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Technology

Ever Improving Laptop 132

Posted by CmdrTaco from the now-thats-super-bitchin dept.
Every few months I see a new laptop that really impresses me, and Hanno submitted one that does that with room to spare. PaceBlade has a transmeta chip, PCMCIA, irda, USB and all the usual stuff... except that it features a removable ir keyboard, and can be used as a traditional laptop, or as a workpad sorta thing with a pen. Expected release around the middle of the year with a $2k price tag... I'm super skeptical of that price.
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Ever Improving Laptop

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  • I think you got it wrong buddy. We keep Sales people employed. I came to a recent realization with the latest product I've been working on that we really could have used the input of the sales and marketing guys. It may be that the last couple years of my life have been spent largely on something that really didn't make a big difference to most of our customers, whereas something I did in a week or less has been much more well-received. I would have preferred to have spent more of that last two years doing a number of those week-long projects, rather than the other. And marketing might have been able to help point out this focus problem.

  • "<body bgcolor="..." > is deprecated in HTML 4 and later, as it is a presentational attribute and should be implemented in CSS instead."

    That's as maybe, but this page uses neither HTML nor CSS to specify a background colour. The white background on the image, however, suggests that the designers were not allowing for the fact that many users may have a default background colour other than white.

    There are well-designed sites which don't override your default stylesheet, and which still manage to look acceptable against different background colours, but this isn't one of them. The only example I can think of right now is Yahoo!, but there are a number of guidelines a web designer can follow to create a background-independent site, such as using transparent gifs without anti-aliasing, or using contrasting borders around images (the page under discussion would not have looked broken against a grey background if the image had a one-pixel black border).

  • This isn't anything new. My friend had a 486 laptop that was a tablet with a detachable keyboard. I remember watching him play populous on it and drooling. I was wondering why that type of device didn't win over laptops earlier. Are they going to work the second time around?
    Joseph Elwell.
  • Changing your "Window" color in Display Properties: Appearance will change the bgcolor of pages that don't specify a color in HTML or CSS.

    Yes, I am quite aware of that. But if a page is going to use an image whose background is obviously white, I think it should be their job to change the color. Manual color changes kind of defeat the purpose of web pages having colors...
  • The link to "company information" comes before the link to "product information." Now, pray tell, what are they trying to sell? Themselves, or their product?

    Methinks they need to priorize a bit better.

    --
  • They claim it's a first, but there's nothing new under the sun.

    I've got an old tablet 486 that works the same way... detachable keyboard and presto! you can use it as a tablet with the special pen that comes with it...

    'Course, it's got a much smaller greyscale screen and only 25 whole megahertz of power (not to mention a whopping 12Mb of memory). Pretty cool though - I had it mounted to a wall for a bit as an electronic noteboard.

    It was made by Compaq, but I forget its name now.
  • Say, you don't know where you can get replacement pens for them, do you?
  • It isn't. I (the one who submitted the story) had this cool device on my hand, twiddling with it, yesterday on CeBIT at the Transmeta booth.

    It had the polish of a ready-to-market product, with all connectors in place.

    It did not run any applications, only a slide show, so it could still be be a hardware mockup. But definitely not cardboard.

    ------------------
  • I'd like to see how that lovely screen actually looks with something running on it.

    The device I saw had a pretty regular LCD screen running at 1024x768. Nothing spectacular, just a screen.

    ------------------
  • According to the laptop's hardware developer I spoke with at CeBIT, the device contains regular PC-compatible components. He himself is not a Linux-fanatic, but he sees no problem running any x86 OS on it.

    ------------------
  • What's wrong witha regular, full-featured laptop?

    Most of all, they are not ergonomic. I use a laptop as my primary computer and I am sick and tired with the "keyboard firmly stuck below the screen" design paradigm. It forces me to a bad working position.

    You can run a real, OS(W2k/Linux, etc.)

    Same for this device.

    Is it me, or are geeks getting even too weak to carry around a 5 lb notebook...?

    Oh, that old argument again. I did carry a 3 kg laptop with me until a few years ago. I do not have a car as I live in a city with no parking space and a very good public transportation system and also have a bike.

    I was surprised myself that carrying a "normal" laptop with me *is* a major strain, both because of its weight and of its size.

