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Hardware

VIA Introduces A New Laptop Motherboard 211

Posted by timothy from the treasuring-diversity dept.
arrasmith writes "It looks like there is going to be an upgrade to that non-expensive $800 Linux laptop. VIA just came out with a new laptop motherboard based on the faster Nehemiah core for the C3. You can get all the specs at the Antaur homepage. If they stay near the $800 cost I can see this one selling pretty well. And they would have a great mobile media system if they added a hardware DivX decoder on top of the hardware DVD decoder. :) And now that the Linux drivers are starting to mature and the sources are finally starting to come out, by the time this is released to the U.S. market it should be a great little Linux laptop."
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VIA Introduces A New Laptop Motherboard More

VIA Introduces A New Laptop Motherboard

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  • Finally... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Kai_MH ( 632216 ) on Wednesday July 09, 2003 @06:43PM (#6403790) Homepage Journal
    Via CPU + Linux = Sweet stuff. Seriously, it's about time there was an inexpensive Linux Laptop. I might even consider getting it instead of a new mini-ITX system. Whee!
    • Since when is a VIA CPU sweet?

      Remember Cyrix anyone?
      • Since they take up very little power, usually require no or small HSF.

        • Neither does... (Score:5, Funny)

          by siskbc ( 598067 ) on Wednesday July 09, 2003 @07:07PM (#6403939) Homepage
          ...an abacus, but I'm not going to use one in an $800 machine.

          • Re:Neither does... (Score:5, Insightful)

            by sleeper0 ( 319432 ) on Wednesday July 09, 2003 @08:55PM (#6404467)
            I understand that this laptop mentioned doesnt require active cooling, but as it seems everyone is focusing on wow an $800 linux laptop I went to go see what $800 could buy you at dell..

            [dell.com]
            2ghz celeron 20gb hd 256mb ram 14" screen... for $749

            While i haven't ever owned one of these i've not had a problem getting linux on dell laptops in the past. If you are looking for an inexpensive laptop to run linux it seems to me you could do a lot better than a very underpowered core processor such as the via.

      • Re:Finally... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by tomstdenis ( 446163 ) <tomstdenis@gma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Wednesday July 09, 2003 @07:04PM (#6403920) Homepage
        I remember Cyrix MI and MII processors as the "I can buy this on a retail job part-time salary when I was 16" processors which wickedly out performed any economical intel processor of the time.

        In fact I recall my 486SLC/66 had desperate troubles playing mp3s yet my MI/133 [or 166 I forget] would sail through them with power to spare. My 233Mhz MII was even sweeter.

        At the time I could put a mobo+cpu together for like 200$ or so.

        My current processor cost 225$ alone [iirc].

        Oh yeah and as another poster pointed out the Cyrix cores were much better with heat than intel/amd. The C3 is even better.

        Tom
        • Considering that I paid $100 for my last MB/CPU upgrade, I'd say were are in better shape. My MB/CPU combo for my 266 many years ago was about $500.

          When I can double speed for $50, I upgrade.

      • Re:Finally... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by JCholewa ( 34629 ) on Wednesday July 09, 2003 @07:47PM (#6404150) Homepage
        > Since when is a VIA CPU sweet?

        Since they started using solid, low power cores based on Centaur team designs.

        > Remember Cyrix anyone?

        You mean the team that VIA disbanded when they decided to go with primarily Centaur-derived technology? What about them?

        --
        -JC
        http://www.jc-news.com/coding/SFi/
        (the above contains exaggerations, but less so than parent)

      • Re:Finally... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Cpt_Kirks ( 37296 ) on Wednesday July 09, 2003 @08:50PM (#6404445)
        Remember Cyrix anyone?

        My wifes computer uses a MII 200mhz. She won't let me upgrade it. It works fine for her, browsing, email and mp3s.

        My little m10000 Nehemiah mini-itx toolbox PC here chugs along fine for DVD ripping, PVR, video processing, etc. When I get a pretty case for it, it's going into the living room.

    • Where are the BSD laptops? :)

      Seriously though, this is a Good Thing. But I know and you know that larger companies aren't going to go for Linux because the "GPV" bothers them.

      I think there ought to be a BSD laptop (no, MacOS X on a PowerBook doesn't count!), if only because I think every Linux needs to have a corresponding FreeBSD - light, truly free, and just as powerful in most cases as its GPL'd competitor.

      Why not?

