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Technology

Fiva: Transmeta Sub-Sub-Notebook 93

Posted by CmdrTaco from the now-thats-pretty-sweet dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Tech Report has an article on Crusoe-powered devices. Plenty of pictures, with details on offerings from Casio, NEC and Sony, among others. These things are really tiny and the batteries last forever! I want one." The fiva is especially sharp. Extremely small: could be very useful.
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Fiva: Transmeta Sub-Sub-Notebook More

Fiva: Transmeta Sub-Sub-Notebook

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  • check out what Microvision has to offer.

    Novel. Expensive. Too cumbersome for Real Users to bother with. Panel displays will stay cheaper and easier for the foreseeable future.

    the equivalent of a 19" monitor

    The 19" monitor claim is silly -- it indicates how much of the retina the display covers and nothing else. The other facts tell a different story: 800x600, 32 shades of grey, 60Hz. Blah.

    input might be harder - i don't know of anything but chording keyboards

    Getting users to want chord keyboards should be about as easy as getting them to want retina-projection HMDs. Good luck.

    what's the down side to sub-1lb devices?

    Battery power is directly proportional to battery mass. A laptop's ruggedness varies with its weight, as well. The 12" screens and full-size keyboards that people insist on aren't weightless. I can't think of any laptop under 3 pounds that has been any kind of commercial success. Mainstream laptops have been roughly the same size and weight for the last 5 years, despite whatever advances in miniaturization.

    just because the current state of the art makes really tiny devices uncomfortable doesn't mean it'll always be that way.

    I didn't say it would. My point is that the offerings featured in this story -- the Fiva et al -- are just more of the same. (There's not a single novel input or output mechanism in the lot of them.) They have all of the Libretto's strengths and weaknesses, with a trendy new CPU inside.

  • Crusoe processors are only available in BGA. When you consider the smaller size and pins over the entire chip rather than just the perimeter, I doubt it is that much larger.

    Of course, SA's are probably available in BGA as well. I'm kinda surprised that they could get by with just 144 pins on one.
  • BLINK tags don't exist anymore.
  • Casio's web site in Japan has a press release [casio.co.jp] describing the ports:
    The unit is loaded with diverse I/O standards, including compatibility with a 100Base-TX LAN, iEEE1394, USB, a CompactFlash (CF) Type II card slot, a PC Type II card slot and a v.90/K56 Flex high-speed modem....
  • Example: you input the letter "T" and it throws up a list of the 10 most recent "T" words you have used, and if you input "R" it will show the best 10 guesses for "TR"

    Which is similar to how the dictionary-based input for SMS writing on Nokia mobiles works. I was pretty amazed when I first used that. And I swear, I was able to write "linux kernel hacker" with just 19 key presses (spaces included)

  • Two reasons that I can think of:

    1. Cost -- those things cost $120 and up for PCMCIA versions. Even on-board, it's going to make the cost per unit significantly higher.

    2. Battery life. 802.11 based products are known for killing your battery life. Tests done at my university showed they dropped battery life by about an hour for most notebooks (with those "4 hour" batteries).

  • A long while back, IBM (and a few other companies) had laptops with butterfly keyboards. Essentially, it was a full sized keyboard that folded into the laptop when closed, and unfolded when open. Aside from the obvious mechanical problems that it might have faced, it was a good idea.

    Perhaps, as devices get smaller and smaller, we should consider such options. Or at least something else. I am not partial to voice control, as it gets very annoying in crowded offices and/or anywhere that isn't your private, tiny little sector.

  • Half their possible audience? Hardly!

    Try about 5% of the possible audience. 95% of the people out there who might buy something like a webpad are also the same people who can't figure out how to use AOL.

    Hardware vendors aren't making them because there isn't enough of a market for them. And as I said before, although I'd like to see them, it isn't going to happen until it is economically viable, which it currently is NOT.
  • This one interested me the most:
    A "Mobile Linux" operating system is used to cut costs. This particular device is apparently designed specifically to connect to AOL, not just any ISP.
    AOL running on Linux, interesting.
  • The point is that there are hardly any ports.
  • Maybe because that's not what all of us are looking for? Remember, 95% of the desktop market is stilled owned by Microsoft. Why would a company invest huge amounts of money in making a product that only ~5% of the desktop market is likely too buy? What _I_ would like to see, and where the money for a large company would be, is making a device such as this that lets you run the OS of your choice, no matter if it is Linux or Windows... or BeOS or BSD Unix... etc.

    ALG
  • I'm sorry - forgive me o great powers - I haven't been following slashdot often enough.

    What makes me say this? - The last thing I read about the Crusoe and Sony, on Slashdot, was that Sony was abandoning the chip. Yet, the last picture of the article features a Sony VAIO..... presumably running on a Crusoe.

    Why?
  • Good point. I was just quoting, so I didn't really look at the mistakes.

    Sorry 'bout that.


    ____
  • When are the people who post before they know what they're talking about going to stop and read?

    Now that would be sweet.


