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Transmeta Portables Upgrades Hardware

Sharp Debuts New Transmeta-based Laptop 250

Posted by CowboyNeal from the new-and-improved dept.
kpogoda writes "Transmeta's new Efficeon processor will debut today within a new trim and slim Sharp notebook. In case you don't remember, the processor family is known for its extremely low power consumption and blazingly high computing speeds."
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Sharp Debuts New Transmeta-based Laptop More

Sharp Debuts New Transmeta-based Laptop

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  • Blazingly high? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cbreaker ( 561297 ) on Monday March 15, 2004 @09:36AM (#8567480) Journal
    I thought these chips were supposed to have "good" performance while consuming a lot less power.

    • Re:Blazingly high? (Score:5, Informative)

      by lbolla ( 714031 ) on Monday March 15, 2004 @09:38AM (#8567487) Homepage Journal
      "The notebook's standard battery will last three hours under normal conditions. An extended battery will add six more hours of computing time and 0.6 pounds, Hanly says." It doesn't seem very different from a common laptop... batteries' life is still a big problem.

      • Re:Blazingly high? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by binaryDigit ( 557647 ) on Monday March 15, 2004 @09:41AM (#8567497)
        Hanly says." It doesn't seem very different from a common laptop... batteries' life is still a big problem.

        Well sorta, the big buy here is that you get that much life from a significantly smaller/lighter battery. Note the presence of the physically larger "extended life" battery. Battery life isn't the "problem", or more accurately the tradeoff, it's the size (which in this case does matter).

      • Re:Blazingly high? (Score:5, Informative)

        by millahtime ( 710421 ) on Monday March 15, 2004 @09:42AM (#8567502) Homepage Journal
        "It doesn't seem very different from a common laptop... batteries' life is still a big problem."

        If you look at the weight of the laptop 2 pounds for the 3 hours and 2.6 pounds of 6 additional hours. That is lighter than a conventional laptop. Hell, my battery prolly weighhs 2 punds for 3 and a half hours. So this does use less power. The battery is just smaller.

        • Does anybody know if there is a Soekris [soekris.com]-like board built with Transmeta?

          I'd like to buy a low-power embedded server with something better than a souped-up 486. A micro-micro-ITX system might be cool, too.

        • So who will get it right (right for me, anyway) and have a regular size battery that lasts atleast 12 hours instead of a smaller, lighter battery that lasts the same as any other laptop? give me this Sharp laptop and that kind of battery built in (instead of having to go buy another battery) and I might be in the market for a laptop.

    • Re:Blazingly high? (Score:5, Informative)

      by lintux ( 125434 ) <slashdot.wilmer@gaast@net> on Monday March 15, 2004 @09:39AM (#8567493) Homepage
      That's the Crusoe chip. These machines have a new chip, the Efficeon. Quoting from the article:

      "The new Efficeon TM8600 is designed to improve performance while maintaining the low power consumption required by ultraportable notebooks--such as the 2-pound MM20. Sharp's tests showed that Efficeon delivers about 1.4 times the performance of Crusoe, Hanly says."

      I don't know if 1.4 times the Crusoe should be considered fast, but at least it's faster...

      • Re:Blazingly high? (Score:5, Informative)

        by akintayo ( 17599 ) on Monday March 15, 2004 @09:45AM (#8567523)
        No 1.4 times Crusoe is not fast, since the Crusoe was/is kinda slow. Anyway the comment implied that the line was fast, but as stated in the linked article the Crusoe was panned for its performance.
      • My understanding with the Crusoe was that it had some funky software layer that allowed for it to run different OS's than just what is supported by the standard i386 chipset. Where are these advantages? I thought that, and the low power consumption were supposed to be the key buying points, but since the initial press releases, I've heard nothing about all that cool stuff.

        Was it vaporware? Silly hype? More broken promises?

        It's rather sad to see them having to team up with bargain brand quality vendors lik

  • Not that fast (Score:5, Informative)

    by linux_warp ( 187395 ) on Monday March 15, 2004 @09:43AM (#8567508) Homepage
    While I love their products, the slashdot title of "blazingly high" clock speeds is a little misleading.

    From the article: "A base configuration of the notebook includes the 1-GHz Efficeon processor, 512MB of memory, a 20GB hard drive, and a 10.4-inch display for an estimated starting price of $1499. Sharp will take preorders for the notebook as of Monday, and it will ship in April."

    So we are looking at around 1ghz.

    • Re:Not that fast (Score:5, Interesting)

      by random_rabbit ( 647072 ) on Monday March 15, 2004 @09:49AM (#8567561)
      There's no reference to blazingly high clock speeds, just computing speeds. Remember clock speed!=compute speed.