    I am glad that the industry makes subnotebooks. My current laptop is 1.5 kg and I can carry it with me all the time without even noticing that it's there. Taking off half of the weight is a major difference.

    ------------------
  • Only a slide show?

    Yes, only a slide show. As I said, it could still have been a hardware mockup prototype.

    However, I've seen a lot of prototype hardware on CeBIT yesterday and this one certainly was the best one I had a chance to get my hands on. Most of the otheres weren't even allowed to be touched and those that were felt shabby or had obvious manufacturing problems and looked, well, "homemade".

    It was made from the right material, felt like a real product.

    Definitely not cardboard and certainly more than vaporware. But if it will become a real, working product - I have no idea.

    ------------------
  • Well, I wouldn't say you'd have all the benefits of a typical desktop/tower PC...

    Expandability and performance (faster hard drives, memory, video cards, etc.) will be lost mainly due to size and power limitations...

    Currently I feel that the best way to go is to have a really fast desktop and a decent laptop (i.e. not a desktop replacement), because you can have a fast desktop and a decent laptop for the price of a fast desktop replacement laptop.

    I wouldn't mind seeing laptop market saturation either. =)
  • I want a display based on the same tech as in the
    IBM lin-watch. 740 dpi OLED!

    Even just a 15" MONO display at that resolution would kick major arse...I mean, 11100x8140 on a 15x11 screen?! Palmtops at 2220x1480?!
    That would be slicker than owl shit.

    C-X C-S

  • Toshiba Satellite 2800-500 has it, and it's an option on recent Dell Inspiron 8000s. Both available now.
  • There have been many "failures" which have helped to kick things along in the right direction. NeXT or the Apple Lisa are a couple of examples of products that bit the dust, but which helped kick things forward at the same time. This system may also be a failure and at the same time it may be the kick in the head that causes someone else to say, "You know, that thing would have been great if..."
    Don't discount the shoulders upon which we now stand no matter how little some of them may have risen above those before them (every little bit helps).
  • Ahhh, but this will have handwriting recognition, so instead of writing things you can't read on a $1.50 legal tablet, you can write things neither you nor it can read on a $2000 laptop.
  • Like so many things, it does if you configure it correctly. loadkeys, xmodmap, the like. See www.linuxdoc.org
  • I have one of those. It is a Compaq Concerto. It is a nice idea but it has one big problem for a LAPtop. It is hard to balance on your lap :-)

    I like to use my laptop while sitting in a chair (I'm not a native english speaker, I hope that's the right word for the 'sitting device' that I want to talk about :-) It is hard to do that when the screen is seperate from the keyboard and is rather heavy.

    Greetings,
  • The add says it includes a "low power" chip.. This could be an oversight or they could be being honest about both power consumption and chip performance...
  • Toshiba has a new model out with the GeForce2Go
    chip, it's probably the best graphical (=gaming :)
    laptop available right now. According to early
    reviews I've read, it generates impressive framerates for a laptop. Don't remember the exact
    model, it's one of the Satellite 2xxx-xxx models.
    It also has a combo DVD-CDROM-CDRW drive, and the
    pricetag is pretty reasonable (around $2700).

  • http://www.paceblade.com/product/pacebook/images/f eatures_05-scroll_over.jpg
  • I just got a new Micron laptop (GX+) and it has a composite video out. I would like to have two serial ports also. I'm always plugging into machines that only talk serial (GEM/SECS), as well as some printers. I was going to try one of those USB to serial adapters. Anyone have any luck with them?
  • Wrong. Now I can code on my notebook like I can with a desktop - with the keyboard & monitor both at comfortable distances, rather than one or the other too close or two far away.

    It looks too big to be a practical tablet, though.

    --
  • Pi. Nice sig ;-)
  • Yep. If anything they should be making a tidy profit on each unit. Don't forget the largest cost component on a notebook is still the screen - here only 12.1". Similarly specced Celery/AMD 600-MHz notebooks are on the bottom-feeder end of the notebook food chain at this point. Here are the specs from their press release: [paceblade.com]

    The PaceBook comes with a Transmeta Crusoe 600MHz processor, 4MB SMI Lynx graphics controller, 128MB SDRAM, 20GB HDD, 12.1" XGA TFT-LCD display with Windows ME or Windows 2000 OS. Optional accessories include CD-RW/DVD-ROM, wireless infrared remote control and CCD camera.