    ____
  • Are these sub-subs available without having to pay the Microsoft Tax?

    Also, I recall reading that the TM-5x00 series of Crusoes has been "optimized" for MS-Windows while they also support "other x86-based operating systems", incl. Linux. Are they also "optimized" for Linux, or was that just market-speak for x86 tuning? Can the processors (the Code Morphin' core) be upgraded by customers themselves, if necessary or desirable?
  • Everyone is lauding the Crusoe for power consumption, but that's not the only important feature of the Transmeta architecture. The other, arguably more important feature is the divorce from backward compatibility. If they start encouraging you and I to write code to the Crusoe Instruction Set, then the next processor has to support that as well. Just like Intel still supports i8086 instructions.

    Their only option for giving you what you want would be to provide the Crusoe analog to the Intel interpreter when they start producing 2nd generation processors, but that devolves into having to ship massive ROMS and memory-hungry code with their hardware. Does anyone really want that?

    -
  • this is really interesting. you've managed to take the same observations about problems with existing sub-notebooks and sub-subs other /.ers have noted, duplicate them, and reach some bad conclusions. you're missing three points, as i see it:
    sure, tiny screens with low resolution suck. but that doesn't mean small(er) devices are a bad idea. check out what Microvision [mvis.com] has to offer. it'll be a while before their stuff is cost effective, but they can (and do, for the military) already suply the equivalent of a 19" monitor, in really tiny space.
    input might be harder - i don't know of anything but chording keyboards (which i can't comment on, never having used one) that give long-term usability. dictation systems arn't nearly good enough, graffiti-type entry is useless for entering documents or terminal stuff. any other good ideas?
    any one last big issue with the above post is this bit:
    ...manufacturers have discovered that people don't want laptops much below 10"x7"x1" or below about 3.5 pounds.
    huh? i can see the issues with shrinking size below about what you said, but weight? what's the down side to sub-1lb devices?
    just because the current state of the art makes really tiny devices uncomfortable doesn't mean it'll always be that way.

  • personally i'm quite a big fan of the small QWERTY keyboard on the RIM Blackberry Pager [blackberry.net]. this keyboard looks ludicriously small and awkward until you realize that you're meant to use it with your thumbs it makes a lot of sense. i see no reason why thumb keyboards couldn't work for these very small devices. it beats graffiti too as you can use it with just one hand if necessary.

    - j

  • I also hear that MacOS is capable of displaying pictures in color, Something that is not capable in any other OSs.

    Can anyone confirm this? If it is true it would be an amazing and innovative advance for the MacOS. I guesse the people at Apple realy are thinking diferent[ly].

    -Andy

  • QWERTY has the advantage that it's instantly understood. Even if you had never seen a keyboard in your life, it would be instantly obvious what you had to do. (although you'd wonder about the order of the keys.)

    Chording keyboards require learning curves. The people who buy these things aren't in 4th grade any more. They don't want to have to learn to write again.

    -Andy

  • The post you responded to was a troll. When a post is a called a "Troll" it's not a reference to a creature living under a bridge. It's a reference to draging fishing lines behind a boat because they're trying to get people to respond.

    -Andy

  • Wow, dynamism.com has to be the coolest rich geek store I've seen. Now I just need to get rich :(

    I could do with one of those 50" plasmas.. and a sony glasstron.. and the vaio GT1.. and everything else they sell. =P
  • C'mon the fish

    If your not from the UK you won't understand that:)

  • These pooters are not as small as they look.
  • Um ... shouldn't it be:
    bool posttroll(string articlesubject){

    if (articlesubject == "transmeta") return true;
    if (articlesubject == "Linux" || "Linus") return true;
    if (articlesubject == "Microsoft" && "conspiracy") return true;


    return 0;
    }
    Perhaps code-morphing can fix your earlier revision? :)
  • I want the one with built-in DVD. Too bad its going to be out of my price range...
  • Do you mean "trawl" or have our friendly american cousins been making up words again?
  • Sorry I am clearly shit at my own language. Next time I will get of my arse and look at a dictionary before posting.
  • Tests have proven that the Transmeta Crusoe processor only gives about a 33% boost to battery life. In contrast, the 600MHz processor performs like a 333MHz Pentium II at low power mode. Definetly not worth it.
  • it seems as if the idea of wireless LANS for surfing the net is a popular selling point when it comes to these Crusoe-powered devices. At one point of the article I got the impression that the author though that this technology had a larger downside than an upside.

    If that is the case than why are these new devices coming out with wireless networks cards as standard equipement?

    So who's right??

  • Portable devices are bad(tm). You lose them to easily. Expensive things should be really big, like cars, houses and boats.
  • Oh really [thinkgeek.com]? Make that most companies...
  • Shoulder pains from carrying around 8 lbs? Man, you definitely are a computing professional!
  • The whole open source community is a communist plot, don't you see?

    Definition B as defined by Webster: communism - a system in which goods are owned in common and are available to all as needed Any company using open source should be aware that once you are in, you are never out of this ideal. If you are going to trust the work of others to run your company it is only right that the street go both ways.

  • "(This is) not the work of a wise man, but only a player and a scribe with a dangerous gambling habit. ... That is a risky mix that will sooner or later lead you to cross the wrong wires and get shocked, or even burned to a cinder. On some days you will be lucky and only break your fingers and make a fool of yourself. But luck is a very thin wire between survival and disaster, and not many people can keep their balance on it.

