DISQUS

nvidia demonstrated firefox 3.5 working nicely which looked faster than the browser in this video (which claim it is firefox 3.1). From what I have read firefox 3.5 is faster and less resource hungry. Fingers Crossed :)

But if they sell and can run desktop firefox maybe other desktop browsers will arrive.

I would rather they got rid of the touch pad altogether and took away the wasted space where it is. A touch screen would be a much better way to control the device.

John

To me it doesn't matter a jot if it is CE if nvidia bring along more software like firefox.

At least ce boots quickly, a few seconds, (if a full power off or re-set of unit). It offers better stanby (instant on/off) support and is a very light in terms of resources.

Looking forward to them still. However I am really dissapointed, so far, we have not seen somthing that is Sigmarion 3 sized with a 6 or 7" screen.

http://www.mikenchell.com/handheldpcs/

(if you wonder std machine has a 5" 800x480 screen) and with that bezel would easilly support a 6 or 7" screen with similar aspect ratio).

erm nope.... Snapdragon will ship netbooks running Windows Mobile or Linux so that's already confirmed :)

Lastly a comment for the article writer.

IE that comes with CE often does a not so good job of rendering on mobile phones with WM as it is trying to re-size the page to fit smaller screens.

IE built into CE .net 4.2 does a cracking job of rendering pages that look just like they do on the desktop PC when on a device with an 800x480 screen. However, looks like tegra is going with Firefox which means I guess I won't be using CE's IE very much.

After seeing all the videos and the fact I like and appreciate some of the good points of CE I am looking to get a Tegra based device as soon as they are for sale (though will get somthing else if better performance comes along). So will happilly do a write-up / video.

Another handy thing for CE is almost all Satnav software was designed for CE with Arm cpu's so adding your nav software of choice will be nice and easy. Another reason I really want to see a very slimline 7" netbook device based on tegra as that would be perfect for sitting on a car mount.

John

Last reason they seem to be suggesting CE over Android. Is...

"Also, all video and graphics rendering in Android is done today by the operating system's Java code, a technique he says is too slow for HD video.

"There's no hardware acceleration. It's all software," Rayfield said."

not a lot at all for volume...

To give you an idea.

I have a Windows CE 4.2 (mini-netbook esk device called a Smartbook G138).

It has a StrongArm 206Mhz CPU and 94Mb RAM available (split between programs and storage) this is 5 years old with a cpu that came out 12 years ago. It will likely surprise you to know it renders most webpages quicker than devices with 500Mhz Xscale CPU's and my friends iphone 3g. This same device will actually load simple pages quicker over wi-fi than out Dell mini 9 - ok so it struggles with large complicated pages but heck almost no memory and a 200mhz cpu I aint expecting miricales but the fact it's faster on most basic sites and forums is really quite shocking and a little unsettling.

CPU isn't the be all and end all. And there is a huge diffrence between ce devices with the same CPU. A whole lot more comes down to design of interfaces with the CPU/SOC, Quality of Drivers and GPU acceleration.

Take another example a 4 year old CPU would have a good chance of running most recent games with a good grfx card. But a 4 year old GPU would struggle to do the same with an up to date CPU.

Maybe that kinda gives a better example of some of the points I am trying to say.

Really? Strange that because nvidia said not only was the GPU doing desktop rendering to accelerate the desktop but for firefox the CPU offloaded all the webpage rendering tasks to the GPU to make it even faster... Didn't look 3 or 4 times slower than any other firefox demo I have seen? In fact it looked faster than most Atom based netbooks using firefox.

Ok so the 512mb machine slowed after 4 tabs but this was due to memory not lack of processing, it's a portable unit with a 9" screen and there will be 1gb tegras capable of more tabs.

Nvidia also said they were working to get other apps ported to tegra with GPU acceleration as well.

Can I ask if you have used CE? Not WM on a phone but full CE on a larger screen (and recently)? A lot of people put an automatic block on it because it sits under a version of WM they had on a crap cellphone at some point.

I am willing to bet snapdragon will not manage to implement as good GPU acceleration as nvidia and I am also willing to bet on all the demo videos I have seen so far there will be little or no diffrence to usefullness of final product.

Think you will find snapdragon doesn't do 1080p tegra does (snapdragon said it needed a dual core 1.5ghz version to do 1080p). Shows how good the GPU is and if they really can offload some software tasks to GPU to speed them up there is every chance they will make their units snappier and quicker in use than the snapdragon ones.

John

Firefoc 3.5 has been shown on Tegra running CE (that's a desktop app).

And it looks very fast as nvidia seems to be supporting GPU acceleration of applications very nicely indeed. Which may go a lot of the way to make up for a slower CPU.

