does it really matter? writes "Apparently the love-in is finally on for the guys at TransmetaZone.com since they finally have a review of a Crusoe notebook to show for themselves. The silver NEC UltraLite gets a good going over, and proves to be an interesting match against a PIII-M." I'm glad to see that the promise of transmeta is finally beginning to start being fulfilled.

Quickening writes: "At long last, the coveted transmeta webpad is available from FrontPath as the ProGear 1050 HX+. Juicy tidbits: linux 2.4, TM3200 400MHz, touchpad, 802.11b, and USB. I expect to see this kind of story on Slashdot before I run across the product surfing. These are the same Rio people that bought up the EMPEG car mp3 player." They're not exactly cheap, but they sure are nifty. I think I'll stay with my old laptop with 802.11 though.

GFD writes: "EETimes has a story about software that dynamically translates the binary of a program targeted for one processor (say x86) to another (say MIPS). Like Transmeta they have incorporated optimization routines and claim that they have improved execution times between one RISC architecture and another by 25%. This may break the hammer lock that established architectures have on the market and open the door for a renaissance in computer architecture."

Linus Torvalds (and David Diamond) wrote this book; chromatic wrote the review below. It may be hard to say much new about Linus and the results of his 1991 inspiration to loose his kernel on the world, but this book is historically informative, with copyrighted Torvalds humor to boot (I snorted in parts) and fun facts about growing up in Finland. And for a multimedia extravaganza, you can even listen to some conversation between Linus and co-author David Diamond.

respect sent us an article about AMD aligning with Transmeta, which isn't that surprising since everybody who is not Intel should be busying aligning with anyone who is also not Intel. My favorite quote "The industry has been gradually moving toward a 64-bit architecture [From 32 Bits], which multiplies the amount of data the processor can access by four". Rock on CNN!

irix writes: "C|Net is reporting that Toshiba will ship a mini-notebook May 18th in Japan, coming to the U.S. later this year. The article also has some information about upcoming Transmeta CPUs." Hints and promises from Transmeta are that the next generation Crusoe will be smaller (half the size of current ones), faster (up to 800MHz) and consume less power (not quantified). U.S. notebook makers still seem reluctant to use them though -- so if Americans want a Crusoe in anything but a Sony Picturebook before the end of the year, we may have to watch dynamism.com and similar places. Update: 05/07 09:37 PM by T : OS24Ever also writes: "Linuxgram has an article about scooping RLX Technologies announcment of their new System 324 Web Server. At its optimum, the product will hold 336 Web servers running Linux or Windows (Windows costs $200 more). The Transmeta chip runs 80% cooler with 80% less power requirements, eliminating a lot of heat and need for fans, bringing single point of failure in the machine down to near zero."

Every few months I see a new laptop that really impresses me, and Hanno submitted one that does that with room to spare. PaceBlade has a transmeta chip, PCMCIA, irda, USB and all the usual stuff... except that it features a removable ir keyboard, and can be used as a traditional laptop, or as a workpad sorta thing with a pen. Expected release around the middle of the year with a $2k price tag... I'm super skeptical of that price.

buzzini writes: "Bloomberg is reporting that Microsoft's upcoming Tablet PC will be powered by the Crusoe chip. An announcement is expected tomorrow during a BillG speech at WinHEC." According to the article, "the development versions of the Tablet PCs will likely follow a hardware outline given at Comdex. Aside from the Transmeta chips, they will likely include 128MB of RAM, a 10GB hard drive, a docking cradle, a USB (universal serial bus) keyboard and mouse, along with built-in local-area networking based on the 802.11." Wireless webpads will rock -- hope they're here before 2000! OK, before the new millenium. Well, errr ...

_Upsilon_ writes "Transmeta announced today that they have released under the GPL their mobile linux as "Midori Linux". It is an x86 compatible version of Linux for internet appliances, residential gateway appliances, wireless web pads, and home audio components." They've got SourceForge project setup for discussion and usage. As well, the download page is ready - the current version is 1.0.0-beta1. And be careful not to drink too much of the distro.

