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Asus hopes upcoming Eee desktops are Eeequally Eeenticing (ars technica)Asus hopes upcoming Eee desktops are Eeequally Eeenticing (ars technica)Posted Jan 31, 2008 16:44 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333)In reply to: Asus hopes upcoming Eee desktops are Eeequally Eeenticing (ars technica) by tjc Parent article: Asus hopes upcoming Eee desktops are Eeequally Eeenticing (ars technica)
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.
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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.
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