    -Hunter S. Thompson

  • I am so very tired of carrying around this 5 pound battery sucking laptop, and finally we are goind to have transmeta products that weigh more than vapor!
  • Unfortunately, keyboards are still the best form of user input right now, especially for people like me who write very slowly and type very quickly. Voice input and graffiti / handwriting recognition are not really solutions for folks like me. I think we need word recognition / completion; it should start guessing your words as you start to type / write.

    Example: you input the letter "T" and it throws up a list of the 10 most recent "T" words you have used, and if you input "R" it will show the best 10 guesses for "TR". Now that's useful.
  • I belive Dvorak keyboards are actually easier once you get used to them.
    I would use one except for the fact that everywhere ppl use good 'ol QWERTY.
  • That was a rumour and a formal press statement was issued by Sony to that effect.

  • Re:Portable Devices (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Are the Tranmeta style chips going to show up in portable devices, such as Palm Pilots?

    Probably not. The Motorolla Dragonball (used in Palm Pilots) and the StrongARM (used in iPAQs, IIRC) still kick the Crusoe's ass for low-power computation. Crusoe's advantage is that it can run x86 instructions -- something that so far hasn't mattered in the PDA market.

  • "The world largely ignored the Toshiba Libretto and the Sony PictureBook, presumably because small keyboards and small screens do not make for happy users."

    I guess your world must not include places like Japan where both have been/are quite popular.

    Very happy with my picturebook's 1024x480 screen and 90% keyboard, fwiw.
    --

  • For all the fawning and drooling in the linked article over how small and light the demonstrated devices are, the world doesn't want a 6", 2lb notebook. The world largely ignored the Toshiba Libretto and the Sony PictureBook, presumably because small keyboards and small screens do not make for happy users.

    Miniaturization has happened quite nicely without the Crusoe, and manufacturers have discovered that people don't want laptops much below 10"x7"x1" or below about 3.5 pounds.

    I do own and use a Libretto. It's amazingly portable (roughly the size of a VHS tape), and it turns a lot of heads, but I can't say I'm a fan of 60%-size keyboards or 640x480 screens.

    The primary benefit of the Crusoe is its power savings, which has little or nothing to do with miniaturization. Why not put Crusoes in real laptops, which people actually use, and realize the power savings there?

  • Why can't the hardware vendors make what we are all looking for...
    It was meant to jokingly mean your average /.re. But really I think most net appliance vendors are really missing half their possible audience. On one hand you have potential customers such as your aunt Sally who really doesn't need a computer but wants access to the internet and email. They might buy one of these devices (with the ubiquitous MSN rebate). On the other hand you have much more knowlegable home network people that want some cheap cool devices that they can put in their kitchens or living room that give them access to the Internet and other machines on their network. So no, i'm not J. Random consumer but I am a person that is more likely to buy a cheap Internet appliance if i can work it into my world, and I am much more likely to buy one than your average consumer, and I'll bet there are a lot more people like me than you think.
  • Actually, Fivas have been available in the U.S. for a while. I bought my -102 from Mobile Planet [mobileplanet.com] several months ago.
  • It should be know that the Fiva has been around for a while now, though only available in Europe and Japan -- Version previous to this one used the Cyrix MediaGX/NS Geode -- therefor it's battery life won't increase much becuase the Geode used before is low power -- though performance should get a big jump.
  • I've been trying to find out what the reflective TFT screen on the NEC with the obscene battery life is like. Has anyone got any comments after extended use or, failing that, a decent play?
  • ...at $3400 for the DVD model I'll leave it on the store shelf, thank you very much. Machines with that kind of functionality need to come down a HELL of a lot more in price before they become really appealing.
  • Shoulder pains from carrying around 8 lbs? Man, you definitely are a computing professional!

    I challenge you to carry an 8 lbs laptop plus the necessairy gear (ac adapter, mouse, etc.) in a normal should-strap laptop-bag, all day long, for a week. You *will* have problems.

    ------------------
  • For those who might still be complaining that we can't buy these things yet.... we can.

    The Fujitsu Crusoe model (called the Loox), can be bought from here [dynamism.com].

    Remember this baby comes with an option for a built in DVD drive....I'll take two, anyone care to buy me one? *grin*

    -Julius X
  • Its great to finally see some hard proof of real Crusoe-powered devices.

    They all look very impressive, I personally am taking a bit of a liking to the NEC device. It looks to fit a fairly decent ultraslim formfactor, and has a reflective screen, which would quench my thirst for a laptop I could use in bright light, such as outside. The fact that it has an 11 hour battery life definitely doesn't hurt either.

    I can't wait to see these make their way to retail.

    -Julius X
  • 3. Compatibility. Maybe your company is using a system other than 802.11 -- or a different flavor.
  • "Or Morse Code? You could do an entire user interface with a single button!"

    About 20 years ago someone pointed out it is easy to detect and distinguish between a high-pitched and a lower-pitched tone. You could talk to a robot with a code made of a high and a low tone. You could use whistling, humming, or whichever sound-making method you wanted to use as long as the tones were regular enough and different enough to be recognized and distinguished from each other. I believe this concept was published before R2-D2's more advanced example of robotic speech...

