onion2k writes: "In this article on VNUnet, Toshiba are saying that the Transmeta chip doesn't quite live up to its hype. Bit of a strange thing to do considering Toshiba were one of the original investors, but hey, thats corps for you ..." Talks mostly about the power consumption of the chips. If you're following Transmeta, this is worth a read.

Vawlk writes "Just before planning to go public, Transmeta and AMD might swap spit (patents) as explained in this Yahoo article. " AMD has done this in the past, most notably with Motorola.

Richard Finney writes "Reuters News Sevice is reporting that Transmeta is filing for an IPO." They are looking to raise $200 million - the rest of the details are sketchy.Update: 08/17 09:59 PM by H :Check out the FreeEdgar filing.

VF/VT Hunter was first with the news. Could you gush about a product announcement for us, Mr. Hunter? "Oh hell yes :) This link over at C|Net details Sony's plan to release a Transmeta-powered notebook by year's end. I KNEW I should wait! What's better, it will include a built-in digital camera. Add standard USB and iLink (aka Firewire) support which seem to be prevalent on most Sonys, plus Sony's reputation for making the coolest looking gizmo's, and I think I've found my next big purchase. It just better not come with a Winmodem." But since it's not a full-sized laptop, should we assume it will be full-featured? Update: 08/15 11:15 AM by michael : The Picturebook line of Vaios doesn't sell very well - it's too small to be useful as a "real" laptop. If only Sony were smart enough to put this chip in their regular Vaios, they wouldn't be able to keep them on the shelves.

Curtis Diesel asks: "The way I understand the Crusoe processor is that it translates instructions on the fly to its native VLIW Instruction set. It is claimed to be 100% x86 compatible. What about Macintosh? One would think that the conversion to x86 Wouldn't be much more difficult than from Mac's Instructions. Personally, I'd love a Crusoe Web pad running OS X. How about IA-64? Alpha? Maybe even Mips or SH-3? (to run Windows CE or something along those lines) Can I run multiple "code morphing" routines simultaneously? Am I limited to one at a time? Do I need to flash my processor every time I switch, or is the Crusoe just another x86 processor?" Interesting thought. Transmeta has been relatively quiet about Crusoe since the initial release, but it would be interesting to note if it could be tuned to not only emulate x86, but other platforms as well.

jackstaley sent us an article about Transmeta testing mass production of its Crusoe processor. They talk about IBM (which can make copper chips, but interestingly enough, has licensing deals with Intel that should protect Transmeta from potential lawsuits) as well as exporting the production to Taiwan.

Here are the answers to the questions we asked Ian Murdock, original Debian instigator and current President/CEO of Progeny Linx Systems.

I'm here at Ottawa Linux Symposium, and I took the Quickies to the crowd and let them pick some of today's Quickies. Hope you like them. CitizenC told us to check out The Kama Sutra of Winnie the Pooh. Scary. alpha264 wrote in about a pegboard computer." Darkness Productions told us that Spaz Labs was back." Phrogman shared a huge collection of Space Images now available on Spaceref.com. kbolton told us to look at streaming anime for free. scampbell said that Yamaha Paper Craft has updated their rare-animal paper sculpture collection to include the Yellow-eyed Penguin. _endgame mentioned that voting has begun for the Freenet Logo." An anonymous coward wrote in about the Men of Sieg Hall calendar. I included that one for Telsa. cdlu wrote (from about ten feet away) about this thing that creates much annoyance from the console. MURL said that Christopher Lee has been cast in the role of a charismatic separatist in Episode II. And finally, I just wanted to mention that Dave Taylor from that company stopped by just to make sure that he wasn't mentioned in the Quickies. Teehee.