    #include "disclaim.h"
    "All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak

  • That space bar looks damned short! It annoys me how keyboards seem to get more and bigger "Windows" keys and things at the expense of the space bar. One one keyboard I kept pressing the right alt instead of the space bar.

  • Heyyy, I didn't realize that 'ergonomic' now means 'shrinking the space bar down to three key-widths.'

    Indeed. Bastards.

  • http://www.EmperorLinux.com/kiwi.html [emperorlinux.com]

    Damn that's a cute little computer!

  • This is the real issue, how fast will it run the client? How many RC5-64 KKeys per sec?

    I will not buy before I know!

  • I'm holding off on buying a new PC because I would like my next "PC" to be an affordable laptop with a docking station. Then I could have all the benefits of both stationary and mobile computing without having to buy two machines.

    This will be a bit off-topic....

    No, you don't have two computers, you have one computer and one docking station. I prefer two (or more) computers and no docking station. I dock using something called network!

    When I come home or to the office, I simply connect the small-screened, tiny-keyborded mouseless laptop to the net, close the lid and put it away.
    When I need to work on a project stored on my laptop, I use X and ssh. In essence a seamless docking into my 21"-monitor-fitted floortop.

    This also has numerous other benefits. A file/web-server always on net, scientific background processes and file-downloading in the background... always.
    So wherever there is a machine with X and SSH I can dock my laptop.
    And last but not least, that wonderful distributed.net client for when the CPU is idle. Gotta love them stats.

  • Unlike other notebooks, they have stuck the Insert and Delete keys where the space bar should be, and there is a black grey key there as well.

    Naff keyboard layouts irk me. Why don't they stick those silly keys somewhere else out of the way?
  • Two serial ports. I know. I'm probably the only one that has a use for two serial ports plus the modem. Maybe one of these days the manufacturers of the realtime equipment my wife and I use will switch to USB, but they haven't yet.

    Sounds a bit kinky.
  • I wish they had shown displays of the screen while the product was in use. Rather than just seeing the hardware and the "6 computers" in their different configurations (oooh, you mean if I turn the screen 90 degrees, I get a whole new computer?), I'd like to see how that lovely screen actually looks with something running on it. That might make me a bit more interested. Until that happens, it's just another piece of junk.

    --

  • I think that the video, proc, etc.. are behind the screen area and the keyboard, mouse, etc.. are wireless.. but thats just my intuition.

    JOhn
  • Actually, those IR-connected keyboard is a god-send to our national cancer trend rate.

    Just wait ten years for the prostate cancer to go back down after untold amount of EM-exposures to our testicle area, from laptops used as "laptop".

    Noticed that marketing stop using "laptop" and adopted "notebooks" instead?

  • Compaq also had a laptop in production (can't remember the name/number) with a very similar form factor about 5 or 6 (or more) years ago. I used one and loved it, but it never seemed to catch on.

    Obviously, it was a little more clunky that the machine mentioned in the article (laptops being a little thicker back then), and the keyboard (and pen I think) were corded. But, it worked great and made a great desktop when the keyboard was detached. Not to mention the pen was mighter than the mouse (for some things).

    So, Apple wasn't the first with this idea either. And this one was in production.

    Smilodon
    V V
  • The price doesn't seem that out of the ballpark to me. The bill of material on this looks to be just about the same as a regular laptop, with the possible exception of whatever they are using to do the handwriting input. The IR link to the keyboard adds about $30 to the BOM, counting the extra battery for the keyboard.

    Depending upon how they do the stylus, that could be the main factor on the cost delta from a standard laptop.

  • Actually, that sounds like a pretty good deal. PocketPCs (that's what they're calling WinCE these days) have no hard drive and tiny screens and the newest iPAQ is going to cost close to $600 when it is released. A good bargain laptop may cost around $1500 but a really tiny, ultralight mininotebooks with comparable abilities will usually set you back about $2000. If this machine will really cost $2000, that's just a small step up from an average laptop.
  • Have you tried either Compaq recondition parts or ebay?
    ---- Sigs are bad for your health ----
  • You are so right! I couldn't believe their horse-sh*t about theirs being the first tablet (landscape/portrait) with a detachable keyboard. I still have my Concerto, actually thinking of giving to my son now...let's see if people still have their PaceBlade in 6 years...
    ---- Sigs are bad for your health ----
  • We're keeping you guys employed though. Sales makes the economy happen, at least in this country where we don't barter for the food we eat.

