Taiwan Mobile Computing Industry Adopting Crusoe

plaXion writes, "California's Transmeta Corp said on Monday Taiwan's key computer manufacturing industry was already adopting one of its new chips as a de facto industry standard for new mobile 'Web pads.'" It's a New York Times story, free registration required to read.

No regristration required

[Anonymous Coward]

If you link to partners.nytimes.com instead of www.nytimes.com you aren't required to be registered to view the article.

Re:No regristration required

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, if you use any browser other than Netscape, you don't have to register. It redirects you to www10.nytimes.com [nytimes.com] and you don't have to register. If you use junkbuster, it does the same thing. I wonder why they ask for registration in the first place?

Re:I bet it'll run BeOS

[delysid-x]

Well, we'll see in a few months if it's dead or not... As soon as the free BeER 5.0 version comes out, I'm switching to it as my primary OS and keeping win98 around for games (yeah, i know, win98 is evil, but Ultraedit32 kicks ass for perl coding, plus Xwin is too slow and clunky. I use linux for all my servers tho!)

I'm hoping that Be doesn't die due to their lousy marketing like so many other great companies. (NeXT, Commodore, Atari...)

Re:For those without a NYT account

[paRcat]

Explain how you're on topic.

To me, it looks like you're comparing the current way of getting slashdot moderators and the US gov way of doing things.

Hmm... I just don't get the connection to Transmeta's announcement.

Maybe you should go somewhere else. No one likes reading your crap. Maybe you aren't a moderator for a reason.

Re:For those without a NYT account

[tak amalak]

This is proof that moderation does not work the way it is implemented on /. This comment was moderated Informative because it looks like it has useful information but closer inspection reveals it should be moderated either off-topic or funny. Either way, this comment will probably be moderated Off-topic as well but I am on-topic. As long as I stay on the topic of the thread I am responding to, I am On-topic. There should be dedicated, fair moderators, that we vote for. Look at the US and most other democratic governments. We basically vote for people (representatives) that make our laws and govern us. We indirectly make our own laws and rule ourselves, so we are not a 100% democratic society. We can't be. That would be disasterous and chaotic; anarchy like. We should vote for our moderators! Have online debates, campaigns, voting, etc. Elect our Moderators. This responsibility of moderation falls into the hands of too many people that shouldn't be moderating, period. Heed my words.
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Re:I bet it'll run BeOS

[tak amalak]

Since BeOS is dying as a desktop OS, maybe they should start looking at the ultra-mobile market. WinCE is not doing to well there either, and BeOS looks enough like WinCE to persuade (or trick, whatever you want to call it) people accepting BeOS for their PDA/WebAppliance/NotePad/Thingamabobber. With Linux, Windows 2000, MacOS X, and the miriad of other Unices out their, is there really any room for BeOS?
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Re:WindowsCE v Linux/Transmeta v EPOC/ARM/Palm

[archfiend]

No advantages that I can see. And the Transmeta site is laughably uninformative. As a DSP geek, I'm still waiting to see what's so exciting about their silicon -- it's going to have to compete with ARM. Can they hack it or not?

Re:I bet it'll run BeOS

[haggar]

Yes, since BeOS is the best of them all!

I bet it'll run BeOS

[haggar]

..or BeIA, as the Internet Appliance version of BeOS is now called. Col stuff, and BeOS runs on it no problem! Tested by the Transmeta guys themselves!

Mobile Linux?

[mrogers]

Anyone have links to any more information on Mobile Linux? I read the part about running on devices with low memory and no hard disk, and I thought "Playstation"...

What about Be?

[Lonesmurf]

I realise that at this particular point in time, Be isn't anywhere to be seen.. but neither is Transmeta.

I think that Be and Stinger have a lot of potential in the WebPad arena and they should, by all means, not be counted down and out for the count before the real fight even begins.

As for WinCE, I don't really have much nice to say about them. The windows interface barely works for desktops.. which is was DESIGNED for. I really feel that, as an interface for a WebPad/Palmtop it will fail.

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Re:Linux Torvalds ?

[Lonesmurf]

That's funny, I kind of always thought that it was LinuS Torvalds.

I guess I must have been asleep under that rock for too long.

Regards,
Rami James

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Re:WindowsCE v Linux/Transmeta v EPOC/ARM/Palm

[threaded]

Nah, the two corners are Psion/Symbian and Transmeta/Linux.