    • Re:Not that fast (Score:5, Interesting)

      by auzy ( 680819 ) on Monday March 15, 2004 @10:11AM (#8567688)
      Thats not strictly true.. On a speed/watt basis, efficeons are by far the best. It also depends on what ur doing.. The VLIW architecture auto optimises, so some things will run very well on efficeons (and they get faster as they run).. Also, unlike the intel and AMD mobile processors, efficeons aren't just some hacked up processor designed for something else.. The 3 hours of computing on even the centrino's isn't great when u consider that the transmeta's last about 12 hours, and chances are u wont use ur laptop to play doom3 either

      He is right though.. the efficeons are fast.. not as fast as the pentium-m's or mobile AMD's, but a very decent speed, gets faster as it runs and awesome battery life make transmeta processors a very good choice..

      Could be wrong, but transmeta's I think dont need fans, so they are also very silent.

      People should remember that the future of computers is clustered CPU's (like openmosix) and wireless, to share CPU power, so in that point of time u wont need much CPU (cause u will just leech it off other computers on the wireless network if u need it) and when that happens, the only reason why the CPU will matter is for when u aren't connected to a network... still, 1GHZ, or more processing power is definately sufficient (my laptop only has 850 P3, which I'm surviving off easily, even with gentoo). Its no athlon 64 FX, but honestly, if u need that kind of power just buy a workstation...

      • Needs work. (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Short Circuit ( 52384 )
        Using a wireless network as the backbone for a cluster seems to me to be inefficient, at least right now.

        Sure, you've got a lot of power available, but your latency is going to be pretty bad. And your reliability, especially in buildings with a lot of concrete. I don't know how well OpenMOSIX handles faults.

        On another note, what happens to a wireless network when you put a whole bunch of computers in the same room? Which will be more important? The number of channels, or the bandwidth per channel?

        Aga

      • On a speed/watt basis, efficeons are by far the best.

        Are you sure? How does it compare to Via's latests C3 CPU's? I could imagine they would be able to compete pretty well, but I haven't seen any comparisons.

      • Crusoe performance, battery life (Fujitsu P1120) (Score:5, Interesting)

        by mahler3 ( 577336 ) on Monday March 15, 2004 @12:15PM (#8568850)
        I have a Fujitsu P1120, with the 800MHz TM5800 Crusoe. It won't blind anyone with its speed, but I make up for a lot of that because the touch screen makes navigating easier than the eraser-mouse or other laptops' touchpads. (That cinched the choice of the 1120 over the Sharp MM10.)

        I've heard that Crusoe processors tend to do well on relatively compact computing tasks, like CPU-heavy numerical analysis in which a relatively small bit of code is run repeatedly-- a bit that's small enough to fit into the instruction translation cache. One interesting thing that I've noticed is that, compared to most applications, OpenOffice seems to run quite nicely on my P1120. Perhaps that's because the JVM (or its most frequently used subset) is small enough to stay in the translation cache? I'm just guessing, here... more informed insight is welcome.

        The extended battery really does last almost 9 hours if you're not using WiFi-- e.g., on a flight. I still had 48% battery remaining after constant use on a 5-hour Orlando-to-LA flight last summer. My WiFi use is mostly at home, and it's still decent-- though I haven't tried to measure it. (Interestingly enough, the biggest battery hog seems to be the tiny DLink USB Bluetooth adapter that I use to sync my cell phone!)

        On the other hand, I effectively lose some of my performance on airplanes, due to everyone around me saying, "What the heck is that thing? Aww, how cute..." Then they realize that their Dell laptop's extended battery is almost as big as my whole rig. :-)

        FWIW, my P1120 doesn't appear to have a fan or a vent. And I can actually place it on my lap for a while; it gets warm, but not too hot.

        Obligatory Linux content: I haven't tried loading Linux on it yet, because as far as I can tell, there is no available touch screen calibration utility. (The screen itself reportedly [hamsterrepublic.com] shows up as a generic USB pointing device.) Anyone know of a solution for this?

      • Re:Not that fast -- Transmeta Fans (Score:4, Funny)

        by Nom du Keyboard ( 633989 ) on Monday March 15, 2004 @02:19PM (#8570153)
        Could be wrong, but transmeta's I think dont need fans, so they are also very silent.

        Tansmeta's do have their fans. But rather than being little devices that go round and round inside the case, these fans keep the air circulating by incessantly praising the processor in their new notebook to anyone who will listen.

        And they're not silent at all!

  • Obligatory Dilbert/PC World Quote (Score:5, Insightful)

    by goldspider ( 445116 ) on Monday March 15, 2004 @09:43AM (#8567512) Homepage
    "Will you advertise on my website or is your new product you want me to review a piece of junk?"

    Seriously, though, this practice shouldn't be rewarded with more free publicity for these products or their "reviews".