      -uso.
      • I don't believe a word you say . . .

        (if you don't know Japanese, don't mod this)
      • But I know and you know that larger companies aren't going to go for Linux because the "GPV" bothers them.

        I certainly don't know that -- in my experience larger companies don't really care what OS it runs, as long as it runs their apps and gives the user experience they want (whether this is true for lindows or not, I have no idea, but linux and freebsd are probably comparable).

        In many cases they like linux because it has a buzz (freebsd doesn't, really, despite OSX), and that makes them feel less nervou
        • Also, another important issue (now that I think about it), is support -- there are quite a few large and well-known companies that will sell you support for linux, whereas I'm not aware of any (large, well-known) companies that will do so for a typical *bsd system.

          [Companies with in-house support staff want to standardize on as few systems as possible, and since linux currently has a fairly hefty corporate mind-share advantage over freebsd, freebsd is likely to lose out in many cases.]

      • Re:We've got Linux laptops now, but... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Take one of the "Windows" cli network tools (ftp.exe, netstat.exe etc.) and run strings on it. If "truly free" means giving away my code to huge companies that will make a fortune on it but will no way and never do anything for me in return, I'll stick with the "falsly free" GPV; thank you very much.

        The whole point to the BSDs as well as to the GNU project was to create OSes that aren't owned by big companies, so the code-proliferating traditions of unix hackerdom can continue. Donating code to big compan

        • I don't understand why parent got modded down; that is an excellent point.

          I think an ideal license would be one that allowed *unmodified* binaries - that passed an MD5 test - to be distributed with just a Web link to a copy of the source that, when built, produced the exact same binary, but require modified binaries to include the source code.

          That would give all the advantages of the GPL without turning off companies.

          -uso.
        • The whole point to the BSDs as well as to the GNU project was to create OSes that aren't owned by big companies, so the code-proliferating traditions of unix hackerdom can continue. Donating code to big companies that publicly state they won't be part of the proliferation process is stupid, contraproductive and against the spirit in which the projects were created.

          If this was true, the BSD license would never have been written.

          You don't have to allow your code to be used in this manner, but there are tho

          • Re:We've got Linux laptops now, but... (Score:2, Insightful)

            by Anonymous Coward
            Look at it from a historical viewpoint. The original BSD licence had an advertising clause to prevent companies from taking a run with the code.

            By taking out the advertising clause one problem was solved, but another one was introduced. Of course the advertising clause had its problems, but you can't claim the BSD licence we use today is the same licence we started out with.

            (Yes I am the same AC as the one that posted the original comment.)

    • Why can't I get a laptop with Debian preinstalled? Why bother with linux if you're just going to make it look and act like windows?

      • Re:Why Lindows? (Score:5, Informative)

        by steveha ( 103154 ) on Wednesday July 09, 2003 @07:39PM (#6404098) Homepage
        Lindows is based on Debian. As far as I know, you should have no problem taking a Lindows notebook, removing all the packages that contain the strings "lindows" or "xandros", editing sources.list to point to your favorite Debian mirror, and doing apt-get dist-upgrade.

        steveha

    • And it is actually well supported! (Score:5, Informative)

      by Fefe ( 6964 ) on Wednesday July 09, 2003 @07:17PM (#6403992) Homepage
      Via is not as anal as Intel about their specs. Linux already has working support for the random number generator (their crypto extension), CPU frequency scaling (their SpeedStep/PowerNow equivalent), you aren't stuck with some proprietary and unsupported Intel wireless chipset, their USB, Firewire, Ethernet and IDE chips are proven technology and well supported by Linux, ...

      and I'm told there is even support for their hardware MPEG-2 decoder now in mplayer (haven't actually tried it yet). All in all this is some sweet hardware, and I'd much rather buy Via than Intel chipsets. With Intel chipsets, if something is unsupported, you are basically on your own. In contrast, Via has actually come forward on the mplayer mailing list and asked for people willing to help add support for their MPEG-2 decoder extension. What else could you possible ask for?

      Personally, I don't care about 10% chipset performance as long as I know Linux works on the damn thing. Just google for the troubles people are having running Linux on their Centrino notebooks and you will see what I mean.

      By the way: I can play full-screen DVD and DivX even on my (older and supposedly much inferior) 933 MHz Ezra C3, with AC3 sound. It's just a question of the correct compiler switches. These CPUs are not as fast as an Athlon or a Pentium M, and I wouldn't want to transcode a DVD to MPEG-4 on them, but they are fast enough to do real work like software development. If these become available in Germany, I'll buy one.
      • Well, I don't know if I'd call VIA proven technology.

