ARM netbook with Android undercuts Atom models

...those specs seem awfully light to me. A 4GB SSD is small. A 533MHz processor sound unappealingly slow. 128MB-256MB of RAM? You have to be kidding. Yes, a lightweight Linux distro will run just fine in that with lightweight apps. Many standard apps just won't or will be painfully slow. As much as I like small and fast and long battery life I just can't see myself buying one of these. For the same money you can get the Sylvania I have and I think it's a much better deal.

This is certainly a "first step" to prove an ARM netbook can be manufactured and made to work.

US$250 might be a bit steep, but remember, we're geeks. "That can't be done" is not a statement of fact, but a personal challenge. Also, $250 is not a bad price for expanding one's skill set into a new architecture.

Quoting:A 533MHz processor sound unappealingly slow.

I bet you never bought AMD processors then in the past? Mhz doesn't say anything about how much work a processor can do. A 2200 Mhz AMD Athlon XP does the same amount of work as a 3100 Mhz Intel Pentium of that same era. And that's comparing x86 to x86! ARM has a completely different instruction set. I would not be surprised that an ARM at 533 Mhz could do more work than a 1 Ghz Atom processor, especially considering that x86 is quite a verbose and cr@ppy instructionset compared to other architectures.

As to RAM, I've been running Ubuntu 8.10 in a virtual machine on 256MB or RAM and it runs fine. 256MB of today's RAM is nothing compared to 256MB of old fashioned SDRAM. Today's RAM is much, much faster. Old 133 Mhz SDRAM could transfer about 1 GB/sec. Modern DDR2 RAM does about 16 GB/s and DDR3 up to 48 GB/s.

Sander -

I would bet the Ram concern is more one of virtual space than memory speed. 256MB of ram holds, well, 256MB before it needs swap space. Swapping between RAM and SSD might be better than between RAM and HD, but it's still swapping and -- that's a pretty small SSD to begin with.

True. But I tried Ubuntu 7.04 on a machine with 256MB of SDRAM and I am running 8.04 with 256MB in a virtual machine. The latter is much, much faster. Of course CPU speed has to do with that as well. The old machine had an 1 Ghz Pentium and the machine hosting the VM has an AMD processor comparable to a 3 Ghz Pentium, but still, it's very fast. If it's doing a lot of swapping then I'm not noticing it.

I would expect the new Ubuntu 9.04 to do even better since it's optimised for netbooks and thus low RAM conditions.

@Sander: Most netbooks have >=512MB of RAM. I doubt Ubuntu is optimized for less than that.

I have run AMD processors and I do understand that the frequency of the processor is not the only thing that determines speed. Heck, my 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 chip in my netbook is hyperthreaded and can benchmark at least as well as a 2.4GHz processor that isn't hyperthreaded. Again, that is an x86 to x86 comparison. Having said that I doubt the differences in architecture can overcome a 3:1 frequency difference.

I also agree with dino. The memory worries me. The small SSD worries me. Both of those worry me more than processor power.

Well, only one way to find out. Go ask for a review unit :-D

If they aren't targeting the US market I doubt they'd provide me with a review unit. Pity. I would like to try it just to see what it's like.

RAM is extremely cheap, so I wonder why you would bring any product to market with less that 512 MB, or for that matter even 1 GB. It's not as if it would add a lot of weight to the machine.

I would think that heat and battery life would be far more of concern than just weight.

Didn't Xandros have problems with updates turning the Eee PC 7xx's into bricks because 4G couldn't hold all the updates?

I've had an ARM A8 with a few hundred meg of RAM at 600MHz running Firefox and a spreadsheet program. Gus, I've not gforgotten about you on that score!

Waiting for the FedEx dude/dudette (Hey, arrived while I was making this post!) and the wifes new 12.1" Dell w/Linux is here. This will be Mrs. Panik's main workstation. She really wanted a netbook but with the hours she spends working that wasn't a good choice. This is almost as portable and much more comfortable to use for a long session than a netbook.

We will let you know how this product does. Maybe the Colonel will get the netbook?

This device IS underpowered no matter which way we slice it we all know this... people will want to watch hulu vids or other hd content and it wont be able to handle it theyll blame it on "linux" or android thats bad . And the price is rediculously high imho. It should be atleast $100 cheaper than the advertised price. I will buy one once their in clearance and on ebay for 100-150 just to muck around with.

I think the $200 laptop, whether it's a netbook, pumped-up smart phone or full-sized portable, is something that the consuming public wants to see happen.

The notion that a laptop should cost $1,000 yet be almost a disposable hunk of technology that you use until it breaks and then pony up another $1,000 to replace it -- that ship has sailed and is far in the distance.

Even $500 is too much to spend on a product that can't be easily and cheaply fixed. But $200? I think that's a price point where the machine can last two or three years, and then you can get another one.

The fact that cell phones are subsidized by the carriers is the main reason that many users get a new one every year or two. Even if the phones are "free," you end up paying full price and more over the life of your service contract.

So free netbooks with mobile-broadband service are something that is going to be big, but a cheap device than anybody can use with Wi-Fi (or wired Ethernet or any other kind of connectivity) is something that fills a consumer need for something ultra-portable, usable and cheap.