Azar writes "Beware Intel. Be afraid AMD. Transmeta has an ace up there sleeve. After perusing the net I came across an amusing satire of Transmeta and the Linux guru, Alan Cox. With proper homage being paid to the man that does so much for the Linux kernel, Alan Cox on a Chip is good for a quick laugh. Be ready to be amazed at "The ultimate Linux platform... it writes drivers for *and* debugs itself!"."

tired.cranky writes: "An article on LinuxDevices.com sez that Transmeta is about to ship a quasi-distro slash embedded development toolkit featuring Linus' new super-efficient cramfs and ramfs filesystems. Apparently, a reasonably normal Linux system can be shoehorned into 8MB of storage, with zlib decompression-on-demand and such. It sounds like it could push a fair few hobbyists and embedded developers in Transmeta's general direction, too... and reads nicely next to a Register piece on Transmeta's leaked server initiative. Does one end of Transmeta know where the other is pointed?"

TJ6581 writes "C|Net news has an article up about Intel's new competitor(s) to the Crusoe Processor. Apparently the new chip uses half a watt of power and did not require a major re-design. Also mentions in the article that IBM will be using this processor in the notebook originally designed for Transmeta's processor." Update: 01/30 06:48 PM by H : This is the update to the story I posted last October - Intel has come through.

Nuke Skyjumper writes: "According to a report on CNBC, it appears AMD is interested in purchasing Transmeta. I wonder what the implications for Linus, and in particular, Linux would be?" With the recent agreement between them, some people see them working even more closely together. But there's been a lot of hot air about this before - I think at one point people had been talking about Transmeta buying AMD. But, as always, time will tell.

rxmd writes "Heise has an article on Transmeta's Crusoe processor being used as a x86-compatible server CPU by companies such as rebel.com and RLX (read their press release on the project), supporting Linux as well as other "established operating systems". Basically, it's about the Crusoe's lower power consumption and temperatures enabling server manufacturers to put more processing power into the same amount of space than with Intel or AMD cpus. Interesting that a CPU designed for mobile applications should find its way into the server market."

HiyaPower writes: "AMD announced today that it has started shipment of its mobile Duron line of processors. While these were supposed to have made it out the gate in 00Q4, it is nice to see that they have finally appeared. Designed around a 1.6V VCore, these processors have a power dissipation of roughly 25W at 600 Mhz, and 29W at 700 Mhz according to the tech specs. Pricing is aggressive as might be expected in this environment. The AMD mobile line has been a good one since the K6-III+ processors. Hopefully, these Durons will live up to the tradition." I bet this release is a spur to the folks at both Intel and Transmeta -- isn't it nice to watch one-upmanship at work sometimes?

Mark Imbriaco (and company!) writes: "This story at News.com talks about how AMD is working with Transmeta to ship developers systems using the processor instructions from their upcoming Sledgehammer chip -- apparently Transmeta is working on a version of their code-morphing software that supports this instruction set. In return they seem to be getting a license to make chips using parts of the Sledgehammer design. If it's true, it's a pretty cool step for Transmeta since their other products to date have gotten a mostly lukewarm response over the past couple of months."

jbischof was the first to tell us that Transmeta has confirmed that they are recalling Crusoe, as we mentioned earlier. The statements says it's fewer then 300 NEC laptops, so it's not that huge of a deal after all. Of course the egg-on-face factor is still high.

jjr writes: "It seems that IBM has a Open Source Project called Daisy that does a lot of what transmeta does. Their code-morphing technology supports PowerPC, x86, and S/390, as well as the Java Virtual Machine. They Morph the [code] into VLWI just like transmeta but they still have some issues to work out. Other issues dealt with in the report include self-modifying code, precise exceptions, and aggressive reordering of memory references in the presence of strong MP consistency and memory mapped I/O."

spoonboy42 asks: "Lately I've been drooling over these tiny new Crusoe-based subnotebooks. Unfortunately, as a student, they are out of my budget. Wasn't one of the Crusoe's benefits supposed to be low cost? Now that IBM has put their Transmeta notebooks on hold, is anyone else working on delivering a Crusoe laptop in the range of $1000-$1200? I'm not looking for anything fancy, a little bulk is fine, I just need a few simple features: Built-in CD-ROM, 800x600 (preferably higher) screen, PCMCIA, and an accessible SO-DIMM socket for a RAM upgrade. Anyone know of a laptop that fits this description?"

An anonymous reader writes "The Tech Report has an article on Crusoe-powered devices. Plenty of pictures, with details on offerings from Casio, NEC and Sony, among others. These things are really tiny and the batteries last forever! I want one." The fiva is especially sharp. Extremely small: could be very useful.