  • Actually, you don't need 4 lines of CPUs. You can have one CPU do all of those, They can have an option where you configure the CPU at the bios. and set the CPU type, optimize for this function or that function. etc etc. Load this architecture and boot this OS. I can't wait till I can have x86, sparc and mips all on the same chip. Mmmm

  • The Crusoe's not really aimed at the PDA market. It's way too overpowered and as energy stingy as it is, it doesn't come anywhere near todays PDA processors.

    The Crusoe TM 3200 - 333mhz (Transmeta's most "mobile" processor) consumes ~15mW [transmeta.com] of power in it's most power conservative state (deep sleep idle) and averages 1.4W (mp3 playback) [transmeta.com] (both of these figures include the Northbridge chipset power consumption as well).
    By comparison, an entire Palm Pilot Pro (using a 16mhz Dragonball eats ~26mW in it's idle state [berkeley.edu] and consumes ~160mW [berkeley.edu] when running CPU intensive applications.

    While you could leave your Crusoe on the shelf and outlast a Palm, It wouldnt take very long for 1.4W to drain a pair of AAA batteries once you start doing something with the unit.
  • Within MacOS, you can assign any key to be any key.

    <rant mode="intemperate"> I am continuously amazed about the number of MacOS users who think there is anything interesting or innovative about their operating system. Guess what? Earlier this week I needed to remap my keyboard, so I pulled off the shelf a copy of the X Window System User's Guide [amazon.com] and read the xmodmap documentation. I bought that user guide in 1988 (eighty-eight), but my memory is that xmodmap goes back a lot further than that.

    MacOS is not interesting; it's not clever; it's not cool. It's the operating system for people who prefer glitz to function, image to substance -- the operating system for poseurs, advertising account executives and 'web designers'; the identifying badge of the know-nothings and contribute-nothings of the electronic age.

    Go out. Buy yourself a copy of In The Beginning Was The Command Line [amazon.com]. Become enlightened.</rant>

  • For all the fawning and drooling in the linked article over how small and light the demonstrated devices are, the world doesn't want a 6", 2lb notebook. The world largely ignored the Toshiba Libretto and the Sony PictureBook, presumably because small keyboards and small screens do not make for happy users.

    The world may not, but a substantial number of people in it do -- enough to account for a lot of sales. I adore my Libretto 100CT, which runs Debian with KDE2 and has on occasion run Oracle 8 server in order to astound customers in presentations. I adore it precisely because it is so small and light - you can stick it in a coat pocket or a bag and have it with you at times you didn't expect or plan to need it. So if a cool idea or the solution to a bug just occurs to you when you're out on a hike or whatever, it's there. It isn't a hassle to have it with you.

    And these new, small Transmeta machines are just what I'm looking for for a replacement. I don't need shedloads of horsepower, but more battery life would be very nice.

    Sure, a keyboard with different pitch takes some getting used to, and you make a few more mistakes at first; but the advantage small size more than outweighs the disadvantage of different keyboard pitch.

  • int posttroll(string articlesubject){

    if articlesubject="transmeta" return true;
    if articlesubject="Linux" || "Linus" return true;
    if article="Microsoft" && "conspiracy" return true;

    return 0;
    }

    Let's go over this again. If you don't want to read it, don't read it. If you don't want to see an article on a subject, adjust your preferences!

    Have a nice day.


    ____
  • So where's the substantial amount of expansion ports, as mentioned in the caption?
  • Um, yeah. Most current cell phones available here (Sweden) are equipped with a piece of software called T9 (by Tegic [tegic.com]), which does right about that. It's not smart enough to be history-sensitive in the way you describe, but rather works against a fixed (but extensible) dictionary. It works fairly well in practice, and helps you write SMS messages using only 11 or so keys...
  • I've been lately going to my local CompUSA to drool over the itty bitty Crusoe-powered VAIO notbook (the one with the built-in camera.)

    I'm elated that there's multiple vendors out there planning to ship Crusoe laptops. The only thing keeping me from purchasing the VAIO (besides lack of money) is the proprietary sony memory-stick bullshit that I refuse to support.

    Can't wait to play with one of these.
  • not that it impacts your point any, but the statement "...equipped with (usually) Intel's SA-110 (StrongARM)..." isn't quite true. Hitachi's SH-3 and SH-4 line has good market share, especially in WinCE (er, whatever it's called today) devices. MIPS chips have some embeded market share, too. but the winner, by virtue of its inclusion in the Palm series devices, are the Motorola 68K series chips. these are relatively low power consuming chips, but are slow (the same arch powered the pre-PPC macs and per-SPARC Suns). but IIRC, all these are smaller than the Crusoe chips i've seen described.
    incidently, i really like the StrongARM chips, and would like to see them gain lots of ground. but they're not there yet.
  • Great googaly moogaly!!! People are already dumping Windows on the beloved Crusoe!

    WHY GOD WHY???

    Seriously though, it does amaze me the way Casio demos the Fiva running Windows. What a total waste of quality...
  • Current PDAs are equipped with (usually) Intel's SA-110 (StrongARM) line of processors, the fastest of which runs at only 233mhz

    The old StrongARM processors (talking about 2-3yrs ago) ran easily overclocked at 280MHz, but you cannot compare the clock speed of a StrongARM with the clock speed of a x86 chip. My 8MHz ARM machine easily outstripped a 66MHz x86 all those years ago, and the intelligent elegant ARM architecture still retains that advantage today. The 200MHz RISC chip can easily play full screen video, what more do you need in terms of power from a laptop?