        I know, judging by the sheer number of posts on deja and the results on google, that their IDE chipset gave linux nightmares for ages.

        In fact, my UDMA100 capable motherboard will only work at UDMA33 on Linux. If you try to go faster, you'll get massive data corruption.

        Check it out... Via IDE Corruption and Linux [google.com].

      • Re:And it is actually well supported! (Score:5, Informative)

        by sacrilicious ( 316896 ) <qbgfynfu.opt@recursor.net> on Wednesday July 09, 2003 @08:01PM (#6404239) Homepage
        Via is not as anal as Intel about their specs. Linux already has working support for the random number generator (their crypto extension), CPU frequency scaling (their SpeedStep/PowerNow equivalent), you aren't stuck with some proprietary and unsupported Intel wireless chipset, their USB, Firewire, Ethernet and IDE chips are proven technology and well supported by Linux, ...

        Not sure if the following contradicts this or not, but this page at mini-itx.com [mini-itx.com] states (emphasis mine)

        The original EPIAs and EPIA Vs are very well supported under most recent kernels (EPIA 5000, EPIA 800, EPIA V5000, EPIA V8000).
        The EPIA Ms are less well supported (EPIA ME6000, M9000, M10000). Drivers exist in binary format only for MPEG2 acceleration, Sound and USB 2.0. Some distributions will have problems.
        Additionally, this thread at viaarena [viaarena.com] documents what sounds like substantial-sounding hurdles getting linux going on mini-itx.

        • Re:And it is actually well supported! (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Svartalf ( 2997 ) on Wednesday July 09, 2003 @11:50PM (#6405141) Homepage
          The new EPIA-M's will be supported shortly. VIA released source code for the 2D and 3D accelerator drivers that they've developed and work is proceeding to integrate the code into the XFree86 and DRI source trees. From talking with the people there at VIA, they're not going to just give out tech data for the CLE266 to just anybody and everybody, but they are willing to allow select (as in the people actually working on the drivers...) people access to the tech data to fix/extend the driver sources that they've recently provided.

        • Yes it is well supported (Score:5, Informative)

          by Alan Cox ( 27532 ) on Thursday July 10, 2003 @06:48AM (#6406271) Homepage
          The audio is working well (except record in OSS) now, and thats sort of my fault because I have the docs to fix it. The CPU power management works a treat. The firewire apparently works, USB definitely works. I've not explored the consumer IR port.
          On the X side 2D works (accelerated) as does TV out. VIA sent me a code drop fairly recently which includes XFree 4.2 3D support and kernel side DRI modules, as well as further Xv overlay (but not the mpeg2 engine). Testing that hit a problem on 1600x1200 but once that is sorted it'll get pushed upstream.
          The 3D needs a couple of people with the time to work through the Mesa changes from XFree4.2->4.3 and update the 3D driver code to make it work again. (or use Xfree 4.2 8))

          The 3D stuff is all in the DRI project CVS for the interested, as is the savage 3D stuff they released at the same time - although that also needs further work.

          Alan

      • AMD? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by phorm ( 591458 )
        Not trying to troll, but we mention a lot of Via VS Intel here, how about AMD?

        I've never been a big Intel fan to begin with, but how does the VIA chipset and Linux support stack up against AMD? How friendly are they to open-source in comparison?

    • Re:Finally... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by dalslad ( 648100 )
      Well, the secret is out. But guess whose been making all those Linux white box systems? VIA, same people. Wall-Mart, Fry's Great Quality, Sam's, Microtel, Wintergreen, Sub300, Neo Computers, Galaxy, Tranquil and Newron all have VIA motherboards and processors. I won't forget that VIA was once Cyrix. I bought three of them and they work great. They came with ThizLinux - an RPM based OS from Hong Kong, but they took everything I threw at them: Slackware, RedHat, Gentoo, SuSE, Debian, Xandros and Solaris 9.
    • Not as far as I'm concerned. The gcc optimizations for the C3 seies of CPU are way off. Until I get really efficient binaries from "-march=c3-ezra" I'm afraid I'll stick to the iBook or PIII-M system.

      Also, the CLE266 chipset doesn't have linux support from VIA, XFree-4.4 will have 2D drivers for the onboard graphics, and sound is coming along in ALSA, but RIGHT NOW linux totally sucks on VIA's low-power stuff.

