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Written by Stew
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Friday, 21 December 2007 |
 The UMPC space is hotting up and branching out. With new and varied designs for a full x86 PC that can fit in your bag, bringing about designs of all shapes and sizes, the question for me has always been about usability. The NanoBook is the one that I thought fit the bill best with its full keyboard and longer battery life. Take look at the Packard Bell version, the Easynote XS20-006. Cool potatoes if you ask me. Now Everex have taken the VIA NanoBook reference design and added a wee bit of a twist. Similar to their gPC, both mobile and desktop, they have equipped the NanoBook with gOS, an Open-Source operating system that is purpose-built for cloud computing. Thus, the CloudBook is born.
gOS is based on the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution and has a desktop configured specially for web-based cloud computing. Cloud computing is of course where we use applications through our web browser, not installed on our hard drive, and we also store data on the web, again rather than on our hard drive - but you already knew that of course. Think Google Apps and Gmail in tandem as your productivity applications and storage drive respectively. So where are your applications and data? You've guessed it. In the clouds.
The CloudBook is set to hit the streets in mid Jan 2008 and is based on the VIA 1.2GHz C7 ULV CPU with a 30GB hard drive, 512MB of RAM, WiFi, a card reader, two USB ports, and a DVI out. It's main competition in that same street is the Asus eee which also ships with a customized Linux OS. Time will tell which of these two designs will win the battle for UMPC dominance, but I am inclined to favor the CloudBook. It looks cooler and has a fuller feature set. That there CPU was designed from the ground up to be used in miniature devices. It was born to do exactly that.
Time will tell. By the end of Jan next year, I'm sure we'll have plenty of details regarding the biggest UMPC showdown so far. One thing is for sure, the reported retail price of around $400 sounds good for all.
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Supported by:
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rjquesada
Friday, 21 December 2007
The Cloudbook certainly looks very nice, more than the Eee, but what worries me about it is the C7 processor -- don't get me wrong, I have various C3 and C7 hardware around -- but the problem most likely is related with today's video codecs... As I don't use my C3 or C7 machines for videos, but I have tested them with h.264 at low bitrates and they just don't made it. And a machine like this seems perfect for video playing, is just the size of a portable DVD!! VIA should really invest in a hardware accelerated video decoder for all the popular and recent codecs to be placed directly in the silicon or in the nortbridge as they did with previous chip, that, however didn't have decent support at the application level.
Visitor
Monday, 24 December 2007
VIA C7 1.0Ghz is like Intel PIII 466Mhz.
VIA C7 1.2Ghz is like Intel PIII 560Mhz.
VIA C7 1.3Ghz is like Intel PIII 606Mhz.
VIA C7 1.5Ghz is like Intel PIII 700Mhz.
VIA C7 1.8Ghz is like Intel PIII 840Mhz.
VIA C7 2.0Ghz is like Intel PIII 933Mhz.
Wait for VIA's next generation CPU, called CN. This is said to be MUCH better than the current C7.
Merry Christmass. :D