Also outputs 1080p via HDMI so I have no complaints with the power of tegra.

I think the reason netbook are getting bigger with bigger screens is the fact Windows Xp, Windows Vista, Windows 7 isn't designed to work well witht he size of screen with the pixel density they packed in.

This is why smartbooks will work better in the 6" - 9" range. They will have an OS with a front end designed specifically to work on a screen that size.

DO people need Microsoft Windows? No not really but some belive they do. Just think of all the Media Players, Satellite and cable boxes, TV's, MP3 players, SatNav's etc.. etc.. Do people go ah but it doesn't run Windows? No! they look at whether the device does what they want it to do.

If you go to the public and don't mention OS. And say look. It browses, It edit's office documents and you can save them so you can use them on your work PC, It plays HD video (and with the HDMI you get 1080p), It will play HD video for the whole flight from UK to US on one charge, It has built in Data capability, Wi-fi, media players, photo editing software...

Forget Games as TBH the market on this size of device isn't huge for 3d games and even if you had Windows on an atom you wouldn't be playing games. However, Tegra has shown it'self quite capable of producing some nice 3D grfx so will be great for some classic titles re-releases.

A lot of us techy's may care what the OS is. Genaral public are not so bothered. It's the half informed ones who belive they need Windows that will not buy them.

I know these will sell well. And when they sell well any gaps in the software available will be very quickly filled.

The tegra devices would do well to position their devices as a crossover between a netbook and a portable media player as it fits with both these tasks brilliantly. And if it can do the other tasks like edit a photo etc.

Nvidia are you listening????? A $199 device that could be used to display RAW photographs would be superb... Photographers the world over would love a small portable device with long battery that would allow them to preview their RAW photographs. And at $150-199 they would buy one to use while out and about becuse if it gets broken it is easilly replaced. Also the ARM machines would be better suited to this as there are no cooling vents for dust, muck or other stuff to get inside.

So Nvidia, You have the tegra, and have shown the GPU to be quite usefull doing 1080p. Get your finger out and get some software that will allow photo editing. But more important than that some image viewing software that will allow previewing of RAW photos. Optomised for the GPU and make it fast/snappy to use...

The ability to play HD and output 1080p will already make it usefull to preview video from the latest crop of DSLR's that shoot 1080p, If you added RAW it would make it the choice for so many photographers. And you just know when it starts appearing in photographers kit bags everyone amateur photographer will want one.

Totally agreed (it's the same reason some journalists still use Psion 5MX's and Jornada 720's - essecially war zone ones etc.)

Though I would be happier with a 7" widescreen with almost no bezel and a touchscreen instead of trackpad. This would mean it would be possible to almost have a device that would fit in an inside coat pocket like my Sigmarion 3 does.

Not sure this is up to date and not so well informed....

Tegra running CE has firefox 3.5 running, Linux also has firefox so how is there going to be any problem updating twitter? One of the comments using a ppc to hunt for bits of webpages.. really?... again firefox! never mind even on a current CE device with 800x480 IE displays nice complete web pages.

I have already seen a version of the early non x86 netbooks (looks like either the xburst or the arm one made by same manufacturer) has been picked up by datawind and they are selling them with 1years mobile browsing built in to the price.

You see I don't want a slightly small laptop with large 6 cell battery to get long useage time. I want somthing small and portable that will last all day. However, I would be very pleased if these devices are not just available through a cellphone provider but can also be purchased retail.

Although tegra's cpu is slower seeing how well firefox runs and hearing how keen they are working to get other big name software working on the platform (with gpu acceleration) I will likely go for one of them.

But it will become even more interesting when 2010 brings dual core cortex A9 machines (well I suppose even more cores are possible).

John

bet you a fiver CE is snappier on Tegra as well :)

but then if you are just talking the snappyness of the UI - my CE devices have always felt very snappy.

but then nvidia showed tegra in an HP netbook case...

So maybe tegra inside???

Would be good as firefox 3.5 seems to run very nicely indeed.

I hope Nvidia remember to include good PIM software and make sure this machines PIM's are syncable to a desktop machine. They are missing a big trick if they leave this out.

John

They may only have 512Mb ram but they don't have a massive heavy OS taking up most of it - the OS if in ram will take very little space - but they may even run the OS directly from ROM which would be great if they make the rom fast enough.

Netbook with XP running 1Gb would likely be a closer comparisson so you may be fine with more than 4 tabs.

Not that I often have more than 4 running at once.

Nice to see nvidia is obviously serious about supporting the platform and seems to be attracting software producers to get on board. Firefox and IIRC Adobe said it was doing full flash for the tegra.