      If anything, VIA should be working with GCC developers to get really good CPU targets worked out,

  • 800 bucks (Score:5, Interesting)

    by blackmonday ( 607916 ) on Wednesday July 09, 2003 @06:43PM (#6403797) Homepage
    Check out Got Apex [gotapex.com]. You can get a full featured 14 or 15 inch-screen Dell for less than 800 bucks when you use the numerous discounts and rebates available. Or even better get a refurbed iBook for a little more.

    • Re:800 bucks (Score:5, Insightful)

      by stripmarkup ( 629598 ) on Wednesday July 09, 2003 @06:47PM (#6403816) Homepage
      The key is portability. This notebook is about 3 lbs. Normally you pay a premium for small size, all else being equal. That is why $800 is impressive.
      • Isn't it size that really matters? 5 lbs is absolutely nothing to an average healthy person.

        • Re:800 bucks (Score:3, Insightful)

          by macshit ( 157376 )
          5 lbs may not cause most people to fall over and die, but if it's something you're carrying around all day, the less weight the better. Even a few pounds can quickly become annoying.
          • 5 lbs may not cause most people to fall over and die, but if it's something you're carrying around all day, the less weight the better. Even a few pounds can quickly become annoying.

            Who is actually carrying around their laptop all day? And if they really are carrying around their laptop all day, why do they even have it, considering they aren't really usable while being carried? 5 pounds is nothing.

            • As just one example, one of the nicest things about laptops is the ability to go to a cafe and hack. Since I, at least, tend to go out in the morning, do stuff all day, and then return at night, this entails carting the laptop around with me the rest of the day while I do other stuff (maybe you drive everywhere and can just stick it in your car, but I don't).

              [Another common example might be college students.]
        • Size and weight correlate pretty well on laptops.
    • When you add the cd-rw/dvd rom it costs as much as an ibook (it's more expensive if you include the student discount). Not that I'm evangalizing apple hardware here but doesn't $800 seam a little steap for those who aren't trying to make a political statement (screw microsoft) when both Dell and Apple offer cheaper systems?
    • Actually, you can get an iBook for $800 too.

      http://dealmac.com/artclick.html?53275,73413

      It's good to see Linux laptops, but $800 for a C3 based system really isn't competitive.

  • Who needs hardware DivX... (Score:5, Informative)

    by TeknoHog ( 164938 ) on Wednesday July 09, 2003 @06:45PM (#6403804) Homepage Journal
    ..when you have MPlayer. People have reported that it plays divx/dvd just fine, in software, on Linux with VIA motherboards, even those below 1 GHz. I believe that because my P3-450 plays them just as well.

    And I don't even have XVideo, which would speed up decoding (it does a part of divx/dvd decoding in hardware, namely colorspace conversion and scaling). The current VIA mobos have XVideo support in XFree86 CVS, IIRC.

    • Until there are better vertical blank synchronization methods, anyone with an eye for detail will insist on a hardware decoder.

      I see a lot of motion artifacts under every player, even after employing the syncfb module on a matrox.

      • Ah.. the new elite. I bet you need vertical refreshrates of 120hz plus, too. Your eyes are too delicate to use a screen that costs less than $2000.

        Don't say it.. you're an audiophile too, your ears start bleeding if that one record of yours is played on a setup that costs less than $4000.

        • This is not necessarily the case. Personally, I find it the tearing artifacts you see playing most DivX video annoying -- Even when you use the various sync options, your screen will refresh in the middle of a frame when your framerates and refresh rates don't divide together to produce a whole number;
          a 24fps video is going exhibit tearing artifacts unless your refresh rate is 72hz, etc..
        • I just use a green marker on the edges of my G400 card.

    • Re:Who needs hardware DivX... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      i had an 800mhz VIA MB and used the via linux drivers from their site. I was able to encode to divx on the fly (320x240,30fps,1000 bitrate) with about 70% CPU usage. I was also able to playback those divx files at around 30% CPU usage. you do the math, baby!

      ok i'll do it for you: i was able to watch divx movies and record them at the same time.
    • The VIA 1GHZ Nehemiah is about as fast as a P3-400 on average. When it comes to floating point of vector operations, it is even slower. And the is NOT the mobile version, but the full power one. Sorry, it might not be viable with VIA :-(

      Don't get me wrong, I like VIA, even if their products thend to be flakier than others, but they at least innovate. See mini-itx, no-fan CPUs, dual channel ddr, etc. Intel has stopped doing that for a while, as it does not sow favourably on the balance sheets.