  • How will Linux do on this, I wonder.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by polemistes ( 739905 ) on Monday March 15, 2004 @09:44AM (#8567521) Homepage
    Since Linus Torvalds used to work for Transmeta, I would like to know if Linux is well optimized for this processor.

    • Re:How will Linux do on this, I wonder.. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by distributed ( 714952 ) on Monday March 15, 2004 @10:00AM (#8567627) Journal
      I think the question should rather be...

      Whether linux is well optimized for x86 arch.

      since these chips use a VLIW core for the actual processing with the x86 instructions being compiled on the fly to the vliw code.

      Maybe if the linux kernel was compiled to take better advantage of instruction level parallelism the code morphing engine(the x86 to vliw compiler) could actually run linux much faster.

      But then that would be doing some part of the code morphing engines job at the compiler level... nothing wrong with that except you would have to write an entirely new compiler.

      plz correct me if i am wrong. (any comp arch gurus around)

      • Re:How will Linux do on this, I wonder.. (Score:5, Informative)

        by Short Circuit ( 52384 ) <mikemol@gmail.com> on Monday March 15, 2004 @10:48AM (#8567982) Homepage Journal
        There is an option to optimize for the Transmeta processor line in the kernel configuration. That option is passed along to GCC to make sure the kernel will run as fast as possible. So GCC supports the Transmeta system.

        There are also things like LongRun support, etc. that are in the kernel configuration, that don't necessarily involve GCC options.

      • The bytecode changes with each processor... (Score:4, Informative)

        by emil ( 695 ) on Monday March 15, 2004 @10:59AM (#8568087)

        Transmeta makes wholesale changes to the backend architecture of these chips with each release. The x86 frontend is the only thing that they guarantee to remain stable.

        A compiler producing native Transmeta code would need to emit (wildly) different code for each different revision. I read a quote from Linus somewhere that the scheduling and parallelism issues are very, very messy.

        So that is why you don't see native Transmeta compilers, although I have heard of large customers tweaking the translation software for higher FPU performance.

    • If it will work under Linux, you will find an installation report soon (hopefully) at TuxMobil - Laptops with TransMeta CPUs [tuxmobil.org].

  • This seems like a good idea... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Tore S B ( 711705 ) on Monday March 15, 2004 @09:45AM (#8567524) Homepage
    ...a laptop with a dedicated "portable" architecture. I can definately see Intel saying "More transistors, more power, more clock, and it'll be okay" - which is questionable on the desktop but not at all adequate with laptops. Transmeta's departure from this is an interesting turn of events - Will we see two separate processor lines, one for the laptop, and one for the desktop? And I don't mean the M-series, which just added variable clock and PM, but something like two different design philosophies.

    And damn, that's a sexy laptop... :)
    • Your post contains some errors, I believe.

      IIRC, the Pentium-4 die was stripped of extraneous chip functions in order to maximise the clock speed. These more efficient parts of the chip were re-introduced in Pentium 4M, to enable the system to run more efficiently at lower clock speeds. Perhaps the actual transistors themselves are on both chips, but only enabled in one format or the other.
      • Close. The Pentium-M uses the Pentium-III core, with some P4 stuff (better branch prediction, slightly deeper pipeline, etc) tacked on top. The Pentium-M does not use the NetBurst architecture of the P4. There's a very nice, in-depth look at the Pentium-M over on Ars Techinca.

    • Re:This seems like a good idea... (Score:5, Informative)

      by centron ( 61482 ) on Monday March 15, 2004 @10:25AM (#8567776) Homepage
      You should mean the M series, because there is a lot more to it than PM and variable clock, something the regular Pentium line has had for years. Read this [arstechnica.com] article and you'll realize just how much went into it.

  • Zaurus connectivity ? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by mirko ( 198274 )
    I first expected it to be some kind of super Zaurus but no...
    it just seems to be some bigger Vaio C1xx.
    Now, I do not see who they want to sell this to if this at least present no consistency with the rest of their offer.

  • Celeron comparison (Score:5, Interesting)

    by PingKing ( 758573 ) on Monday March 15, 2004 @09:46AM (#8567534)
    How does this chip compare with that other energy-saving chip, the Celeron?

    And more importantly, is there any reason you'd choose a Transmeta-powered rig over an Intel one?

    • Re:Celeron comparison (Score:4, Interesting)

      by PingKing ( 758573 ) on Monday March 15, 2004 @09:48AM (#8567550)
      Whoops, I mean the Centrino chip.

      • Re:Celeron comparison (Score:5, Informative)

        by slackr ( 228760 ) on Monday March 15, 2004 @10:05AM (#8567655)
        Centrino is not a chip. It is a "system" comprised of three parts:
        Intel(R) Pentium M processor
        Intel(R) 855 Chipset Family
        Intel(R) PRO/Wireless Network Connection
        Basically, Intel repackaged and "branded" some existing technologies in an effort to squeeze out other wireless hardware manufacturers (if it ain't Intel WiFi, you can't call it "Centrino," and a successful branding campign makes people want Centrino whether or not they know what it actually is).