    Phillip.

  • Offhand, I really don't know how big StrongARM processors are physically

    144-TQFP if i remember correctly. as you probably know, that's a hell of a lot smaller than a 474-PGA. do PGAs even come in 474 pins? i thought you could only get that many pins in a BGA.

    anyhow yeah, the StrongARM is much better suited to Palm-sized applications. what has surprised me however, is how very few devices with MIPS processors have been on Slashdot. i guess MIPS isn't as "cool" as Crusoe, but MIPS already has plenty of market share in the embedded market, and you've be suprised to see how many "Internet Appliances" are built around the MIPS processor (usually with Embedded Linux as well) such as the ATI Set-top Wonder [ati.com] reference design.

    - j

  • Voice input on a PDA would be anoying at best.

    Most of the situations I find myself using my Palm in I wouldn't want to be talking to myself. Either I'm trying to be quiet, or Its too noisy to speak in a normal tone. And frankly, I don't want everyone around me to have to hear my appointments and TODOs.

    Also, everytime I hear this idea I get the distinct vision of a bunch of business people standing around. One of them says "Ok, So it's agreed. We'll meet at Three O'clock." Then they all whip out thier PDAs and say "New!...Apointment!...Friday!...Three!...Oclock!.. .PM!....Save!" in turn.

    If the PDA was smart enough to listen in to thier previous conversation it would already know what time the meeting was. This would be extremly cool. But otherwise Voice-PDAs would be anoying for everybody but the blind. Who would love them.

    Why not more advanced hand-writing recognition? It's be less proccessor-intensive and it'd work better with the current note-pad metaphore.

    Or Morse Code? You could do an entire user interface with a single button!

    -Andy

  • If/When I ever get around to buying a Palm, I'm seriously going to consider getting FITALY software for it. FITALY [twsolutions.com] -- which was mentioned here once, I believe -- is a keyboard layout designed for one-finger typing. It's laid out based on what letters you'll most commonly need, by analyzing the English language. The most commonly typed six letters are in the center, for example, and much of the time, the next letter you need to type is right next to the one you just typed. Seems like a very viable solution to me. No voice-control to make you sound like lunatic on the subway, no chording to make you feel like a Borg.

  • I'm with you on this - I want my sub-notebook, but I want it running *nix, I could care less about windoze.

    As I understand it, the crusoe 3k series is fully 32bit. It doesn't work well with Win9x because of all the legacy 16 bit code that survives in that line of software. The 5k series has extra hardware to handle the 16bit code, making it more complicated and expensive. Bad news is that all the notebooks are using the 5ks, because they generally ship with win9x (ME in this case, same junk.) These chips should run *nix fine - they just have extra stuff that isn't needed for any true 32 bit OS.

    This is why things like the AOL device are Good Things [TM] - if those things take off production on the 3k series should ramp up, and the speeds should improve, and that could conceivably lead to 3k based notebooks with better cost/performance ratios for those of us that don't need 16bit code support. I know, I'm dreaming ;^), but without the 3k based appliances this is impossible - with them it's merely improbable. The 3k may be objectively less expensive in every way, but economies of scale will destroy that advantage if they can't sell them in quantity.

    I spent about half an hour a couple days ago looking for notebook vendors that are Linux-friendly - Emperor Linux [emperorlinux.com] sells a variety of laptop/notebook sized 'puters, with optimised Linux install (choice of Redhat Slack or Debian IIRC, custom kernel and X install, all hardware set up and working) and they have the Sony/Crusoe model available. Anyone know anyone else doing this?



  • Within MacOS, you can assign any key to be any key.



    Seth
  • The pictures of the keyboards for the devices featured in this story show double (at least!) key assignments on most keycaps. Are these the "AZERTY" keyboard layout you refer to? I never heard of this arrangement before, although I once tried the "dvorak" keyboard arrangement.

  • The most exciting aspect of these devices, for me, is that manufacturers are finally returning to well-laid-out (and properly tinted, except Sony) keyboards! At least, I think they are... It's nice to see they're about the size of someone's hand, but I would have preferred to be able to see where the Ins/Del & Backspace keys were.

    Just a writer's two cents' worth....

  • Or Morse Code? You could do an entire user interface with a single button!
    That's not funny. A company we contracted with once to do barcodes on namebadges provided us with a device that sat on a daisychain between the computer and the printer. It had a parallel cable to plug into the printer and another to plug into the computer.

    It had two buttons: one black, one white, that - I swear to god - you had to use to navigate through a complicated set of menus, which it would print out on the printer. Configuring the thing for one use took roughly ten sheets of paper, if you printed on both sides. And if it got unplugged, well, you had to do it all over again.

    The next time we wanted barcodes we had an OLE component developed in-house (the office was all Microsquash). As it stood, the one year we used it we had to develop a DOS-based application to get Access to talk to the thing correctly.