    • hardware divx/dvd saves battery power. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by aoteoroa ( 596031 ) * on Wednesday July 09, 2003 @07:27PM (#6404035)
      The more efficient cpu, and hardware divx allows laptops to be created with smaller batteries, and since batteries are one of the heaviest components this equates to much lighter laptop designs.

      blockquote from their site: [via.com.tw]

      With the workload distributed across the whole platform, rather than being concentrated on the processor, the VIA Antaur processor has to do less work, saving battery life while delivering smooth 30 frames per second DVD playback.
  • I thought even a relative slug like this laptop would be fast enough to decode just about anything in software these days. My P3/733 with a Matrox G400 decodes MPEG-4 just fine.

    Or is this machine even more poky than that?

    • The 1GHz Nehemiah core Epia's handle DivX of all shapes and sizes just fine, and is available up from the M-series Epia boards. The 1GHz Ezra core that previously powered the M10000, however, still had some problems with extremely high quality divx. In some benchmark showing, I believe, FPS, the Nehemiah pretty much doubled the figure the Ezra was churning out.

      In short, the C3-cores are slower than even similar-speed celerons, but they're getting better, and a 1GHz Nehemiah is fast enough to do multimedia
    • It'll handle decode of MPEG4/DiVX streams adequately - the hardware MPEG2 is there to give the CPU a leg up so that it can do other tasks as well (think streaming MPEG2 combined with a web surf session or something similar going on...).

  • what i wonder... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by intermodal ( 534361 ) on Wednesday July 09, 2003 @06:49PM (#6403824) Homepage Journal
    is how overall performance compares. I can get a refurbished IBM ThinkPad coming off corporate lease with a Pentium III circa 700MHz, and know for a fact that the motherboard is fast. I've seen too many motherboards not able to handle their speed to give it a lot of credence without proving it. Thinkpad, on the other hand, has been consistently rugged and reliable for me.

    • Re:what i wonder... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by rsborg ( 111459 )
      I can get a refurbished IBM ThinkPad coming off corporate lease with a Pentium III circa 700MHz

      Not that I doubt you, but where have you found these off-lease deals? Usually for $800, you get a P3, 500 to 650 Mhz, with a used battery (on average my experience has been 50% charge) and possibly some case defects (nothing functionally wrong, but definitely used). I've had to replace both battery and keyboards on all the used laptops i've bought, within 1 year. (3 dells, 1 thinkpad, 1 toshiba). These are not co

  • Real men build their own refrigerators... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by poptones ( 653660 ) on Wednesday July 09, 2003 @06:50PM (#6403832) Journal
    Very cool. So I can buy a laptop motherboard separate from the laptop itself? So I could, in theory, pick up a cheap(er) used laptop, machine a cool new case [linuxcnc.org] from plastic, and roll my own transportable PC?
    • Only if it happens to be the same model notebook, or one close enough to have the same chassi+monitor. About the only common components between different notebooks are the CD/DVD/HD/Floppy drives (ignoring any mounting hardware or cosmetics you can harvest from the old drive, they are mostly the same), ram, CPU (if removable) and sometimes modem card. Most have unique chassi designs that require a specific motherboard to fit, and even then you have to match the LCD to the video hookup on the mboard's video
    • I think you will face significant problems in the areas of heat dissipation and general cooling.

      From what have seen, many retail laptops seem to use custom heat dissipation schemes. I think we can feel pretty certain that work has been put into these custom schemes by professional engineer-types.

      I also wonder whether you will be able to purchase some of the components and materials used in these schemes for your own use from companies which supply them, rather than having to buy in bulk. They may simply n

  • Cool - a neat BSD laptop. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ColdGrits ( 204506 ) on Wednesday July 09, 2003 @06:51PM (#6403837)
    Might be interesting to buy and have as my BSD laptop - reasonable power and a good secure OS woudl suit me fine for portable computing, and this sounds as though it could be just the thing!
    • Does *BSD have good laptop support? I didn't even consider it... APM and everything included?
      • I haven't done much tinkering with FreeBSD on laptops, (esp. since all the FreeBSD laptop compatibility documentation I've been able to find is at least two years old -- tsk, tsk, boys!) but I've had decent success with OpenBSD, and NetBSD has floored me by working perfectly on just about every piece of hardware I've thrown at it.