        Anyway, your question is stil valid, but to technically nitpick it's really about the Pentium M processor.

        More info:
        http://intel.com/products/mobiletechnology/ demo/wo rks.htm?iid=ipp_demworks+tab&

      • Re:Celeron comparison (Score:4, Informative)

        by rsborg ( 111459 ) on Monday March 15, 2004 @01:21PM (#8569512) Homepage
        How does this chip compare with that other energy-saving chip, the [corrected]Centrino/Pentium-M?

        Well, from my viewpoint, it's a power/speed tradeoff. Here's my take from the list of laptops you might want:

        • Efficeon/Transmeta is the lowest power laptop chip you can buy. It scales very well, but is also not very fast (but is 1Ghz fast enough for laptop activities like browsing/doc editing/movies?)
        • Next is the G4 from Apple, which is also low power. My sister's iBookG4 is not exactly a slouch, but then again, it doesn't run windows (is that a pro or a con)?
        • In the middle is the Pentium-M, which is fairly low power, as well as being pretty dang fast. Con: high cost.
        • higher up on the power curve is AMD's AthlonXP... not much to say 'xept it's probably the cheapest x86 option out there.
        • Drawing more power is AMD's Athlon64-Mobile. Thing is, the power control on this puppy is so good that it's often cooler than the XP-M. It is by far the fastest mobile chip out there.
        • On the high end you have the Pentium4-M (which is what I have). Only use this if you never plan to test the term laptop [theregister.co.uk]. P4's run hot and were never meant to be put into a mobile architecture.

          • I'd say what you want depends on what you need. Cost not being a factor, I'd be happy with a Centrino/Pentium-M. If I wanted super low power/heat, I'd go with a Efficeon. If I wanted OSX (yummy), I'd of course, go with an ibook (still wating for those powerbook G5's). If I want cheap, AMD has me covered with their XP-M offerings. If I wanted a powerhouse/gaming 'top, I'd definitely go for an A-64M (just impressive). What I'd avoid: the P4M (abomination).

        • Re:Celeron comparison (Score:4, Informative)

          by sean23007 ( 143364 ) on Monday March 15, 2004 @03:32PM (#8570960) Homepage Journal
          On the slower, colder end you're forgetting the VIA C3 chip that is available in a few laptops and tablets. It uses less watts than the Efficeon and gives off less heat. It is also cheaper. However, it is considerably slower per clock cycle and doesn't have the power management built into it like the Transmeta chips. I have a Crusoe tablet, and I'd like to compare it directly to a VIA-based machine.

          On the fast and hot end you're forgetting about laptops with the full P4 in them (or even the new ones with P4EE or Prescott). I also have one of these (full P4). It is hotter than hell, and I can't keep it on my lap for more than half an hour without worrying that the sweat on my thighs will short it out. Also 12 lbs vs 3 lbs is not so comfortable.

          Basically, there are a lot of options depending on what you want. I personally like the laptop form factor for a desktop machine (quiter than a normal rig with comparable speed), and the tablet/laptop hybrid is awesome for portability (especially the Compaq one, which has the computer behind the screen instead of the keyboard, so there is nothing to produce heat where the machine touches your body).

    • Re:Celeron comparison (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tugfoigel ( 80286 ) on Monday March 15, 2004 @10:01AM (#8567635)
      Why not choose a Transmeta powered port-a-box? What's the difference what's inside as long as you can run you necessary proggies? Does it really matter if AMD or Intel is inside? Does it really matter that it's Transmeta? How could you even tell, provided your software behaves as expected?

  • Not what it is all about (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Alain Williams ( 2972 ) <addw@phcomp.co.uk> on Monday March 15, 2004 @09:49AM (#8567555) Homepage
    The CPU is just one component that eats electricity in a laptop; the other big hog is the back lit screen.

    Do you really need much compute power in a walk-about machine to do email, web browsing, word smithing ? In a trade off give me battery time over machine horsepower every time.

    I think that many people have a laptop for ease of use (all your files not backed up in one place that moves with you) and expect the laptop to do everything. What I like is those laptops that drop performance in battery mode.
    • Ditto, I'd also like to add that I use our home 'pokey' laptop to ssh and remote desktop into much faster/less portable computers. Think of it as a wireless console and it's CPU horsepower doesn't matter AT ALL.
      • I do almost the same : I have a 4 year old HP Jornada 680 (6" diag 640x240 touch screen, 133MHz cpu, 16M RAM, keyboard, wifi card) running WinCE 3.0 - I use the term-server client for WinCE to connect to my server and just run a terminal server session full speed on one of those machines. The only thing moving over the wifi connection is screen deltas and it is incredibly smooth, fast. If the screen was 640x480 or even 800x600 - it would be the perfect solution.