Windows CE is in a hole somewhat, grabbing at the ankles of anything it can in the vain hope of dragging them down to it's level ...

Jeez, that's a Troll ...

When can we buy a Crusoe laptop?

[guy_davis]

I am looking at buying a laptop before I go back to school this fall. I am definately underjoyed with the current offerings of x86 notebooks. Does anyone know if a relatively powerful Crusoe laptop will be available by August?

yep thats damn cool

[DeXtR]

so ok not very wise post, but it is perty damn cool!

WindowsCE v Linux/Transmeta v EPOC/ARM/Palm

[MosesJones]

It seems that the mobile devices arena has three distinct threads, MS in one corner with WindowsCE, the old boys of Psion in association with Symbian (Nokia, Ericsson et al) and the EPOC OS, and now Transmeta and Linux.

Its going to be interesting to see what happens as their currently differing market places begin to combine with the mainstream.

What are the advantages of Mobile Linux over EPOC ?

Dangling the carrot.

[Phizzy]

Anyone else get the feeling that Transmeta has based their entire business plan on dangling this low-power, VLSM carrot in front of our nose? Every week, we get some kind of new announcment that makes us go "oh.. so they are still doing SOMETHING". Not to complain, really.. I just want one of these web pads. By summer, transmeta's going to have us begging them to let us pre-register to be entered into a random lottery to see the design specs for one of these things.

and we love it.

//Phizzy

Re:What is Taiwan??

[gargle]

The nyt article mentions the computer industry only once. The rest of the article makes it sound as though Taiwan itself had by government directive unanimously decided to adopt Transmeta chips. The NYTs article sounds more like a Transmeta press release than a serious piece of journalism.

Vague, but boy do I love it

[Raindeer]

Transmeta's announcements are so vague, it makes makes Microsoft's release dates seem to be written in stone. Come on 'key computer manufacturing industry'. Give us names, release dates, specs. OK, enough of the frustration. I think it is inherent to the policy of secrecy that Transmeta had, that we have to wait a while before we see the first products. Compare it to Bluetooth. It is one thing to have a chip. It is another to have something working based on that chip.

The Main thing I would love this Transmeta stuff for is to act like a pc that I can lug around and that communicates with my server to show me what is on the screen there. It would be great to cuddle up in the couch and watch a movie on that screen or go to class and make notes on it and then have them stored instantly on my server at home. Here on campus there is a program called Wireless Campus and I think these things would fit in nice. Espescially if you can hook it up with a Bluetooth enabled keyboard, for the things you dont like to do writing. I am really anxious to see what will be shown at CEBIT in 2 days.

build your own? (Transmeta modules?)

[Tekmage]

So, when will we be able to buy a Transmeta version of what Jumptec [jumptec.com] has done for AMD with their DIMM PC [jumptec.com], and what Cell Computing [cellcomputing.com] has done for Intel with their PNR [cellcomputing.com]?

I've been resisting buying Cell Computing's latest with a view to buying an equivalent Transmeta module for my own wearable [blu.org] dabblings... But I can only wait so long. :-)

What is Taiwan??

[gargle]

What does it mean to say that "Taiwan ... had rushed to adopt the company's low-power Crusoe chips using the Mobile Linux operating system."??

Taiwan is a free capitalist country. "Taiwan" doesn't decide to do anything - individual companies do. Replace "Taiwan" with "US" and you'll see how ridiculous the quote is.

And it seems like a gross exaggeration to say that "The entire island of Taiwan is standardising on these mobile devices using Mobile Linux and Crusoe"? I doubt the "entire island of Taiwan" is standardizing on anything.

Re:WindowsCE v Linux/Transmeta v EPOC/ARM/Palm

[teraflop user]

I don't know about Transmeta's mobile-linux, but I can see one significant advantage of using and embedded Linux (or even an embedded DOS): Microwindows [censoft.com].

It is a compact (100Kb) embeddable GUI which implements the bulk of both the Win32 and X11 APIs. That gives you a very simple port of any software from two environments. Why use WinCE, when you can recompile your apps and avoid the royalities?

I presume TM's Mobile Linux is using a cut-down Xfree86. It would be interesting to see how much of the 32Mb ROM they could free up by using a purpose-built embedded GUI. (I think Xfree86 is great, I'm just not convinced it is the optimal choice for embedded applications).