margin hardware like mainframes. I think there'd have to be a big shift in corporate policy for them to get back into consumer hardware.
Asus hopes upcoming Eee desktops are Eeequally Eeenticing (ars technica)
Posted Feb 2, 2008 18:46 UTC (Sat) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link]
> Also Linux doesn't need x86. Maybe build it with a Power PC CPU? I'm pretty sure PPC is a dead end. It has been ever since Apple abandoned it.
PowerPC
Posted Feb 3, 2008 23:17 UTC (Sun) by edmundo (guest, #616) [Link]
PowerPC is still being actively developed for a number of markets: servers, game consoles, cars and other embedded applications, etc. See the Wikipedia article. In any case, if I'm running free software, why should I care whether the architecture might disappear or not? Changing to a different architecture isn't that hard to do. What I mostly care about is the price and power-performance available today.
Umm, no.
Posted Feb 10, 2008 5:39 UTC (Sun) by leoc (subscriber, #39773) [Link]
There are PPC variants in every Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox360 and Sony PS3 sold. The PPC is doing better now than it ever did when Apple was using it.
not to mention...
Posted Feb 11, 2008 7:32 UTC (Mon) by xoddam (subscriber, #2322) [Link]
Not to mention that several chips sold as high-end FPGAs actually contain one or two PPC cores in addition to acres of general-purpose programmable logic. Many of these cores are used eg. as DSP processors; many are permanently idle. AFAIK Apple dropped PPC for one reason only; that IBM had repeatedly failed to deliver on its promises for high-performance, low-power (or flexible-power) CPUs for laptops, whilst Intel's PentiumM and CoreDuo range were too tempting for words. I have no idea if more recent performance PPC chips are potentially as battery-friendly as Intel (or AMD) processors, but this doesn't seem to be quite as urgent a consideration in most of the devices where they're being deployed (low price, no requirement for long battery life) as it is in high-end laptops. On the subject of non-x86 laptop processors, did I once see a DEC laptop announced with an Alpha processor, circa 1999? Did such a beast ever exist, or is it a figment of my fevered imagination?
Alpha Laptop
Posted Feb 17, 2008 17:45 UTC (Sun) by anton (guest, #25547) [Link]
On the subject of non-x86 laptop processors, did I once see a DEC laptop announced with an Alpha processor, circa 1999? Did such a beast ever exist, or is it a figment of my fevered imagination?I once saw a laptop based on an Alpha CPU, but not from DEC. On Wikipedia I find mention of the ALPHAbook 1 by Tadpole (based on the 21066). I don't know if the laptop I remember is the ALPHAbook 1. A problem with the Alpha in laptops was that there never was a low-power Alpha CPU.
Tadpole also produced a number of SparcBooks.
And there used to be some ARM-based laptops around.