        Battery lasts about 20 hours (I have the la
        • The only problem with that is: You build it, and they'll wanna charge $999 for it. (look at Viewsonic as a good implementation with a DUMB price.) It's better to just get a $700-$800 laptop for the money involved.

    • Re:Not what it is all about (Score:4)

      by hankwang ( 413283 ) * on Monday March 15, 2004 @10:39AM (#8567896) Homepage
      Do you really need much compute power in a walk-about machine to do email, web browsing, word smithing ? In a trade off give me battery time over machine horsepower every time.

      Common sense would say so, but unfortunately, newer browsers, widget libraries, and window managers use a lot of resources. I used to use Redhat 7.1 with FVWM and Opera 6. Blazingly fast on my P3/450. Then, because of frustration with incompatible libraries for newer RPMs, I upgraded to Fedora/Opera 7. I still run Fvwm, but this new Opera version (with a newer Qt library, I presume) needs about 2 seconds of CPU time just for getting in and out of focus. If I look carefully, I can see that the borders of the windows inside the Opera window change a little bit depending on the focus. Emacs and xterm still run fine, but everything that has Gtk or Qt is slow as hell.

      • Re:Not what it is all about (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Alain Williams ( 2972 ) <addw@phcomp.co.uk> on Monday March 15, 2004 @10:51AM (#8568011) Homepage

        1. If I look carefully, I can see that the borders of the windows inside the Opera window change a little bit depending on the focus. Emacs and xterm still run fine, but everything that has Gtk or Qt is slow as hell.


        I have long been of the opinion that the Gnome/KDE developers should be forced to use a P450 as their desktop - that would result in fast/efficient/bloat_less code, or at least we would see a fast mode option where most of the eye candy is switched off.

        • I have long been of the opinion that the Gnome/KDE developers should be forced to use a P450 as their desktop - that would result in fast/efficient/bloat_less code, or at least we would see a fast mode option where most of the eye candy is switched off.

          The very first thing that you see when logging into a KDE system for the first time is a personalisation wizard that asks you a couple of questions about how you'd like things to work.

          One of the things it asks you is how much eye candy you want. The

        • Don't use KDE do you? (Score:4, Informative)

          by bluGill ( 862 ) on Monday March 15, 2004 @11:58AM (#8568657)

          I've used kde since the 1.0 days, upgrading all along on my dual ppro-200. Even in the slowest 2.0 days, it ran fast enough on my system. Sure I turned the eye-candy slider way down when I configured KDE the first time, but that is all. It works, and is fast enough.

          The only time I have problems is when I hear the harddrive grinding away, swapping. Even then I'm running something heavy duty in addition to KDE, something that can take up most of my memory alone.

    • And yet consumers will almost always sacrifice usability for power. A rational ranking of laptop features would start:

      1. Weight
      2. I/O (wireless, optical drives, etc.)
      3. Screen quality
      4. Formfactor (eg: convertable tablet is best)
      5. ...

      Because: If it weights too much, you'll never have it with you. And there's no point in carrying it around if you can't access anything. And you won't want to access anything if it's a pain to use.

      And so most handhelds have enough power, yet consumers continue to have their priori

  • US debut (Score:5, Informative)

    by mocm ( 141920 ) on Monday March 15, 2004 @09:52AM (#8567585)
    The new Muramasa has been out in Japan since January. It has had some nice reviews and keeps up well with Pentium-M modells of similar clock speed (see this Japanese review) [impress.co.jp]. And it is much cheaper.

  • Slow Computers (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CastrTroy ( 595695 ) on Monday March 15, 2004 @09:53AM (#8567587)
    I don't know what everybody is complaining about with these being slow chips. THey should really start to look at the trade-offs. Do they want to lug around an 8 pound laptop, with 3 hourse of battery life, just so they can say they have a 2.4 GHz laptop, or would they rather carry around a 2.6 pound laptop with 6 hours of battery life (weight with extended battery), and have to run things just a tinsy bit slower. I've found that provided the system have a good amount of memory, a pentium 2 is good enough to run most applications.

    • 9 hours (Score:3, Informative)

      by Teun ( 17872 )
      2.6 pounds with 3+6= 9 hours of battery life.

    • Re:Slow Computers (Score:3, Informative)

      by Westley ( 99238 )
      That really depends on what you're going to use your laptop for.

      My laptop is my development and entertainment computer. I want it to be able to cope with XP and Visual Studio .NET (or Eclipse) pretty nippily, and still play music while it's doing so without stuttering. I want it to be able to compress music to MP3 without making it completely unusable while it's doing so.