Angus writes "VNUnet have just posted a story that IBM is being cautious about the future of Transmeta's Crusoe in production machines. Suggestion is that Intel is still the player for the future of portables." An interesting comment at the end: 'All Intel has to do is cut prices to squeeze transmeta out of the market'

Boone^ writes "Yahoo! has an article from ZDNet News that details how Compaq and Dell are shying away from Crusoe notebooks 'for now.' " Basically it says that the performance isn't so hot, and consumers are gonna be burned by the hype of the first generation of Transmeta based laptops. But then again ... the battery life sure ain't a bad thing. Mentions that Hitachi notebooks might be shipping as early as October. Update: 06/28 09:37 by CT : here's some pictures of transmeta laptops.

theGEEK writes "Rebel.com will be making Netwinders with the crusoe chip from Transmeta. In related news, Fujitsu, Hitachi, IBM and NEC will all be showing off notebooks using the Crusoe today."

Magorak writes "ZDNet is running an article on the upcoming PC Expo show in New York which is going to feature new notebooks from NEC and IBM which will have Transmeta's TM5400 processor in it. There's mentions of Transmeta's background, future company partnerships, and other goodies."

bradlauster writes: "As Reported on InfoWorld.com: Intel will be announcing new mobile processors on Monday. One is claimed to run at 500 MHz and consume less than two watts! How's that compare to Transmeta's Crusoe ... and has anyone used one?" yomahz points to additional coverage at news.com. Isn't it nice what price/performance battles can do?

levendis writes: "Ars Technica has an excellent article up on the future of the x86 architecture. It touches on new idea from Transmeta, Intel, HP's Dynamo, and a bunch of other technology that keeps the 20+ year old architecture alive and kicking." As always, the Ars take on this (specifically, Hannibal's) is lucid and thoughtful, and grounded in some interesting history.

MikeFM writes: "It looks like IBM is set to release Linux Thinkpads! This is great news to my ears. I am just holding out for a Transmeta powered Linux Thinkpad and then I can be happy. I do hope these Thinkpads are compatible with other versions of Linux though. I always use either Debian or Mandrake. Being that these would have limited use as a server I'd probably go w/ Mandrake." Question is, why so long? Thinkpads have been running Linux for a long time, after all.

p0rkmaster writes "Found a nugget in a Tom's Hardware Guide report from Computex in Taipei - FIC was showing off TransMeta Crusoe 'WebPads' " Interesting specs, but no comment on what OS it's running, or on the type of wireless LAN used. If it's Linux and 802.11, we may have a winner ...

OK, so now it seems almost official. According to this story in the New York Times (free registration required) - AOL/Gateway will announce their Transmeta/Linux based Web appliances today. The article is particularly interesting since it details the motive behind AOLs going counter Wintel, And Transmeta's Ditzel says it best: "The truth is that the phrase Internet appliance has become a code word in the industry meaning 'no Windows.'" And dare I say: no Intel too... But only time can tell if this is going to be as big as AOL/Transmeta hope. Thanks Eitan for the Link.

Quite a number of people have written about this story - here, ContinuousPark writes: "IEEE's Spectrum magazine has an interesting article with a step-by-step account on Crusoe's design process. It also talks about how they got the venture capital by creating the term 'code morphing,' how they hired their staff and how is it to work there, among other details."

Robrt writes: "According to this news.com article, the first Crusoe based products will be released at PC Expo. The article doesn't give much other information. " They comment that they're not sure if we'll see laptops or webpads, but we might see something. I'd love one of those webpads with the Lucent wireless, and say, 8-12 hours of battery life.

kevin922 writes: "Check it out! IDEO, a small close-knit development firm (they are responsible for products such as the Visor, Transmeta Webslate, and a variety of other cool things) has developed Cisco's new IP Phone. This device (which looks like a normal phone) plugs directly into a 10-baseT connection and has a phone # associated with it. When you plug the phone in somewhere else it takes the # with it. I'm planning on getting some eval units to try out. Should the PBX guys start reading up on TCP/IP? :)" Doesn't look like these things are available just now, but the concept is long, long overdue. Bypass the phone company -- in fact, just ignore the phone company.