Dell Considering ARM-Based Smartbooks 298
wonkavader sends us this quote from an article in PCWorld:
"In an effort to expand its Linux offerings, Dell is researching new netbook-type devices and will soon offer netbook Linux OS upgrades, a company official said on Wednesday. The company is researching the possibility of offering new Linux-based mobile devices called smartbooks, said Todd Finch, senior product marketing manager for Linux clients, at the OpenSourceWorld conference in San Francisco. The company will also upgrade its Ubuntu Linux OS for netbooks to the latest version in the next few weeks ... Smartbooks with Arm chips have inherent advantages over x86 chips like Atom, such as lower power consumption and longer battery life, according to Finch. The chips are also becoming more powerful, as indicated by the growing number of applications on smartphones, he said. 'I think it's natural and reasonable for us to begin looking at them as they begin scaling their processors up.'"
Well... (Score:4, Insightful)
ARM vs x86 (Score:2, Insightful)
ARM has an advantage such as lower power consumption, but it also has a huge disadvantage - it does not run x86 programs.
It will be the same situation like with PDAs ~10 years ago.
I want some program, it's available for PC, but not available for Psion.
With this ARM "smartbook", I'll still have to lug around a big laptop to be able to run those programs that the smartbook doesn't. I think that in this regard, I'd rather buy a Fujitsu U810 or equivalent.(17cm x15.5cm x 2.7cm but has Atom and is fully compatible with x86 programs; battery holds for >6 hours).
Re:Uh-huh. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Just"? Negotiating tactic is most certainly at least the consolation prize, but they seem to be doing well with their Ubuntu systems.
It seems to me that this is more a case of not keeping all of one's eggs in the MS-x86 basket. Using Linux now gives them a head start in developing a polished interface over their competitors and experience in migrating platforms.
Using ARM now gives them time to work the kinks out of the hardware integration so their ARM laptops can be more stable than the competition's when everyone else starts jumping on the bandwagon.
Re:ARM vs x86 (Score:5, Insightful)
"...but it also has a huge disadvantage - it does not run x86 programs."
You are missing the point, this is only an issue when using Windows and the point is to get rid of Windows.
There are already a huge amount of applications moved to other CPU architectures and many others need just to be recompiled.
Yes I do know that it may not be "just recompile" but the Linux community is much faster to adapt than Windows community.
Ripe for adoption (Score:2, Insightful)
I predict that these things are going to take off. Once people realize that they don't need a heavy OS like Windows in order to enjoy a portable platform that provides email & web browsing, any prejudice against will evaporate. Besides, most people won't even notice that Windows is missing.
One reason PDA's never took off is the man-machine interface. The keyboard is pretty much a must-have for an email & messaging platform. These things are going to be everywhere, especially with carriers eager to sell data plans subsidizing them.
Re:MS will adapt. Eventually. (Score:4, Insightful)
Not every game needs to be bleeding edge to attract players. There are plenty of simple casual games that have a much larger market than the "core" gamer market that will run perfectly fine on a netbook (or what ever the hell they are calling them now). The idea is to focus on game play and mechanics rather than eye candy.
A Big Up Yours (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Uh-huh. (Score:2, Insightful)
Because it will sell, and the margins could be high. I imagine something like this would be popular in "developing markets" as well.
Finally (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:MS will adapt. Eventually. (Score:4, Insightful)
Probably they do have experimental builds, but there's very little point in MS actually making products from them. The reason why you want Windows is because Windows apps run on Windows. They also have to produce ARM builds of all of the software that people need. They can do that for their own stuff, but most Windows software is not produced by MS. It's important to remember that when you get Ubuntu, you get a whole load more software than on a plain Windows box and even most of the software not included comes with source code so it's relatively easy for someone to port it to the new architecture. Not to mention that Windows Mobile has done real damage to the Windows brand by looking so much worse than Symbian phones, let alone Android or the iPhone. They can't afford to keep repeating that.
The Intel Atom is produced specifically to make an i386 platform which competes with the ARM. MS would do much better to commit to that kind of platform. The power consumption is "good enough" and they don't risk splitting their market share.
Re:ARM vs x86 (Score:3, Insightful)
ARM has an advantage such as lower power consumption, but it also has a huge disadvantage - it does not run x86 programs.
Why is this a problem? Just find a free software distribution that offers packages for ARM, like Debian. Problem solved... but... if you really depend on propietary x86 programs.... Doesn't that worry you at all?
Re:ARM vs x86 (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you saying that Ubuntu has a way to automatically download an ARM version of FireFox and OpenOffice?
I don't know about Ubuntu but Debian most certainly has Firefox [debian.org] and OpenOffice packages for ARM that are ready to use.
Even then, what about Flash and Adobe Reader? How am I going to play my favorite YouTube videos and Facebook games?
Do you really want to use a proprietary browser plugin with a horrible [slashdot.org] security [slashdot.org] history [h-online.com] like Adobe Flash, with _known_ vulnerabilities [h-online.com] that have been unpatched for over 8 months?
With new open technologies like HTML5, Flash is becoming more and more obsolete anyway.
YouTube videos can be easily downloaded and played with mplayer. Gnash, a reverse-engineered libre replacement for Adobe Flash, gets better continuously. Many Flash applications already work with Gnash, like YouTube or the flash photo galleries generated by some Adobe applications.
