[Info-vax] OT: For Mr VAXman: Microsoft racist gaffe !

[seasoned_geek]

On Sep 21, 1:09 pm, John Wallace <johnwalla... at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
> If things go right, there ought to be some rather nice (Strong)ARM
> based Netbooks before too long. Now there are a few obvious things to
> bear in mind, like they won't run Windows/x86, but they will probably
> run a nice Linux (Ubuntu Netbook Remixes seem popular) and because
> they're ARM they should have decent battery life, maybe even without
> needing an "extended life" battery.
>
> Maybe soon we'll be back to where HP were back in 2000, with an ARM-
> based PDA-with-keyboard (with 640x240 display), the Jornada 720, which
> unfortunately back then was hampered with Windows CE. Of course any
> vendors who do play the ARM/Linux game will loose any "goodwill" they
> currently get from the Wintel gang... but if the product is right,
> maybe they can make it up in netbook sales (somehow that seems
> unlikely though).

Well, when they can get 7 days of battery life out of a rechargeable
battery, I'll be interested.  Currently the NEO with its funky little
display and burnt PROM word processor can get 7 days on (3) AAA
batteries.  It's not a whole computer or a whole computer screen.  It
was made for writers who wanted something they could take anywhere and
wouldn't offer them the "distraction" of a wireless Internet, email,
or FreeCell.

The Netbooks are down in its price range, but not in its functionality
range.  The NEO could be taken anywhere.  There was no hard drive, and
I believe the keys had a liquid barrier.  The drop-height
survivability of the thing was something like a couple flights of
stairs...hitting each one on the way down.

We won't see significant gains until two things happen.
1)  Software components get configured to write all of their "timed
save" information to a thumb type drive, or other non spinning storage
medium.
2)  "spell as you go" type features have to load their sources on
thumb drives or be turned off.
3)  Liquid ink gets fleshed out.

While it is true that color display power consumption has gone down,
it still eats a lot.  For things like word processing and email,
liquid ink offers the potential of real power savings.  There is only
a little portion of the screen which changes while writing.  From what
I've read on the current liquid ink displays, they require no power to
keep the non-changing screen portions displayed.

Of course, if you are too cheap to get glasses/contacts, and INSIST on
using a text editor in full screen mode with a big font, then your
battery will never last.

The other "consumption tweaks" have a central theme.  Don't spin the
hard drive.

I'm old enough to remember a time, before Microsoft committed criminal
wire fraud calling that task switching GUI layered on top of DOS an
operating system, when notebooks were routinely advertising 8 hours of
battery life.  Once that task switching GUI was added to DOS and
higher resolution color displays were demanded, battery life vaporized.