Dell EEE-alike - using VIA CN or ARM processors for exceptional (8+) battery life

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Dell EEE-alike - using VIA CN or ARM processors for exceptional (8+) battery life

230 points posted to New Product Ideas, Laptops by mandarinka Mar 27

This has been suggested a number of times, but I would like to stress some points, that, in my opinion would make for a unique product.

1. The device must have better-than-laptop class battery life. That means 6 to 8 hours and more under normal (not full) load on a standard battery. The battery unit must be a quality one - it is supposed to retain a significant poriton of capacity over two or three years, not like the Asus/Acer "disposables" :)

2. 9"-10" LCD; Keep the borders tiny, the size of the device should stay as small as it can (size overshoot with small display is a blight of all the new lowend subnotebooks). LED backlight to reduce power draw.

3. Use a real lowpower CPU - the new and supposedly high-performance Via CN (Isaiah) comes to mind.

4. Alternatively, use an ARM core: this could lead to MUCH longer battery life (using laptop-class battery). Cortex-A9 (or Cortex-A9 MPCore) CPU could offer performance on par with lowend x86 CPUs.

5. The chipset of the computer should have some video processing unit integrated for low power usage (= long battery life) video playback. A mobile chip capable of this (aside of being an integrated GPU and ARM11 CPU) is nVidia APX 2500; supposedly able of playing 10hours of video from a cellphonne battery. It is also 720p resolution capable.

6. OS capability: Windows CE, WIndows mobile, or Linux (good choice: provides easy portabiltiy of open-spource applications).

The result would be PC class minilaptop suitable for work/browsing/entertainment/e-book reading etc... for extended period of time in schools, planes, trains, or generall on the go.

okroger104 Mar 27	You know, Dell can offer more than one device catering to different segments of the market.
mandarinka Mar 27	True.
mandarinka Mar 27	Also, in the case x86 CPU was used, use plain windows or linux for operating system.
champ Mar 27	While I promoted this, Windows CE would be a Bad Idea(tm). My father-in-law has a cheap-o GPS. It kept rebooting every time you told it to re-route or detour. I thought to myself "Gee, that reminds me of how Windows crashes and reboots all the time!" Flipped the thing over, and lo and behold, it said "Windows CE" on the back. Go figure. By the way Windows CE shortened is WinCE or wince, which is what you should do when you see a product running it. Also, Intel has the new Atom CPU, which are VERY low wattage -- 0.6 to 2.5 watts! No Joke! That means fanless! It also beats out the Isaiah in wattage. In general, an EEE competitor would be awesome. Don't forget the 3 things that makes the EEE so popular: 1: It's cheap! 2: It's small & light 3: See #1!
fargo Mar 27	these EEE aka netbook wil be flooding the market with their low price and ms wants to get in on the money and will. offer xp for an os as there is way to little ram to support vista. this may push the end of xp way past the June 30 date
zmjjmz Mar 27	Here are a few other guidelines I'd like to suggest: a) Use a small Linux distribution that can boot toram on a low RAM computer (like DSL, but you'd probably want the 2.6 kernel). This will make it insta-fast, which will be great, because most long battery life-ultra mobile-super cheap computers aren't the fastest things in the world. [On the other hand, you'd have to ask the Knoppix or DSL developers if you can a) Boot toram from the disk and b) Save settings from a toram session] b) Use the cheapest SSD drive with decent amount of storage. By the time you get around to making this (if you do >.>), a 16GB SSD drive shouldn't cost too much, and you can obviously offer higher storage but more expensive models. c) Make it user friendly. It really shouldn't be hard to customize a lighter version of Knoppix (which is pretty light already, but not light enough) to be more user friendly, and there are some lightweight WM's (or you could heavily customize twm or vtwm) that are user friendly. Or you could try the Sugar interface, but based on my recent try of an XO it's pretty heavy. If you offer the Knoppix/DSL toram OS, Windows, which AFAIK can't boot toram being that huge, will seem like a slowpoke on that machine. Users will go for the Knoppix/DSL toram one. [For those of us who are less geeky, toram means that you copy the OS into the RAM and run it from there. It's freaking fast.]
mandarinka Mar 29	As for Intel Atom, it is quite good solution, but I believe it might have sub-par performance - it is an in-order execution design. Via CN might very likely be faster with similar power figures. This however, remains to be seen. The Windows CE option is only for the case an ARM CPU would be used (the nVidia or Cortex cores). However, linux would be better, it is highly modular and has large open-source, i.e. easy to port aplication base.
mandarinka Mar 29	I would rather see a mainstream distrubition rather than DSL, because they tend to be more polished. For example, I have a KDE desktop environment on openSUSE 10.3, the installation size with swap space being only about 1GB. It's without openoffice, however, that would be 300MB more. RAM usage in KDE under 128MB. DSL is to much advanced-user-oriented. Its harder to setup, to install third-party software in etc... (sorry for double-post, language check trouble... ah, is it the D in DSL?)
mandarinka Mar 29	Eee PC has low build quality, worst of which is ineffective cooling, with a fan that is hardly even useful (can't pull the temperature down enough under stress). Also, the battery is reported to rapidly lose capacity, resulting in as little battery life as low as 20 minutes after just three months of use! Please use better batteries. (sorry, now I have pushde through everything I wanted.)
zmjjmz Mar 29	Now that I think about it, the XO's WiFi and Battery would be much better. The XO has a reported 12 hour battery life, although I suspect that's due to the slow processor... nonetheless, their WiFi setup has a very large range, and that would definitely be optimal. Although I do agree that DSL isn't user friendly, it could be made user-friendly by using a different interface/Window manager and applications (the Eee uses IceWM, albeit highly modified).
mostlyharmless22 Apr 25	Hmm. Hadn't heard about the Eee battery issues. I've only read good things about them. I played with one for a week and the fan is not an issue because of the SSD. Seemed to be excellent build quality but Asus' tech support was horrible. If you webmailed them a question, they would come back with something random that had nothing to do with the question you asked. Talk about your language barriers! Dell may use foreign phone tech support but they seem to understand and speak english. Dell's customer service is what prompted me to wait and see what they come out with. Hope it's good!
thefirstm Jun 4	I would not buy any computer that had a VIA chip in it, and I would probably not buy an non-x86 PC. How about the Intel Atom processors?
champ Jun 5	Here it is: http://gizmodo.com/393815/exclusive-dell-mini-inspiron-their-first-mini-laptop Other stuff I've been reading says its going to have the Intel Atom, but no confirmation. Looks nice, but I think its going to be too price, as is the new 9 inch eee. The winning combo is going to be a 9 or 10 inch screen, and $450 or less.

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