      My current laptop (Dell Inspiron 5150) does all of that fine. It has a reasonable battery life (3 hours or so if I'm not playing games),
    • Most peopel who use a laptop also use a desktop, either as the primary computer or as a secondary computer. To people who use a desktop a good number of hours, even the best laptop feels handicapped -- either by RAM or slower disk speeds or even slower CPU.

      I would NOT be interested in a slower laptop with more battery time and less weight. For the most part, I lug my laptop at the airport and occasionally in my car, and I don't find the weight onerous at all. From a power consumption perspective, I seld

    • Re:Slow Computers (Score:4, Interesting)

      by digitalhermit ( 113459 ) on Monday March 15, 2004 @11:15AM (#8568229) Homepage
      I've found that provided the system have a good amount of memory, a pentium 2 is good enough to run most applications.

      I've been tweaking an older PII laptop (400MhZ, 192M) over the past few months. The idea was not to lose any functionality or "new" features (i.e., dropping a 2.2 based distro, the PII's contemporary OS, would be cheating). So far I'm extremely pleased. The machine is very functional, even faster in some respects than a newer Thinkpad T22 (800MhZ, 256M) because the video support is better.

      The main changes:
      * 2.6 kernel -- huge difference
      * Fluxbox instead of KDE/Gnome
      * NPTL
      * Rebuilt some apps with i686 optimizations
      * Config tweaks (default services, buffer sizes, etc)
      * Application substitutions (Firefox vs Mozilla, etc)

      I've been testing other things including:
      * Default fs (reiserfs vs ext3)
      * sshd default configs (blowfish vs des, etc)
      * MP3 vs OGG (about the same CPU, but I hear MP3 is nicer)
      * Adjusting timer resolution in kernel
      * Replacement syslog that batches writes

  • Don't forget heat... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Lord Haha ( 753617 ) on Monday March 15, 2004 @09:57AM (#8567606) Homepage
    I'm surprised no one has mentioned this, Transmeta's tend to run alot cooler then Intel/Amd...

    I know personally after sitting in a class at university with my Dell my legs feel like they are about to melt. Anyways Transmeta has exact stats on the site but its somewhere around 1/4 of the heat output, personally thats why I am considering a Transmeta next round....

    • Re:Don't forget heat... (Score:4, Funny)

      by ArseneLupin ( 743401 ) on Monday March 15, 2004 @10:08AM (#8567673)
      I know personally after sitting in a class at university with my Dell my legs feel like they are about to melt.

      Be glad that it was only your legs [bbc.co.uk] ...

    • Did You (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Monday March 15, 2004 @10:10AM (#8567686) Homepage Journal
      Compile the "Dell Laptop Extensions" into the kernel? gkrellm has an i8k plugin you can use to spin the fans up to low and high when you hit certain temperature thresholds. There's also a standalone temperature monitoring utility but it's seemed a bit flakey lately.

      Of course both fans spinning will impact your battery performance but it's better than third degree burns on your... lap.

    • after sitting in a class at university with my Dell my legs feel like they are about to melt

      Sounds like your university needs to invest in some of those newfangled 'desk' things.
    • Well, I've used a Pentium M-based laptop for many hours and it didn't get hot at all... In fact, the only time it was ever warm was when I was defragging the hard drive, and it was only warm over the HD.

      Compare that to the P4M processors... Those got really really hot.

      Actually, my friend has a Tramsmeta-based tablet PC, and it gets quite hot after a short time as well. That is probably more to do with other components though. But the point is that other components are a big part of power consumption (and

  • Speed is by no means (Score:4, Informative)

    by karmaflux ( 148909 ) on Monday March 15, 2004 @09:57AM (#8567611)
    what these processors are known for. Benchmarks [vanshardware.com] show that. That's not to say it's a bad processor, and maybe the Efficeon will turn out a little sweeter. Meanwhile, there isn't a whole lot about Transmeta's stuff that stands out. Except the wacky design.
  • At CES, they had one, and it was absolutely dwarfed by my Nokia 6360 phone. Take a look:
    http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=13578
    While the phone is a 'big' one the laptop was thinner, and it weighed nothing. Very cool.

    These ultra-light models don't click until you hold one, but when you do, you look at the standard ultra-lights and wonder how people use them.

    -Charlie
  • I think transmeta is loved by geek [mithuro.com] community just because of Linus Torvalds connection.

    Their first chip Crusoe, although saving power, underperformed [pcworld.com] badly. And the Efficeon doesn't look fast compared to its rivals. The Efficeon TM 8000 can do 1.1GHz consuming 7W. Intel's Pentium M does 1.7GHz for the same power consumption.

    I don't think there's anything particularly cool about this news. It is the same as the discovery of the new planet [mithuro.com]. There are better ones already out there.

