7-inch Android Netbook From GNB 150
An anonymous reader writes "Netbooknews.com has scored a video of a 7-inch Google Android netbook from a company called GNB during Computex. The device is powered by a Freescale iMX31 CPU. The design might not be to everyone's taste, but it could turn out to be a super cheap Android netbook."
Re:Some information would be nice. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Some information would be nice. (Score:3, Interesting)
Android is optimized for small screens and low-powered devices, with no unwanted background processes.
Have you tried running Ubuntu (non-netbook edition) on a 10.2" screen at 1024x600 screen? Most apps simply don't fit on the screen, alt+mouse_drag only moves windows down, not up, meaning jumping through a lot of hoops simply to press OK in a dialog because it is below the screen.
Runs only two and half hours (Score:1, Interesting)
Pondering on power consumption... (Score:4, Interesting)
I've done quite a bit of work on ARM processors without an operating system and limited work using ARM9 devices with a Gentoo based distro and something I've wondered is if under Linux there's a way to conveniently enable low-power mode essentially putting the processor to sleep while allowing certain peripherals to remain running? An obvious example would be leaving the LCD controller running to display an e-book page while the CPU was in sleep mode or running at a low clock rate until a button is pressed. I know how to do that when programming most ARM CPUs natively, but are there any attempts out there to standardize some low power behaviour for the kernel?
It could really help some of these devices that are no doubt often used for a single task at a time. Perhaps it could even be in the form of some sort of system call that allowed a process to request the minimum slice of CPU time per second and wake-up latency required per task and the scheduler could determine the required clock frequency and possible sleep time required to fulfil the requirements of every process. Just seems to me it could be a way to extend the battery life and take advantange of some of the amazing low-power modes of newer ARM cores in a standard manner.
I've got one already... (Score:5, Interesting)
...or something very much like it.
It's called a CnMBook. Have a look at this page [194.150.201.35]. (Yeah, I know - bare IP address looks suspicious. I don't think the manufacturer's quite got the hang of this Internet thing. Google is your friend if you don't trust me.) It's sold under a lot of different names.
The specs are similar to the gadget on show here. Mine has a slower CPU, less memory and no touch screen. Battery life is 2.5-3 hours. The OS is a heavily-customised Debian. I love the small size and low weight. I can fit it into my coat pocket. The screen is nice and clear. The keyboard is reasonable, but is prone to registering phantom keystrokes - running vi is therefore not recommended. I don't know if it's just mine that does this, or if it's a design flaw.
The main app I run on it is a text editor. It's a bit slow for anything else.
I paid £139 for mine just before Christmas. I bought it from Maplin, who are now selling them off for £99 - probably because they were evasive about it not running Windows. They now have a Windows CE version of it, which has "Windows CE" in the product name.
Hunting for the next line (Score:3, Interesting)
Is that width (74 characters) really ideal or just some relic of old printers' limitations or some such?
There's a reason that even with today's digital typesetting, printed newspapers have five or six columns of text and not one column running across the whole page. On a reasonably-wide column (30em to 40em, or 60 to 80 characters), your eyes can find the next line while your brain is processing the last words on the current line. Otherwise, hunting for the next line interrupts your train of thought.
Re:Ultra Small Resolution (Score:3, Interesting)
I wouldn't call it "ultra small" resolution. The latest from eeePC in the economical range is the 1000HE and according to amazon, this 10" has 1024x600 res, worse than this with 3 more inches.
I believe Dell's offering has better res but not sure. (Of course, it could be bigger too, defeating the purpose.)
BTW, wtf is with slashdot and the random bars in my browser?
Re:OK, saw it and my likes and dislikes are: (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah- two design features I don't get are the stupid touchpads and crappy batteries. Netbook manufacturers are you listening- DITCH THE DAMN TOUCHPADS. Hardly anyone uses them- it just ends up taking up very valuable keyboard real estate and periodically moving my cursor around in unexpected ways. I hate these damn things.
Secondly- 2.5hrs may be enough for regular laptop users who just use the thing as an overly expensive, delicate desktop anyway but netbooks are actually meant to be carried around and as such need to have much better battery life. I think five hours actual running time is mandatory. As a benchmark my 1000HA (with an aftermarket battery since ASUS hasn't grasped that people really, really care about battery life) has a TEN hour (that's 1-0) run time with Wi-fi. Come on netbook makers- take our cash- give us the option of getting decent batteries and don't waste our time and money on 2-3 hour runtimes. It's just not acceptable.