        Let me give you an example: about a year ago, I was broke, but wanted a cheap laptop with 802.11b for lightweight scripting and admin work for my web development clients. I spent

  • Great news... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jamonterrell ( 517500 ) on Wednesday July 09, 2003 @06:53PM (#6403851)
    But I'd like to see a lot more of it. If open source software continues to team up with distributers and hardware manufacturers like this they could be well on their way to being viable M$ competition. If little johnny asks his dad for a computer it's going to be a tough job for M$ to convince johnny's daddy to buy him a windows computer for an extra $200(rough cost of OEM operating system license and office license?) when the linux machine boasts all the same features. M$ has ridden the coattails of every manufacturer in the world shipping a license of Windows/Office with every computer they sell for long enough. Now all they need is to work out a few more kinks and get some advertisement going.

  • Motherboard? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by binaryDigit ( 557647 ) on Wednesday July 09, 2003 @06:55PM (#6403866)
    VIA just came out with a new laptop motherboard

    I can't find any info on any motherboard. Everything they have is only about the cpu. Maybe I'm just not seeing it, but can anyone point me to where the VIA site discusses the actual motherboard. I was getting very jazzed thinking that I might be able to purchase a motherboard and use it for some projects (low heat, low power, small form factor, nice).

  • Laptop processor, not laptop motherboard (Score:3, Informative)

    by HotNeedleOfInquiry ( 598897 ) on Wednesday July 09, 2003 @06:57PM (#6403878)
    I read the article and could find no information on buying a VIA laptop motherboard, something I would have a use for, believe it or not.

    I could find no information on a motherboard, just the processor chip.

  • Is is any good? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by roumada ( 684718 ) on Wednesday July 09, 2003 @06:59PM (#6403894)
    With all the problems I have with the VIA chipset in my current PC, I'd hesitate before buying a laptop with their motherboard/processor. I'd much rather see nvidia get around to that nForce mobile chipset-- but that probably wouldnt be targeting the low price side of the market.

    • Yes, it is! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Fefe ( 6964 ) on Wednesday July 09, 2003 @07:30PM (#6404055) Homepage
      Try running Linux 2.5 on an nForce. What, no network driver? Well, who needs one of those these days, right? Or even try running *BSD!

      I own an nvidia graphics card and am happy with it because some lunatics [minion.de] ported the nvidia driver to the 2.5 kernels. But the nforce users are pretty much lost.

      Intel chipsets tend to be well supported as well, but let me mention these: "Winmodem" and "Centrino Wiress LAN". Good luck running OpenBSD on one of those. Apart from that, Intel chipsets are expensive and historically never performed well, especially on notebooks.

      If I had to buy a new computer tomorrow, I would only even consider VIA and SiS. Both chipset companies are usually well supported by Linux and BSD, and their hardware is supported as soon as it is on the market. With Intel, you usually have to wait a few years until the hardware is obsolete and then Intel will release some driver under some non-GPL license (see the e100 driver for Linux, which was only recently released as GPL).

      VIA and SiS may not be the highest performance chipsets around, but they work well, have absolutely no stability issues (except maybe under Windows) and are well supported. And "well supported" outweighs anything else anyway. I'm too old to run around in circles around nvidia or Intel, begging for even a binary only driver to get my machine to work at all.
      • Just don't enable the IO-APIC in any VIA chipset regardless of OS and you are good. For some odd reason under Linux and Windows the IO-APIC causes completely random instability.
        • APIC hoses USB on nForce motherboards too. (Just found that out last week, upgrading my parents to a new Linux box to replace their broken Windows machine.)
    • It's O.K....

      The Cyrix C3 (the processor) is a wannabe 686 without the full instruction set, so you have to do a special step in the install of Linux (I learned that on Mandrake) in order to keep it from running (or should I say locking up) with the 686 version.

      I've also read speed is about 60% of PIII, so the ultimate cost is in the speed/performnce.

      But for a sub $200 PC (which I got that had the VIA C3, with CD, 128MB, and 20GB HD) it was within my cheapskate price range. (=))

  • It might be able to handle low resolution video, but I doubt it could play most of these: High Definition Content Showcase [microsoft.com]
    • I can't find the specs on the site, but I very much doubt that this system can output video at anywhere near 1920x1080 anyway.