  • Cool (Score:3, Interesting)

    by color of static ( 16129 ) <smasters AT ieee DOT org> on Monday March 15, 2004 @10:17AM (#8567716) Homepage Journal
    I have been looking at the MM10 (the older version) as a small Linux computer for some months now and the memory was always a hold up. This things solves that and then some.
    The older model was small and light, but very usable. You could confortably hold it in one hand for a long time and it never got warm/hot. This was the thinnest thing I've ever seen, and the smallest without seeming to sacrifice on usability (close to sacrifice though).
    I might just have get one and see about running Linux on this little guy.

  • Wrong price point (Score:5, Insightful)

    by uradu ( 10768 ) on Monday March 15, 2004 @10:21AM (#8567743)
    As far as I'm concerned (and lots of people I know as well), the magic price point for notebooks financed from personal funds has become $1000 or less. After all, these are machines that are often "refreshed" every two years or less, I definitely don't want to spend much more than $500/year on notebooks. This Sharp is only giving me a slow processor, XGA and 20GB for $1500? Heck, I can get the ultra-slim Averatec 3150 for $900 (often for $700 refurbished), and it's got twice the HD and a faster mobile AMD to boot. Given that the backlight eats most of the power anyway, I doubt this Sharp will run all that much longer on a charge than the Averatec, Transmeta or no Transmeta.

    • Re:Wrong price point (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Draknor ( 745036 )

      Uh, RTFA?

      The MM20 is designed as a second notebook for corporate executives or frequent business travelers that prefer something lightweight when traveling, Hanly says.

      You are right - its the wrong price point for home use. The mass market there buys Dell, HP/Compaq, and maybe Sony. They have the cheap laptops at the price point you speak of. I'm actually in the market for a laptop, and I've decided to skip the cheap consumer junk and go with an IBM T40/41 - a durable business-class notebook backe

      • > Uh, RTFA?

        Uh, yeah and? Just because they CALL it a business notebook--ostensibly to justify the higher price--doesn't have to actually MAKE it a business notebook. The strongest thing speaking out AGAINST such a use is the crappy keyboard that PCWorld slam. One thing business users do a lot is TYPE, and if the backspace key becomes the most important key on the keyboard, well, good luck. No, sorry, the Averatec also only weighs around 4lb, but actually has a very usable keyboard (except for layout of

  • Comparisons with macs? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by littleghoti ( 637230 ) on Monday March 15, 2004 @10:36AM (#8567863) Journal
    Anyone know / care to comment how these chips compare with apples G3 and G4 laptops? I was under the impression that they were much less power hungry than intel and AMD's chips, which let them be lighter and have better battery life.

    • Anyone know / care to comment how these chips compare with apples G3 and G4 laptops? I was under the impression that they were much less power hungry than intel and AMD's chips, which let them be lighter and have better battery life.

      They're better than P4Ms and mobile Athlons, but not better than mobile P3s and PMs. Powerbook users are getting nowhere near the claimed 4.5 hours battery life, 2.5 seems more typical. Of the current machines, only the iBooks get 4+ hours. They're lighter than many comparabl

  • Transmeta hype (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mst76 ( 629405 ) on Monday March 15, 2004 @10:44AM (#8567955)
    Transmeta made a lot of fuss about energy efficiency, but in reality, the Intel LV and ULV mobile Tualatin P3 consumes almost as little power while being much faster. The best power/speed tradeoff seems to be the ULV P3 933mhz, 512kb L2 cache, 1.1V. The typical and maximum power consumption are 4 and 7W respectively.

    Intel is now hyping the P-M just as heavily as Transmeta. The P-M can dynamically scale the frequency through a large range, but if you use CPU intensive apps, the power consumption can get suprisingly high (31W for the 1.5-1.7 ghz versions). For more facts and figures, see Sandpile [sandpile.org].
  • Fujitsu 'did it right' with the P-Series.
    It would be nice to have a faster processor but the flexibility the P-Series (I have the 2120) is unmatched. 8 hours+ battery life and when you add in a 7200rpm drive it is not as sluggish.

    Games are best avoided here but I didn't buy it for mobile gaming just mobile working and notes taking in class.
    • I agree, as I own a P2120B and a NetWinder 3300, but even Fujitsu switched the P Series to Intel processors.

      I helped develop a Crusoe based product, the NetWinder 3xxx series. It took a LOT of effort to before we saw 86 on the debug port (86 is the code for when the Crusoe processor is finally executing CMS and is ready to execute x86 instructions). It was so monumental a moment and effort that we took pictures.