    --sjd;
  • you're right, but until enough "regular folks" (people that would have some pretty interesting explanations of what a "chording keyboard" might be) buy these things and discover that the shrunken QWERTY is just not ideal, they'll be making them shrunken QWERTY.

    until people understand why they need a different keyboard, they will not want one. that's the main interface, that's your fallback - what are you going to do if you don't understand how to make it do your bidding?

  • Before I go on with the actual reply, I just though I would trow in the Transmeta Reality Check. Here it comes :

    The Transmeta Reality Check : Any processor can run any other processor's machine code.

    Any processor (ie. not just the Crusoe). Case in point: one can run SNES rips of cardrige on any pc no problem. All is that needed is an interpretor or a JIT. Now, JIT's are not that hard to understand : think of them as second generation interpretor that don't suffert from a x10 speed hit. Quickly put, they work as on-the-fly optimizing compilers. The catch is they are even harder to write. So please people, stop expecting that Transmeta will write dozens of them in the upcomming year, it's not happening.

    We've all seen the reviews of the P4's lackluster performance, until apps are recompiled... well, Transmeta CPUs, in theory, doesn't suffer from that problem!

    It doesn't suffer that problem because it suffers a greater `problem` : JITing is not exactly free (performance-wise). Otherwise you could think of Intel writing a JIT to convert from P3 code to P4 code on the fly and distribute it along with the chip.

    Remember, the rationale behind the Crusoe is to save transitors by delagating to a software module the task of breaking-down the ridiculously complex x86 machine code.

    And of course less transitors means less power used, less heat produced, less pricey chip, no need for a blow fan, and some silicon-space left available to embeed a pci bus chipset. All very good things for a sub-sub-portable processor.

    Yes, one could argue that the extra transistors could be used to boost the speed of the chip, ultimatly compensate for the cost of the JITing and pull ahead of the speed race. I wonder weither some back-lab at Transmeta isn't trying to do just this.

    -

  • How useful are these things? Tiny keyboards, very very small screen sizes, Windows ME.
    I guess these are great for showing off, beautiful for long airplane flights since you can put use them to play games such as freecel, chess or minesweeper. You could defenetely use them for email, but how expensive does it get to be wirelessly connected all the time? (I guess you would not be able to connect wirelessly from a plane, since your network card may interfere with the plane's navigation systems. Reading your email on your way to work while using public transportation may work for some, but if you take subway you still can not use the wireless network. Using these to browse the web and read email while you are driving should defenetely be considered a felony and be punished with the full accordance of all the applicable laws! (as if using cell phones while driving is not enough!)
    To do anything more usefull than play games and read email you need larger input/output devices. Of course I knew a guy who could use his calculator to browse the web, but the hell with those people.
    How expensive are these things?
  • You need help getting that hook out of your mou
    th?

    I don't get it. Cause he is a fish? or he is fishy?

    It sounds like a flame, please explain.


  • Perhaps the posting should have read: "The fiva is especially sharp. Extremely small: could be very difficult to type on."

  • I have had a fujitsu lifebook b2130 for about a year now. It's a 3lb subnotebook with a 10.4" screen. The keyboard is 90% of full size. It's handy to be able to carry it anywhere and the keyboard doesn't cause me many problems even when I use it for hours in a row (which I often do) (although the touch screen helps with useability a lot!). However if it were any smaller it would be a serious problem for long term use. The only use for a smaller system would be as a carry-everywhere PDA replacement, but they're still way too big for that and don't have anything close to instant-on, it takes about 45 seconds for the system to resume from hard disk. By the way, it should be possible to install linux on any of these systems, assuming someone can bother to support their more esoteric hardware devices. :>
  • Of course it runs Windows. They want to sell to 90% of the population, not 10%. It will be a while before the general population is ready to deal with the Logon prompt of our favorite OS. They want instant on use. There is little concern for security (untill after it's stolen). Other OS'es have a learning curve for most people. Palm for a long time only sold well by word of mouth. Someone showed someone else how easy it is to use without a keyboard. Most people are too afraid to spend a few hundred bucks to see if the UI will work properly without being shown first. Showing a product that you can take on the airplane that isn't too heavy and works just like your desktop is a selling point for most people.
  • I've been lately going to my local CompUSA to drool over the itty bitty Crusoe-powered VAIO notbook (the one with the built-in camera.) I'm elated that there's multiple vendors out there planning to ship Crusoe laptops. The only thing keeping me from purchasing the VAIO (besides lack of money) is the proprietary sony memory-stick bullshit that I refuse to support. Can't wait to play with one of these.
  • QWERTY hqs the qdvqntqge thqt it's instqntly understood

    Oh no it doesn't. I spent just one week in Frqnce writing HTML using AZERTY insteqd, and now I'm spending qll dqy long switching A's qnd Q's qnd the likes. You know whqt the worst thing is? AZERTY is qctuqlly better thqn QWERTY, especially for writing HTML. So when is someone going to release keyboqrds specificqlly written for certqin jobs? I wouldn't mind hqving one with q reqlly big < qnd > on it...

  • The Gateway Appliance (Score:3)

    by smartin ( 942 ) on Monday November 27, 2000 @09:59AM (#598171)
    I looked at this thing on the weekend, it looks ok if a little flimsy. The screen is pretty small and the gateway guy that I was talking to was unable to answer any of my techical questions. The UI was pretty and obviously there was no sign that the underlying O/S is Linux. Why can't the hardware vendors make what we are all looking for, which is a slick, cheap Linux based device that can run your standard internet applications locally and is extenisible through both Java and as an X terminal on your home network!

