Linux Arm Netbooks?

[craigix]

If nothing decent comes along I'm sure we could downgrade the Pandora by removing the controls and making the keyboard bigger and there you go!

 

[BWoodson]

And the whole "Linux is faster than Windows" bit is a myth as far as I'm concerned. The OS probably doesn't matter for most things anyway.

This is going to greatly depend on the functionality you want. If you use a full Gnome or KDE desktop then you may or may not tell the difference due to you running into the same issue that you have with Windows: bloat. I'm currently running KDE 4.3 on my desktop (Intel Core2Quad Q9400) and it's not too shabby. It would grind my netbook to a halt though! On my netbook I'm running OpenBox as my window manager and it flies like the wind.

But that's just general feel of the user interface. If you're talking about under the hood, actual processing of data then generally both sides with have charts and graphs about how they are better and I don't think it make a big difference either way.

 

[darkblu]

^ Still waiting for that other $199 device promised a year ago

how about the Efika MX smartbook?

still no offical price, but the expected one is somewhere in the $350 vicinity.

 

[Grench]

If nothing decent comes along I'm sure we could downgrade the Pandora by removing the controls and making the keyboard bigger and there you go!

So, it would be Pandora's big ugly sister?

That actually may have some promise... Move to a 10" screen - same resolution, keep the same motherboard - use extenders on the ports to make them fit the bigger base, full size keyboard, keep the gaming controls, put a USB hub in there with a USB-SATA adapter and a spot for a 2.5" HDD and put in TWO of the Pandora's batteries to juice it up.

It would be a 2lb 12+ hour netbook on steroids WITH gaming controls.

Sell the thing for $1,000 a pop with a 500GB 2.5" HDD in it on that USB adapter.

OK, there's your next production idea. Can I have my Pandora now? *DUCK & COVER*

 

[WizardStan]

My experience with Linux vs Windows speed has been all about how the windows behave under load.
In Windows (2K, XP, and Vista, haven't tried 7), if an application is chewing up 100% CPU, the mouse cursor jumps, windows refuse to function, etc, until the CPU frees up a bit.
In Linux (by which I mean Gnome) even if something is running wild with the CPU, I still have no trouble moving the mouse around, dragging, minimizing, or otherwise manipulating windows.
And the "kill window" icon I dropped onto the task bar which allows me to kill offending processes (assuming they are a window) with 2 clicks is very handy, as opposed to the Windows way of opening the process monitor (wait for a window to appear), click stop (wait for a window to appear), and sometimes the process will actually die, although usually it still takes 30 seconds or so.
That is how I see Linux as being "faster" than Windows: if something is throttling the CPU but it doesn't prevent me from working with the window manager, it is good.

 

[mali]

how about the Efika MX smartbook?

still no offical price, but the expected one is somewhere in the $350 vicinity.

Looks interesting, but it's much too late.

Time passed by, thus I bought an 8.9" Aspire One for 179€ in Q1 last year and upgraded to an 11.6" Timeline 1810T a few months later. Any ARM netbook will have to be very cheap and small now, else I'm not interested any more. My 11.6" CULV replaced all my other mobile devices including my 15.4" C2D laptop. Pandora will fit my handheld needs and a 5"-7" tablet could be interesting for couch surfing. I'm a geek, but I won't buy an oversized ARM netbook as it doesn't fit in between.

Tbh, I don't see a point in ARM devices that resemble two year old x86 netbooks formfactor-wise.
I don't see a point in Atom netbooks any more, either. CULV processors run in circles around Atom and yield the same battery life.

 

[SirisC]

Atoms these days are also dual core, not to mention 64-bit.

Yes, newly 64. Only dual I know is N330. But that is a weird concept. "You decided to get a PC. You decide that mobility and battery life is more important than performance. You see Atom can save you money. You try it and not satisfied with its speed. So you get a dual-core Atom. You pay a little extra. You just realise you've lost half the battery time. You moron"

Except that you don't lose half the battery time. A system with the dual core atom will use less than 10% more power for a significantmoderate gain in cpu processing power.

 

[SirisC]

And the "kill window" icon I dropped onto the task bar which allows me to kill offending processes (assuming they are a window) with 2 clicks is very handy, as opposed to the Windows way of opening the process monitor (wait for a window to appear), click stop (wait for a window to appear), and sometimes the process will actually die, although usually it still takes 30 seconds or so.

For faster, more reliable results in killing processes in windows: instead of telling the application to stop, go to the processes tab; right click on the offending process; select either kill process or kill process tree; process is killed immediately most of the time. (this also has the benefit of being able to kill misbehaving processes that don't have a window)

 

[Kangal]

Except that you don't lose half the battery time. A system with the dual core atom will use less than 10% more power for a significantmoderate gain in cpu processing power.

True you don't exactly halve it. Because you've only doubled the processor: the monitor, graphics chip and fan have stayed single and ofcourse they waste power. But where are you getting your figures from? Don't you think that if it REALLY did only waste an extra 10% power to give you the performance boost, that dual-core Atoms would be more prominent? Sorry but in a certain study (mp3 playback?) your figure may be validated but for general use battery life decrease should be (is!) closer to 50% loss than 10% loss.

Ninja'd h34r:

EDIT: I only saw your link now. Its comparing desktop computers. Desktops are not designed to be portable as power is continuoisly sourced from the socket so they dont posses power effecient setups like netbooks.

"The quoted TDP of the Atom 330 is 8W, twice that of the old N270."

Asus EE PC 1201N:
"While the netbook has an excellent performance, it’s draining up the battery much faster than other netbooks. Engadget gets 2.5 hours in their video playback test. This is considerably shorter than most other netbooks out there."