    I was at a sales presentation the other day and everyone was crowded around a guy who had a Palm on one side of a portfolio, and a writing pad on the other side. Under the writing pad was a pressure sensitive pad that transfered his handwriting on the paper to the Palm. He didn't have handwriting recognition software, but if he did - wow. We were all impressed, but I have no idea how much those things cost.

  • [body bgcolor="..."] is deprecated in HTML 4 and later, as it is a presentational attribute and should be implemented in CSS instead.

    As long as websites have matted images at all, the world of 'content' and 'presentation' are inextricably mixed. PNG support is uneven and broken, and few people even know about it. It is within a creator's prerogative to make an image that assumes a certain background color. CSS is an optional component of the system.

    When images depend on background, a [body bgcolor] is not too much to ask, and is a lot simpler than setting up a CSS clause or override.

    We have to face it, there is just no one "right" way to make a web page. You can't just say 'bgcolor is deprecated' and expect every tool that's out there to break the old traditions and bow to the holy new standards.

    "Be strict in what one produces, but liberal in what one accepts."

  • I am writing this from the floor at Cebit. I saw the device yesterday afternoonn and it looks sweet. Super smooth design and definately a cut above other similar devices that out there. Of course the price is high but the manufacturing costs are also high. Maybe in 5 years they will actaully be cheap enough so I can buy one for each room...

    I asked the guys about linux support, they are looking into it but at the moment there is not enough support for the hardware so I guess we better get hacking.

  • It's cute, but it's still a Mac.

    Anyone here know what the current status of BSD on the StealthBarbie is ? Soon as it runs a real OS, I'm up for one 8-)

  • So, it's just like the Fujitsu [beacon-link.co.uk], except that I can already order the Fujis ?

    Why is this thing so exciting ? Are Slashdot doing paid product plugs now ? 8-(

  • buy whatever freakin' mouse you want, if it is USB the mac will support it

    Tricky on a laptop though.

  • $4??? I'll buy a thousand of them for that price!

    :)
  • hi,

    recently build laptops simply sux. the have fun. what for? laptop is a portable computer, not heater, it shpuldn't generate uneeded heat.

    Manufacturers should think about power-saving, not one gigahertz processor. think about laptop from year, let's say, 1996. Pentium200MMX. Give it 64mb ram and linux would run pretty fast. Add current (2001) battery technology and you'll got laptop running 20 hours on cells.

    Please, stop making so monstrous laptops with pentiumIII or athlons. Those are not needed!!
  • <vitale>The daiper dandy! Its BSD, baby!</vitale>
  • USD200 give or take. Try http://www.seikosmart.com. Cheers, Gary
  • Ahh..I guess if you read it that way it does...
    Thanks for clearing things up for me.

  • Not bad price for the crack you are smoking... (Score:3)

    by Dman33 ( 110217 ) on Tuesday March 27, 2001 @06:28AM (#337683)
    A very basic laptop will run you $1500 but any mid-range laptop (Dell Latitiude C600 for example) will run you at least $2k. Did you look at this thing? It has features that blow a Latitude away!

    Granted, everyone is entitled thier own opinions and you have yours, but compared to the current laptop market this is not bad for a unique versatile laptop like this...
  • The website just seemed to have pretty pictures. Not that that's a bad thing, but they need some statistics if they want real interest as a product (else be branded as vaporware). Was anybody more successful than I at finding the thing's stats? I want to know processor speed, RAM, and HDD space especially when using the monitor as a stand-alone tablet.

    If I use this, I need lots of disk space on the tablet since my horrid handwriting is unrecognizable by any software... I'd just save each page as an image or a bunch of strokes. Naturally, I'd need at least 50 pages like that. Preferrably about 150+.

  • One can now put the Monitor on a convenient distance and write on the ergonomically designed IR keyboard.

    Heyyy, I didn't realize that 'ergonomic' now means 'shrinking the space bar down to three key-widths.'
    I can't tell what keys they're putting down there, but I'm sure I'll end up hitting them with my right thumb.