  • Re:Very sweet, but (Score:3)

    by Hanno ( 11981 ) on Monday November 27, 2000 @03:03PM (#598172) Homepage
    How useful are these things? Tiny keyboards, very very small screen sizes, Windows ME.

    Here's my experience: Very, very useful.

    I used to own a Toshiba Libretto 70ct and now have a Fujitsu Lifebook 112, both are very tiny laptops. The first was 850 gramms with about 90 minutes battery time, the second is around 1200 gramms with usually more than 3, sometimes 4 hours battery time, which is a lot if you look at the battery's size.

    They both are "regular" PC-style laptops and I have Windows and Linux installed on them. Both offer substandard performance compared to "normal" laptops.

    However, portability is more important to me than raw performance. The Lifebook is a Pentium 233 and it is enough for me to write Perl, PHP and Java stuff while on the road.

    I don't have a car and don't have to, as I have a bike and there is an excellent public transportation system in my city and affordable trains in my country.

    Without a car, I found myself *carrying* my laptop with me practically all the time. And believe me, 3 kilogramms (or usually more these days) is a *lot* once you carry it all day long.

    And it's not just the weight, the size of these devices is also a problem. A regular laptop requires a special, rather big protective case. My Libretto literally did not need much more space than a big pocket calculator, my Lifebook still fits in a very small bag (originally made for photo gear) that I can wear easily while riding my bike.

    I now smile at my colleagues who sigh about their heavy laptops, while I can easily afford having a 160 MB Ram, 12 Gigabyte laptop with me all the time, running my most important applications at decent speed. And yet it's so small that people ask me all the time how I like Windows CE. :-)

    A device like that, even more lighter and with longer battery time, I couldn't ask for more.

    The size of the keyboard is a problem, though. I touchtype, but that was impossible on the Libretto and the Lifebook is just the minimal size keyboard one can touchtype on, at least for my fingers.

    It's similar to a PDA, though. Once I arrive at my destination, I usually have a normal keyboard and a large screen waiting for me, anyway, so that the laptop's input devices is mostly used on the road.

    ------------------

  • Re:Fujitsu Models now on sale! (Score:3)

    by Royster ( 16042 ) on Monday November 27, 2000 @11:21AM (#598173) Homepage
    Now that is one sweet looking laptop. That wide screen makes a whole lot more sense than a 4:3 size screen. That is one machine that might wean me from my 2 lb. Mitsubishi Amity.

    For those who say that no one wants a small keyboard, phhhhhhht! Since I carry my laptop every day, I want low weight and long battery life over full size and desktop speed. There certainly is a niche market for these things.

  • Re:The Gateway Appliance (Score:3)

    by blaine ( 16929 ) on Monday November 27, 2000 @10:20AM (#598174)
    Why can't the hardware vendors make what we are all looking for...

    The simple answer: because you are living in a fantasy land.

    Who do you think you are referring to when you say "we" in that statement? The general populous? If so, you're sadly mistaken.

    I would like to see devices such as the one you've described, and so would you. But guess what? J. Random Consumer DOES NOT. And quite frankly, the number of people who are willing to buy such devices is so low that it wouldn't make much economic sense for the company to make them.

    What's that? You thought the company was making the products out of goodwill towards men? Oh, thats too bad... you see, companies exist for a purpose: to make money. They do not exist to supply you with whatever gadget strikes your fancy. Thus, they are not in the habit of making such devices just because a few tens of thousands of geeks want them.

  • Re:Very sweet, but (Score:3)

    by watanabe ( 27967 ) on Monday November 27, 2000 @10:49AM (#598175)
    Here's my perspective on this: I use a 19" monitor all day, usually two at a time. I do not travel with my 19" monitor -- it's too heavy. I used to have an 8lb laptop, 166mhz pentium, 32 megabytes of RAM. it was slow, it ran windows 95, and later windows 98, and most importantly, it was too damn heavy. I get shoulder pains just thinking about it.

    Now, (3.5 years later), I have a 3.5 lb laptop, with a 166mhz pentium chip and 240 megabytes of ram. it's about an inch thick, and it cost me $800 used. I love this thing! I use it for word processing, e-mail, ssh, and the occasional web browsing. It's the same size as a pad of paper. I'm not writing a novel with it -- it's not my work computer. I just use it for basic functionality.

    The transmeta laptops fill this need for me PERFECTLY. They're small, their battery life is (conservatively) double the length of my current laptop's, and they're at least twice as fast. I might get to put some games on this thing. But, if I don't, and I only word process, that will be fine. Why? I just use it for basic functionality. On a plane, when I'm carrying it on my back, the damn thing better be light. And, if it's got wireless networking, that doubles the effectiveness. But, if it doesn't have DVD, or even a CD-ROM, does that matter? No, because I just use it for basic functionality. My 2cents.

  • Portable Devices (Score:3)

    by webword ( 82711 ) on Monday November 27, 2000 @09:50AM (#598176) Homepage
    Are the Tranmeta style chips going to show up in portable devices, such as Palm Pilots? Why or Why not?