Lenovo IdeaPad S12-2959:
"The included six-cell battery delivered 3 hours and 45 minutes in our video playback test."

Dual/Solo battery life: 2.5h/3.75h = 0.67%
OR
Percent of Difference: 2.5/3.75 = 1.5 = Solo has 50% more than Dual
OR you do the maths!

 

[ldesnogu]

True you don't exactly halve it. Because you've only doubled the processor: the monitor, graphics chip and fan have stayed single and ofcourse they waste power. But where are you getting your figures from? Don't you think that if it REALLY did only waste an extra 10% power to give you the performance boost, that dual-core Atoms would be more prominent? Sorry but in a certain study (mp3 playback?) your figure may be validated but for general use battery life decrease should be (is!) closer to 50% loss than 10% loss.

"The quoted TDP of the Atom 330 is 8W, twice that of the old N270."


Ninja'd h34r:

Yes and your netbook doesn't have memory, screen, HD and Wifi that all eat significant power?

n330 was not popular in netbooks because it's not a mobile chip, it was designed for small desktops.

 

[SirisC]

Dual/Solo battery life: 2.5h/3.75h = 0.67%
OR
Percent of Difference: 2.5/3.75 = 1.5 = Solo has 50% more than Dual
OR you do the maths!

Looking into it, Lenovo's battery is smaller than ASUS' battery so it looks like you are quite right on the laptop usage.

Lenovo: 4.8 Amp*Hour * 11.1 Volts = 53.28 Watt * Hour
ASUS: 63 Watt * Hour

so Lenovo's battery has only ~84.57% the capacity of ASUS' battery.

Dual/Solo battery life: 2.5h/(3.75h / 0.8457) = Dual last 56.4% as long as Solo given equal amounts of energy. (looks like you were right on target)

Percent of Difference: (3.75 / 0.8457)/2.5 = 1.77 = Solo last 77% longer than Dual given equal amounts of energy.

So it looks like I was completely off target. Too bad Intel hasn't started making dual core atoms using the new more efficient cores used in the Z5XX atoms.

--edit--

Yes and your netbook doesn't have memory, screen, HD and Wifi that all eat significant power?

n330 was not popular in netbooks because it's not a mobile chip, it was designed for small desktops.

Screen: both 12.1 inch, ASUS has higher resolution
Hard Drive: both use standard laptop drive
WiFi: both have WiFi, ASUS has n

 

[ldesnogu]

Asus EE PC 1201N:
"While the netbook has an excellent performance, it’s draining up the battery much faster than other netbooks. Engadget gets 2.5 hours in their video playback test. This is considerably shorter than most other netbooks out there."

Lenovo IdeaPad S12-2959:
"The included six-cell battery delivered 3 hours and 45 minutes in our video playback test."

Dual/Solo battery life: 2.5h/3.75h = 0.67%
OR
Percent of Difference: 2.5/3.75 = 1.5 = Solo has 50% more than Dual
OR you do the maths!

My orange is better than your apple, I'm sure

 

[Exophase]

Currently not. But 1.5GHz Dual-core Snapdragon coming soon. Isn't Snapdragon a modified A8 SoC?

No, Snapdragon has absolutely no common lineage with Cortex-A8. It has some similar design elements in the CPU but it was developed completely independently. That, and 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragons aren't out, so I wasn't considering them.

I didn't mean 1GHz A9, I meant dual-core A9 at 1GHz. Yeah I think a 1.5GHz A9 (solo) should be on/near par.

Comparing single and dual core CPUs is apples and oranges - the dual core will only be faster with some applications, and it won't always scale the same way. But it's moot given that there are dual-core Atoms out now.

Firstly, what good is hardware without good software: nothing. OS is pretty important part of a PC, not just UI but performance too. Example, why was Vista cleared off by XP on netbooks? It was because Vista wasn't suitable for netbooks before Win7 release.

We're talking about operating systems, not "software." The role of an OS is greatly overrated.

Secondly I do believe Linux is a lighter system than Wins. I know its a myth. Still, I didn't say it'll be faster than Wins. I should've wrote "Linux is faster than Wins, imho". To justify, LeeNux was pretty decent on 1.2GHz old Atom compared to XP which was always taking an extra moment to follow each command (eg open properties of a file, start up and switch programs (dual-booted)on the same netbook.

Your subjective accounts of responsiveness aren't that important to me. I'm not talking about how snappy a GUI is, I'm talking about impact to the performance of the programs you run on it.

Yes, newly 64. Only dual I know is N330. But that is a weird concept. "You decided to get a PC. You decide that mobility and battery life is more important than performance. You see Atom can save you money. You try it and not satisfied with its speed. So you get a dual-core Atom. You pay a little extra. You just realise you've lost half the battery time. You moron"

But a dual-core A9 is supposed to be attractive over a single-core one? Going dual core doesn't cut your battery time in half, that's kind of the beauty of them. Not to mention, you only use the other core when you need it.

I would say having only one dual core Atom out is better than the zero dual core ARMs out (or at least, I don't know of any in commercial devices yet)

 

[Kangal]

So it looks like I was completely off target. Too bad Intel hasn't started making dual core atoms using the new more efficient cores used in the Z5XX atoms.

Thanks, sorry if I sounded harsh just had one of those moments (the kid in class that always jumps up with his hand up to the question no one was answering)

I agree, dual-core Atom on new platform (Pineview or Pinerail?) would be a welcomed addition. I wouldn't want PC any slower than that, I'm just a power-hungry user. (That's why I want ARM netbooks MIDI "small PC's" to enter the fray and do it soon)
[think of an 8" Atom/ARM tablet with clamp-on swivel keyboard-battery, now we're talking portable]