  • Having two serial ports is useful when you have to use expensive software that requires a dongle, or you want to use your laptop as a debugger.
  • Every distro I've used recognizes it (and I've tried all the majors). It normally activates the "K menu" or the Gnome foot menu thing, and I seem to remember it doing something cool with E as well.

  • looks like... (Score:3)

    by wunderhorn1 ( 114559 ) on Tuesday March 27, 2001 @06:07AM (#337688)
    the bastard child of an Apple iBook and my Colecovision...
  • " It is a perfect device for the road warrior sales professional, for doing presentations, for doing conferencing and for a large number of professional applications"

    Excuse me whilst I barf.

  • Compaq made one of these a while back, around 1995 or so.

    I hope they got 'it' right, though. I fear this thingie will suffer from the 'El Camino' effect. In trying to be both a car and a truck, or in this case, a notebook and a tablet, it fails at doing either well enough, so it becomes neither.

    Neat idea, though...

  • Please, stop making so monstrous laptops with pentiumIII or athlons. Those are not needed!!

    Sure they are. I have a laptop with 1400x1050 screen, Windows 2000, 802.11, and a DVD drive. When I'm home, I can carry it around with me and be online anywhere in the house. When I'm at a friends place, I can plug it into the TV and watch DVDs. It takes standard memory and hard disks. I do software development on it including Linux in a VMWare window. It has completely replaced my desktop system. Battery life isn't even a problem. I have two batteries and I can easily go 5 hours without charging them. Today, something equivalent will probably cost about $1700.

    The only thing lacking right now is hard drive speed. It's a little heavy for a laptop, but it has to be to have everything I want.

    My old desktop is going to be a Linux firewall, mp3 server, print server, and file server.

  • Can't speak to the serial ports, but my Toshiba Satellite Pro 4200 has TV out.

  • PNG support is uneven and broken, and few people even know about it.

    Until they get sued. [burnallgifs.org]

  • 8 *MEG* to run a word processor?

    Remind you of Emacs (Eight Megs And Constantly Swapping)? No, wait, Emacs has easter eggs such as M-x tetris [everything2.com] and M-x doctor [everything2.com].

  • A VHS composite video output. This lets you plug it directly into a television set to put on a presentation for a small group, and it's great for playing games with the whole family.

    My laptop has an S-video output connector on the left side. (Sadly, it's only active when I run Windows 98.) I got a 24-foot S-video to composite video cable for $24 at some Yahoo! store; it came with a free stereo audio cable. Or you can make your own adapter; it's merely a matter of mixing the signals on the luma and chroma pins.

    Too bad my laptop's CPU is too slow (333 MHz Celeron-A) to decode DVD or DivX ;-) movies or to render Quake 3.

  • Why can't people learn to use HTML? Is it really all that difficult to state which background color you want?

    <body bgcolor="..." > is deprecated in HTML 4 and later, as it is a presentational attribute and should be implemented in CSS instead. Some users prefer white text on a black background and have their default stylesheet set accordingly. (If you're using a Web browser that crashes when fed valid CSS, that's your problem. Mozilla has come a long way and is already an order of magnitude better than Netscape 4.x.)

    Then I go look at it with Netscape under Linux which, thanfully, does not make everything glaringly white unless it is told to

    Changing your "Window" color in Display Properties: Appearance will change the bgcolor of pages that don't specify a color in HTML or CSS.

  • low powered CPU (Score:4)

    by yerricde ( 125198 ) on Tuesday March 27, 2001 @07:27AM (#337697) Homepage Journal

    Who is willing to have a low powered CPU?

    Somebody who doesn't have a lot of money for batteries and will be using this thing for long periods of time away from AC power. "Low powered" does not necessarily mean "long execution time for a given program." Even then, document-editing programs are generally dominated not by CPU speed but by apparent latency; Transmeta's CPUs are powerful enough to run even the bloatware that is MS Office, but I see a potential problem with heavy use of GIMP filters. If you want to play 3d games, get a fscking game console. If you want to crunch RC5 keys, you don't need mobility; get a standard minitower.

  • He meant he was skeptical it would be that low
  • ...I've been waiting for a tablet PC coupled w/wireless ethernet card! Imagine, being able to order up a DVD & a pint of Ben & Jerry's from kozmo, without even getting out of bed!