John

Just realised apart from Book digital selling an ARM based netbook called the Smartbook there is a German Laptop company called smartbook.

smartbook.de IIRC

so they could see a challenge from 2 camps :)

hmmm could this maybe be based on the nvidia's arm platform???

Being they used an HP mini in demos?

The razorbook and all other chinese based machines had a samsung ARM9 SOC designed for satnav etc.

Most were 266-400Mhz and the SOC only had a framebuffer with no grfx acceleration at all. They were trying to drive a larger screen than most pda/sat navs would be asked to produce. No wonder it wasn't up to scratch.

There is just no comparision in terms of hardware. Software implementation will have to be slick though.

John

Actually,

Gotta wonder...

I own a device that was called a Smartbook G138 and was made by Book Digital. It is basically slightly smaller than a Netbook, has an ARM CPU, Has a keyboard, 7" touchscreen and a GPRS connection.

If anyone still ownes the trademark I can see a courtcase looming. Surely if you are going to use a name for a product family you would type it into google and see what comes up first.

http://www.hpcfactor.com/reviews/hardware/bookd...

John

Ok so full OS apps may be import....

But if you are looking at 3hrs vs 10 or 12 hours from similar sized battery then it is not such a no brainer....

I am looking forward to their arrival :)

try typing a document on your phone :D

Funny as CISC chips as you call them (x86) actually have more in common with RISC now than the way CISC is meant to be :)

I entirely agree there is no good reason for X86 over ARM cpu's it all depends on software and how it is implemented (speed of the GUI for want of a better description).

there are very few people actually need or use software that is only available on windows on a netbook sized device.

Look at some of the multiple ARM devices announced recently I think you will likely find ARM cpu's will power one of the big Supercomputers soon. And it will likely power more and more Servers (less heat, less power but it will give same computing power ok so maybe over multiple cores' or cpu's but does it matter how it gets there in a server).

Once ARM is in servers and Supercomputers (One of MS's big markets is in server software - you think it won't make a version of windows for them?). So many servers are using Linux of BSD these days a switch to ARM or any other processor architecture is no big deal.

Most industries computer included suffer a 10x force once in a while that just changes everything completely in a short space of time. Computer industry has had a few so far.

IBM Choosing a 4bit intel chip for it's first PC??? when there were multiple choices that were so much more powerfull. Intel were as good as bust till IBM made this strange decision. Another was IBM as good as handing DOS to Mr Gates.

A lot of this is just me thinking out loud but if ARM gets it'self as big in the Netbook market and Big in the Server market (this is where cores optomised for power usage and chipsets to go with fast RAM etc will get developed) then it has every chance of coming back into desktop machines.

With energy getting ever more expensive there actually may be other reasons for ARM making inroads to server markets cost of the electricity is likely to be a big reason.

Some people are saying ah but ARM it's a PDA processor. Nope it is just a processor. And the cortex is quite a jump forward.

Disagree if you like, opinion makes the world interesting but doesn't mean it will or won't happen.

John

Forget the current crop of arm netbooks from china like the razorbook. They are cheap rubbish that should not be on the market. My StrongArm 206Mhz device from 2003 totally outperforms them and not by a small margin.

The new cortex netbooks are looking at a price point of $200-$300 to start and that will be on devices hitting the market Q3 this year and mark my words they will be considerablly more sexy than the current crop. When the mass market is presented with larger, less sexy, less battery etc. but familiar OS and the cortex option which is sexyer, takes less space, runs all day - the choice becomes interesting and familiar OS isn't the only consideration when the other devices look so sexy.

A lot of ARM units look like they will also come with a touch screen (not all but a lot of them) making them smaller for same device and on a 7" screen a touchscreen is a very nice thing to have.

Lots of years ago I used to think a small device with x86 and full windows would be great but after going through 10 or 20 devices from laptops to PDA's to tablets to Handheld PC's I found it was the CE device that actually became the most productive due to portability and silly long battery.

Doesn't take many people to buy them and start using them for people to notice and re-evaluate their requirements.

Actually was quite funny; the number of times I was on a aeroplane and as soon as the fasten seatbelts light was out I was up and working in about 2 seconds while some corporate person was still getting subnotebook out of the bag. Then we hit some turbulence and I had my device off and stowed in about 2 seconds while he was still saving the doc he was working on. Ended up so many times in a conversation where they asked what I was using and every time they actually took device details to look for one.

I am just looking forward to seeing some retail hardware so I can see the speed etc. as it is about time my venerable StrongArm device was moved on to give me a boost in speed.

John