      In any case, is there anywhere except off a HDTV broadcast or demos like that one you have pointed to where you can actually obtain video at that high a resolution?

  • Look a little further down this page [via.com.tw].

    I love when they use stock photos with Macs in them for companies selling x86 products. It's like the group that does advertising/site design can't remember that not everyone uses Macs (or it's not important to them).

    Don't get me wrong, I prefer Macs and I used to troubleshoot them for an ad agency. It was amusing when they would do ads for PCs and ask to take photos of Macs & their parts.

  • Nice for the U.S., even better for the rest (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 09, 2003 @07:15PM (#6403986)
    The C3/Antaur may be nive for the US market, but it may be even better for the rest of the world. Because all other x86 manufacturer are US companies (Intel, AMD, Transmeta). Letting a single country control the 99% of all PC CPUs does not feel much better than Microsoft&Apple controlling >95% of all PC OSs. If the US wants to hurt other economies they just need to raise prices for CPUs - or maybe refuse to sell them at all. The C3/Antaur makes the rest of the world depend less on the US.

  • Everything fine but video... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'm sorry, but that laptop only has a savage4 video solution which if anyone has ever used a board based on this chip knows, there is no DRI support, hence no accelerated 3D. Hell, even the older ATI mobility M3/4 has DRI support. That laptop is a useless brick until they upgrade the vid.

    • Re:Everything fine but video... (Score:5, Informative)

      by reynaert ( 264437 ) on Wednesday July 09, 2003 @09:01PM (#6404511)
      Surprise surprise, Via has just released drivers with support for DRI and all the other goodies...

      From: Tim Roberts <timr@probo.com>
      Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2003 11:32:34 -0700
      Subject: [Savage40] Better Driver Out There
      To: savage40 <savage40@probo.probo.com>
      Reply-To: Tim Roberts <timr@probo.com>
      Return-path: savage40-bounces@probo.com

      Well, folks, it appears that my Savage driver is now a LONG ways from the state
      of the art. I am no longer "da man".

      Unbeknownst to me, VIA/S3 have been quietly bulking up their snapshot of the
      Savage driver. Recently, they were persuaded to release their driver to the
      world in source form:

      http://www.linux.org.uk/~alan/S3.zip

      I have not tried to compile this yet, but based on a quick perusal of the
      source code, it looks like it:

      * Supports all of the Savage chips
      * Supports video4linux for videoport/zoomvideo
      * Supports the Chrontel TV part on ProSavageDDR motherboards
      * Supports MPEG motion compensation acceleration (XvMC)
      and (drum roll, please):
      * Supports DRI and OpenGL

      They have made so many changes that it is almost impossible for me to determine
      whether all of my recent fixes are in their code, but given the thoroughness I
      see in other places, I suspect that they are.

      So, if you have the inclination and ability to build from source, it would be
      well worth your trouble to give this a try. If you do build binaries for
      either 4.2.0 or 4.3.0, let me know and I will announce it to this list.

      --
      - Tim Roberts, timr@probo.com
      Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.
  • Are there "standard" motherboard form factors for laptops as there are for desktops?

    I mean, what good is a laptop motherboard if it won't fit in some random "obsolete" laptop case?

    Seems like there are plenty of small "real" motherboards if you want something standard, that works.

    Not a troll, really curious.

  • $800! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rindeee ( 530084 ) on Wednesday July 09, 2003 @07:29PM (#6404053)
    I can buy a Mobile Celeron 1.2GHz laptop with USB2, CD-RW/DVD-ROM, 12.x" screen, 256MB, 25GB, with WindowsXP Home pre-installed for $799 at my local Sam's Club. Whatever VIA does better cost about half what's out there now (and it easily could). A unit equipped similar to the one above with everything VIA puts on a mobo with no OS installed for about $500 would be reasonable me thinks.

  • Yeah, right, but which one????
  • I have been observing that most of the notebooks dont use Nvidia graphic cards. Instead they prefer using Radeon mobile or some cheaper on-board cards. This is problem for me, because I am looking to buy a notebook on which I will install linux. Nvidia has fantastic linux drivers, so I wont have to worry about hardware 3D acceleration, if I buy a notebook with Nvidia graphic card. But I just dont see any notebooks in the market with Nvidia graphic cards.