The libre software situtation is much better when it comes to PDF, as PDF is, unlike Flash, an open standard. There are plenty of libre alternatives to Adobe Reader, most of them less bloated and way faster than the original. The FSF has launched a portal site [pdfreaders.org] for those.
Re:linux32 wrapper (Score:3, Insightful)
'smartbook' - I like! (Score:1, Insightful)
better than that stupid term 'netbook".
Re:ARM vs x86 (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not ? Their has been a version of Flash for Linux on ARM for years already (see Nokia N810 for example).
Luckily it's provbably the only non-opensource-program you'd want to install on such a device anyway.
Re:Nice idea, but let's wait for what Apple is up (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ripe for adoption (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess this is why this has such appeal to Linux-users. These devices do just that, run a Linux-distribution on a smaller device, the same way like they run on the bigger desktop-machines.
Re:Google ChromeOS (Score:3, Insightful)
Or maybe because Ubuntu's next release will have an ARM-release and they already ship Ubuntu.
Re:but will it run (Score:3, Insightful)
What? So no viruses?
If that's the case, then it would seem to that there's even less hope for the average Linux user to attract the notice of malware developers.
Re:ARM vs x86 (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not quite that simple.
There are, for example, plenty of cases where people have been able to switch to Linux because they can still run $FAVOURITE_PROGRAM with Wine. And Wine is still tied to x86. I suspect emulating an x86 processor will be a bit beyond most ARM smartbooks.
There are also a lot of people who, like it or not, do use closed-source software on Linux. I have several closed-source programs installed on the very Linux netbook I'm typing this on. Will the vendors of those programs be happy to port them to ARM? They've already taken a risk just supporting the tiny x86 Linux market; the ARM Linux market is even smaller.
Don't get me wrong. I love the idea of ARM smartbooks, and if Dell brings one out with Ubuntu on it, I will buy it without a moment's hesitation. I'm just pointing out that x86 is only irrelevant if you only ever use purely F/OSS software, and that isn't universal even among Linux fans.
Chrome OS will help make this happen (Score:3, Insightful)
Where most people will be scared of trying linux, they'll trust it when it has the Google brand. Where many people might be confused by an OS that looks mostly like Windows but where everything is just different enough to be confusing, they'll probably understand the concept of "Chrome OS is just a browser & nothing else". The remaining question is if ARM + Chrome OS will drive prices down low enough that people will be willing to forego the flexibility & familiarity of a regular Windows laptop.
Re:Chrome OS will help make this happen (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, I think most people don't know what Chrome is, they don't associate it with a browser (yet).
Re:Uh-huh. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What's a 'smartbook'? (Score:3, Insightful)
Or ARM desktops, I mean, why the fuck not? Make a tiny machine (think G4 Cube type box), powerful enough for most desktop stuff, with a low power consumption, and I'm sure you could get lots of people/businesses/schools interested.
Good way for them to buy/replace a whole bunch of desktop machines for cheap, that eat up less power/emit less heat and noise and don't take much room. The time has come for us to have dirt cheap tiny machines.
Re:A Big Up Yours (Score:1, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A Big Up Yours (Score:3, Insightful)
The quirks were worked out long before that: Windows NT until 4.0 supported x86, Alpha, MIPS, and PowerPC. 2000 (i.e., NT 5.0) supported Alpha until as late as after RC1.
Yet only one of these four architectures ever had decent support for Office: x86. (There was a single release of Office for the others including Word 6.0 and Excel 5.0, both 32-bit, and PowerPoint 4.0, as 16-bit.) Why? Office, especially PowerPoint and Access, both apparently contain a lot of x86 Assembly.
The other architectures died because nobody used them because the most useful program that ran on them was Calculator. Nobody ever bothered porting to it before. If they try again, will it be different? It will depend on how many people buy ARM-based netbooks, and how much software MS can get to run on them (and they will, de-facto, need emulation to get any decent marketshare, as people expect their old programs to run).
Re:Uh-huh. (Score:3, Insightful)
This is not speculation. Maybe you've heard of the Zune HD? The Zune HD is using a new Nvidia Tegra [arstechnica.com] chip and is designed to be a competitor for iPod touch and iPhone. One of the things Microsoft is advertising is "the full internet experience." Just like Apple is going to use iPhone OS and ARM chips for their tablet, Microsoft will probably use Nvidia Tegra, which is mostly a couple ARM cores with some Video and Audio processing cores as their platform for future computing products.
Apple and Microsoft have both realized that people do not need desktop power in a portable computing device. As long as it can do decent web browsing, run javascript apps, listen to music, watch video, and read email, what more do people need to do?
Re:Well... (Score:4, Insightful)
That's because running Windows Vista costs you both an ARM and a LEG to get a computer that can run it. Can't do it with just one.
Re:Uh-huh. (Score:4, Insightful)
Great, let me know when I can buy a Apple laptop with a 7 hr battery for $200.
Re:Uh-huh. (Score:4, Insightful)
IIRC, on those laptops with "Latitude ON", when running on the ARM subsection, that laptops have runtimes counted in days, not single digit hours. And they can play video, do web access, email etc so Dell is in a position to lead or help lead in this sector. Their work with Ubuntu on x86 is another major plus for them and with ARM Inc working with Ubuntu on the ARM platform, that's a strong partnership( Dell, Canonical, ARM ).
This is an important one to follow and it would be great to see something from Dell this year.
LoB
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)