  • They are far from the first. Just what the world needs more false marketing

  • Laptops vs. Desktops (Score:5)

    by istartedi ( 132515 ) on Tuesday March 27, 2001 @07:51AM (#337701) Journal

    About 2k, eh? Just about *all* laptops are about 2k. Sound familiar? Desktops were the same way until a couple years ago, then the major manufacturers finally started dropping price. At the time, I remarked that this might be a warning sign of "PC saturation" and I turned out to be frighteningly correct.

    Laptops are still not saturated. As a consumer, I would like to see them saturate. They may be starting to a little. I have managed to find a few laptops in the $1000 range but I'd like to see major manufacturers advertising $600 laptops. That's right about my price point for a good new laptop.

    It's really a shame that laptops didn't clone like the PC did. The race to see who can be thinner, lighter, more ergonomic has resulted in a slew of nonstandard parts. IIRC there were some standardization efforts but they were doomed in any attempt to produce something as useful as the ATX case/motherboard standard.

    Anyway, I'm rooting for a "laptop downturn" to follow the PC downturn. If history repeats itself, a price war will precede it. I'm holding off on buying a new PC because I would like my next "PC" to be an affordable laptop with a docking station. Then I could have all the benefits of both stationary and mobile computing without having to buy two machines.

  • Windows keys and other nonsense. There's a big picture (500Kb) at : http://www.paceblade.com/pictures/foldedopen.jpg
  • Ok, lets tie this in with the earlier story about new funky organic LEDs for a cool display, before we get too excited...
  • http://www.dynamism.com [dynamism.com]

    A bunch of neat little laptops that haven't yet been released in the States yet but are apparently available in Japan.

    Mark

  • At the time, I remarked that this might be a warning sign of "PC saturation" and I turned out to be frighteningly correct.

    I have to admit, I was frightened.

    ;)

  • You should check out the Qbe Vivo. Nice setup with a built in wireless ethernet card and all the extras...
    Check it out at www.qbenet.com
  • Only a slide show? Was this not running Windoze, Linux or any other established OS that would have been easy enough to have any sort of interactive window once the I/O was working?

    Personally, I'm put off by the "the first tablet computer" claim on the web page. In just recent memory is the IBM Transnote- no removable keyboard, but the screen can be flipped around so that it's a tablet computer, it has the usual stuff- Win2k, ethernet, modem, Type II PC card slot, IrDA, USB, etc. About the only problem with the thing is the small 10.4" 800x600 screen (and okay, the power- 600 PIII, 100MHz FSB, etc)
  • There are 2 pads that are very similiar. One is made by Cross, the other Seiko. I have the Seiko and it's definitely cool. It's not a pressure sensitive pad, I don't think it is at least. You have to use a special pen for it to work, a pen with a little sensor in it. It does not have handwriting recognition, but builds a huge BMP of whatever you write on the pad. It's OK. Viewing it on a palm is tough. It's better to view the output on a PC. I find the Palm Portable Keyboard (PPK) a lot more functional. The bad side of the Seiko SmartPad is the pad only works for Seikos apps and only grabs an image. So I can't write text that I want to go into a to-do or whatever...
  • Imagine being able to order up a DVD & a pint of Ben and Jerry's from Kozmo from anywhere in town on any portable device.

    802.11 is nice, but just isn't nearly as versatile as Ricochet. [ricochet.com] I'd rather wireless at 128-250kbps all over town than 2-3Mbps 300 feet from my house.

  • This is of no intrest to a coder. "Wow, now I can code without a keyboard?? cool!" (Followd by repeated self eye poking.)
    ender-iii
  • You wonder if slashdot has stock in these companies or something ...

    In all honesty, I've seen much better and neater products out there that would reall interest the slashdot community as a whole
    And I'm pretty sure that other slashdot visiters have not only seen them, but submitted them to ...

    This is just my 2 cents ... it does make you wonder ...

  • I'd like to see enough room in a laptop for a MFG to put in a PCI slot... think of the possibilities
  • Ok, you're an inventive little son of a bitch. z
  • Because their early machines were total shit and that scared off a lot of people. I'm not going to buy Fujitsu for a _long_ time. z
  • Its probably a cardboard mock-up.
  • http://www.paceblade.com/index2.html
    This is a nice lap-top, but are we expected to accept that because you can turn the screen on it's end, it has 6 functionality modes?! That's a little much for even me to swallow.M
  • Screw that. Get a Toshiba with the new GeForce2Go chip. 16-32 megs of gaming fury in a laptop.