    How does Radeon behave under linux in notebooks? . Ho

  • Not a very good deal (Score:5, Informative)

    by frovingslosh ( 582462 ) on Wednesday July 09, 2003 @08:53PM (#6404459)
    Glad to see notebooks focusing on Linux, but I don't see this as a particularly good deal in the current market. To support that statement, this spring I bought an HP notebook for $850 after rebates (and I got a load of other free stuff after rebates with it including an inkjet printer and a wireless pcmcia card). I've since seen that same computer and a slighter faster HP model from the same family for $799 (without the free add-ons). Here's a comparison between the two systems:

    HP notebook has a 15 inch screen, VIA a 12.1 display (both have the same max resolution).
    HP notebook has an Athlon XP 1.8 (1.5 gig clock frequency) cpu, the VIA notebook has a much more limited VIA C3 933mhz cpu.
    The HP uses PC2100 notebook memory and supports up to 1 gig. The VIA uses PC133 memory and supports up to 768 meg. Both come with 256 meg standard.
    The HP came with a 30 gig hard drive, the VIA comes with a 20 gig drive.
    The HP uses an ATI video chip and can share up to 64 memory. The VIA uses a Savage video chip that can share 32 meg.
    The HP came with a combo DVD reader/CD-RW writer; the VIA lists the CD drive as optional!
    I'll give credit to the VIA in that it has USB 2 and firewire; the model of HP notebook I'm using does not have firewire (it is an option) and as far as I know USB 2 is not available (it has USB 1.1, 2 outlets).
    Also to the VIA's credit is that it has a compact flash slot as well as a PCMCIA slot, the HP has only PCMCIA.
    Both have a LAN connector, but additionally the HP has a built in modem (handy on a notebook when you travel) and SVGA video out (as well as the normal mouse and VGA out porrts). The VIA has no mention of a modem or a video out connector.
    HP also threw in a free (after rebate) USB floppy drive, neither system comes with a floppy.

    The VIA is much lighter, so if you're looking for a light notebook rather than a PDA it might be a good choice, but as a general notebook you can get a lot more of a notebook than this even after paying the Microsoft tax (the HP comes with XP home). The HP does support Linux just fine; I use Knoppix with it all the time. Only conflict I've seen is with the free wireless PCMCIA card that was thrown in the deal, and the VIA doesn't come with wireless hardware, so if you get a wireless pcmcia card that will work with Linux on the VIA it will likely work on the HP as well.

    So it's good to hear that people are offering Linux notebooks, but I would much rather see HP offer their notebooks with Linux or no OS at all and take what they give Microsoft off the price. Just because VIA is offering a notebook with Linux does not make it a good deal.

  • A perverted rackmount cluster (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ziegast ( 168305 ) on Wednesday July 09, 2003 @09:07PM (#6404546) Homepage
    Just a thought for those who like to build sick beowulf clusters out of white box PCs...

    If you stack the laptops closed side by side, you can fit 20 of them in a width of 19". If the depth of the rack is 30", you can fit 20 on one side and 20 on another. The height would be 5 rack units, but you'd probably need 1U for power/network cabling. You'd also probably want a 1U 48-port ethernet switch and a 1U shelf for a total of 7U. Each laptop comes with its own UPS. Each laptop - sans hard drive - would probably suck about 20W while on - and 15W when in powersave mode. With 40 laptops, that's 6 rack units of 800W with 40GHz of processing power for $32000.

    Each box would boot off of a solid state disk (8MB compactflash or 16MB USB thumb drive) with enough smarts to join the cluster.

    Power distribution would be the only real challenge, perhaps some parallel DC bus that all laptops suck 12V off of.

    Ok, enough of that.

    Personally, this could be my next laptop. I've always looked to Transmeta for long-running laptops, but they've always been to consumery/trendy/expensive for me to consider.
  • Why is this such a big deal, when Dell has been selling a laptop for under $800 for a while in one offer or another. Like this one. [dell.com]

    • Re:What about Dell? (Score:2, Informative)

      by soliaus ( 626912 )
      If you read above, the problem is weight. A comparable sub-notebook that weighs 2.9 pounds is extremely expensive. And yes, weight matters! ----------------- God, is that you?

  • They also have a SiS 550 SoC which is a processor + chipset, basically an entire mobo and processor in one chip at $35 a piece. Add 128mb ram, a cheap 10GB seagate hdd and an 800x600 LCD, and you have around $200 laptop. Such a beast would work well with KDE and Linux and would sell well.

    I know I'll buy at least two of em.
  • ...which means it won't run right with Linux.

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