    John S. Rhodes
    Industrial Strength Usability -- WebWord.com [webword.com]

  • even better laptop here (Score:3)

    by lkchild ( 166476 ) on Monday November 27, 2000 @10:53AM (#598177)
    OK so I know its hideously expensive, and its probably the eqivelent of the toaster telephone, but I *want* one sooooooooo bad....

    take a look at the vaio GT1 - 600mhz crusoe built into a DV camera - 2.42 lbs, 17 hours battery, 6.4" 1024x768 display.

    no I dont work the people selling it, and its probably completely impractical, but its got my geek factor going (and it would be a perfect base for a wearable). If only it didnt cost 4000 dollars :(

    http://www.dynamism.com/gt1/index.shtml [dynamism.com]


    --
    Lauren Child, lauren@laurenchild.net [mailto]

  • Re:Small devices (Score:4)

    by Zerth ( 26112 ) on Monday November 27, 2000 @12:02PM (#598178)
    > We'll meet at Three O'clock." Then they all whip out thier PDAs and say
    > "New!...Apointment!...Friday!...Three!...Oclock!.. .PM!....Save!" in turn.

    Or even better, imagine a room of students working on projects, muttering into microphones. Then, from nowhere, a naked pledge runs across the room shouting "Shutdown! Quit without Save! Shutdown!"

  • Small devices (Score:4)

    by Anoriymous Coward ( 257749 ) on Monday November 27, 2000 @10:00AM (#598179) Journal
    My fingers are not the fattest I've ever seen (I knew a chap once who had difficulty on a full size keyboard[*]), but the getting a full qwerty keyboard in an area the size of my hand doesn't seem like a good idea to me. Few input devices are as fast or familiar as a full sized keyboard, but when you get below a certain size, other methods must be considered. Graffiti is cool, but I have difficulty forming the characters with consistency (it requires more loopiness than my normal handwriting), and after a while my hand starts to ache. Voice input has potential, and it looks like these devices have the horsepower to do it. I haven't played with chording keyboards, but people who use them tend to rave about them.

    [*] he had difficulty with other things, too, like breathing, and walking up the two flights of stairs to our (elevatorless) offices.

  • Hopefully, but... (Score:5)

    by dizee ( 143832 ) on Monday November 27, 2000 @10:26AM (#598180) Homepage
    Buzzword: Mobile Internet-capable devices.
    This is what the Crusoe was designed for. From Transmeta's webpage, speaking about the Crusoe TM3200, which ranges from 333-400 mhz with 96K of L1 cache:
    • "The TM3200 is the ideal engine for a new class of mobile Internet devices weighing just a pound or two. With up to 400 MHz in performance, the TM3200 is designed to allow a full day of web browsing on a single battery charge."
    The current crop of Crusoe processors comes in a 474-pin grid array. This is pretty big if you think about it. This is basically a socket A processor. And when you think of how little room you have in a device such as a Palm Pilot, the comparitavely huge size of the Crusoe processor(s) might present a space problem.

    Current PDAs are equipped with (usually) Intel's SA-110 (StrongARM) line of processors, the fastest of which runs at only 233mhz. Offhand, I really don't know how big StrongARM processors are physically, but I recall them usually being soldered onto the board and being pretty small, like the size of an old 80487 math co-processor or smaller. In sharp contrast, Crusoes are available from 333mhz-700mhz. Crusoe would definitely provide an infusion of power into the PDA market. PDAs with 400, 500, even 700 mhz processors in them combined with 256MB+ memory have have the potential to be really powerful, but also really expensive.

    But I guess we all know that already. Unfortunately, I cannot justify spending $500 on something I probably would never use.

    Mike

    "I would kill everyone in this room for a drop of sweet beer."

  • True power of Transmeta! (Score:5)

    by 2nd Post! ( 213333 ) <gundbear@pacbe l l .net> on Monday November 27, 2000 @10:08AM (#598181) Homepage
    I suspect that the true power of Transmeta is yet to be unleashed!

    We've all seen the reviews of the P4's lackluster performance, until apps are recompiled... well, Transmeta CPUs, in theory, doesn't suffer from that problem!

    What would be really powerful from Transmeta is a whole line of different CPUs targeting different markets, but able to run, relatively efficiently, an identical codebase! It's just another level of abstraction, one below ASM this time.

    Imagine 4 lines of Transmeta CPUs;
    a DSP like CPU handles streaming really well, targeting games or entertainment

    an ultra low power ultra efficient device for sub-portables and handhelds

    A power-hungry long pipeline high Hz CPU targeting the Intel mainstream

    A middling class CPU that is more efficient than the Power Hungry beast, but more powerful than the ultra-low power, for mainstream CPU use

    Then imagine the code that, compiled once, would run on all 4 classes of machines! Then code could be written and compiled against, say Java to be silly, and then retranslated and recompiled per architecture to best take advantage of each system. The true, real benefit, however, is the time shifting code independence. Something compiled 3 CPU generations ago will be able to run efficiently and effectively on a modern CPU, because of code morphing, where both Intel and Apple has had issues whenever the userbase needed to be moved over from one architecture to another.

    Geek dating! [bunnyhop.com]

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