      A NetWinder 3300 powers my website. Along with the DSL modem, the UPS lasts over 2 hours wit

  • Not fast at all. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ItsIllak ( 95786 ) on Monday March 15, 2004 @11:00AM (#8568092) Homepage
    In case you don't remember, the processor family is known for its extremely low power consumption and blazingly high computing speeds

    Obviously someone who's not used the Transmeta based Compaq Tablet. About as blazingly fast as a shackled tortoise. It does have great power consumption stats though :)

  • Does it still 'dynamically emulate' (Score:3, Interesting)

    by nurb432 ( 527695 ) on Monday March 15, 2004 @11:08AM (#8568158) Homepage Journal
    And if so, can i change the emulation to lets say.. a PPC, or even a Z80?

    Or is that locked down to a microcode level and not 'user accessable'.

  • the Sony X505 [dynamism.com]

    Centrino guts, 10.4' 1024x768 screen all under 2 pounds! Its made of carbon fibre too! too bad it costs between 3-4 grand depending on options.

    I dont want a big disk and screen in my laptop. 10.4 is fine, 12 is the biggest id want. I want battery life and light weight. So i ask you slashdotters, what good slim laptops do you like?

  • wait..... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by MoFoQ ( 584566 )
    lemme check the calendar to make sure it aint april 1st.

    Indeed, transmetas have an extremely low power-consumption rate, but one can't say they are fast, especially post-Enron; u can't fudge the numbers. If power consumption was a part of the performance index (let's say for a SpecInt or a SpecFP), then yea...it might be able to compete. But it's like Via's C3; its low power in more than one way.

    Just like you can't have a Lamborgini that gets 60MPG, you ccan't expect to have low power with high power; o

  • I have a MM10 (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymouse Cownerd ( 754174 ) on Monday March 15, 2004 @12:39PM (#8569073) Homepage
    I have the older MM10 model, with the transmeta 1GHz. I love the machine though it is not the quickest. The only problem? They seem to be OVERLY dedicate. I had purchased my original last July. After 3 weeks of minimal usage, the screen went bad. Sharp sent me a refurbished unit (though I had paid full price for a new unit just 3 weeks early). About a month ago, the replacement went bad (battery was bad and possibly the charge circuitry went bad as well). They have since sent me a refurbished unit and battery and I've been ok since then. It's a great machine, but you really have watch out for it.

  • Other form factors? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by -tji ( 139690 ) on Monday March 15, 2004 @01:21PM (#8569511) Journal
    When will transmeta come out with a Mini-ITX or Nano-ITX board with ther CPU on it? VIA has done very well at that with its C3 processors. They sell a lot to end-users, and sell a ton to embedded systems vendors. Transmeta could get a piece of that market.

    Those server/embedded devices are a lot less demanding of CPU power. Any device, like a laptop, which has direct user GUI interfacing will always need a lot of horsepower.

  • Blazingly high? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Wakko Warner ( 324 ) * on Monday March 15, 2004 @01:50PM (#8569812) Homepage Journal
    Is it really all that much faster than the Crusoe? I've got a Sony Vaio C1MW with an 866 MHz Crusoe in it and it's just barely fast enough as it is.

    - A.P.

  • wrong! (Score:2, Funny)

    by dJOEK ( 66178 )
    It's known for that Torvalds kid that worked there

  • Transmeta CPUs != longer run time (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rayd75 ( 258138 ) on Monday March 15, 2004 @02:27PM (#8570253)
    I know it is one of their big selling points but I have yet to have used a Transmeta device that actually had a longer run time than my huge Latitude C series with second battery. Why? Because for some reason manufacturers seem to have a fetish for the 2.5 - 3 hour benchmark. Once they reach it, they concentrate on size instead. Surely I can't be the only one who would be happy with a smallish (12-13") notebook with long battery life. I certainly find that more interesting than devices that are so tiny as to be unusable yet have comparable run time to normal laptops.

  • There IS a definite market for this. (Score:3, Informative)

    by rindeee ( 530084 ) on Monday March 15, 2004 @02:44PM (#8570451)
    First off, I just finished ordering one, with the extended battery. Now for why:

    I use a Laptop virtually all day, every day. I currently work on a Thinkpad T23 with a 1.3GHz processor, 1GB RAM, 14" Screen, etc. I add a 802.11g card when in office and a T-Mobile wireless WAN card everywhere else. I love my laptop, but I have three complaints: 1. Weight, 2. Heat (holy crap it gets hot), and 3. battery life. I also have a Sony Picturebook which address these issues, but it's TOO small and lacks a LOT of connectivity. I use a Zaurus with Opie and love it. I have long wished that I could get a "really big Zaurus" with integrated WiFi, good storage, etc. That's essentially how I view the MM20. Of course that is predicated on my getting Linux on it, but I am confident that given some time, that is quite doable. A 1GHz proc, half a gig of RAM, acts as a USB2 hard-drive when connected to my desktop, integrated 802.11g, 2 lbs. and a 10" screen...it's PERFECT for my needs. Anyone want to buy a Thinkpad?

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