    Almost makes me wish I hadn't bought my Dell Inspiron 4000.

  • I agree, although I find my Speedstep Pentium III laptop works pretty well. It's nothing amazing, but I can easily get through a copy of The Truman Show on DVD at the airport without the battery dying out (it's an Inspiron 4000).

    By the way, if you really want to crunch RC5 keys you should probably get a high-end G4 tower (heavy integer computations). And I wouldn't consider Office "bloatware". Word runs in under 8 megs of RAM. Windows 2000 is bloatware. OS X is bloatware. Office by itself takes up hard drive space, but actually running it does not tax available CPU resources.

  • Dell actually moved the Windows Context Menu key up to the top of the machine (Thank god. I never used that thing).

    Question, though, I use the Windows key fairly often to get at my Start Menu (and it seems to run past full screen apps well). Why doesn't Linux recognize it as a key?

  • It doesn't do any more for me than WordStar used to in 64k.

    Except spell and grammar checking on the fly. And inserting photographs into documents. And running in different languages. And making corrections to dumb user mistakes (like not capitalizing the first letter in a word). And being able to fix itself when someone deletes a critical Office file (that's been around since version 2000).

    Oh wait, you mean you've never tried StarOffice, either? Now THAT'S a memory hog.

  • Having two serial ports is useful when you have to use expensive software that requires a dongle, or you want to use your laptop as a debugger.

    Aren't most dongles parallel? (Not that I'd touch dongled software with a 10-ft pole, mind you). Parallel seems to be the cascadable device of choice (zipdrives, scanners, external CD-R's...) before USB completely takes over.

  • I think you got it wrong buddy. We keep Sales people employed. If we didn't create products that you could sell what exactly would you sell?

    I hate this attitude that infrastructure people (HR, managers, salesman) have where they think they are the company. Without a product, there is not a company. We need your help to make things good, but YOU need our help just to have a job.
  • I agree that marketing and sales are very important. But some of those people seem to think they can do without the creative people and that just is not true.
  • And I wouldn't consider Office "bloatware". Word runs in under 8 megs of RAM.
    8 *MEG* to run a word processor? It doesn't do any more for me than WordStar used to in 64k.
    Oh wait, it does - that paper clip does piss me off more than WordStar's arcane macros did...
  • I think you need to look at VNC [att.com]. It's a simple remote framebuffer protocol, inserted between the display driver and the actual video card. The server thinks it's writing pixels to a local video card, when in fact the driver ships the updates across the network to a remote viewer.

    A benefit of this division of labour is the simplicity of the viewer. There are VNC viewers on many different platforms. [att.com]

    ~

  • It was called the Compaq Concerto. I did 3rd level tech support for Compaq back in 1995 and I can remember being totally in love with that machine. I was amazed pen based computing didn't take off at the time.

    ...Of course I am still amazed people put up with poorly backlit palms when they can get vibrant color...Just goes to show that the majority of people want to pay for crap and nothing extra, thank you very much.
  • The only useful technical data available on the website is in the PowerPoint presentation (~2.6 MB). You have to download it.

    What I want to know is, how does the Crusoe CPU run x86 code (e.g. OS binaries for Intel processors)? Does this require a special build or is the Transmeta chip able to just run Intel x86 native code with its VLIW instruction set?

  • ...and all your redundant "yeah, but does it run Linux?" posts belong to us :-) Seriously, it looks cool, but it's not a new idea: the Compaq Concerto, the recent Fujitsu machine someone pointed out, and (stretching waaaaay back), the GRiD computer. The last of these was where the creators of the Palm (Jeff Hawkins, et al) started out. It was a pen-based, tablet-sized, x86 processor machine that could run DOS, GEOS, and (if prodded with a sufficiently large hammer) Windows (2.X IIRC). Unfortunately it was heavy, had a very reflective screen, and a slow processor to give it a decent battery life. Where this makes to look some advances are in weight, battery life (thank you, Crusoe) and overall usability given a fairly zippy processor.
  • If you haven't fondled one of the new G4 Powerbooks yet, drop off your significant other at the video arcade and head on down to Frys. If you already have too much debt, I suggest leaving your credit card at home.

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