as even Atoms run really, really hot. Even if that entire thing inside is a giant heat sink and the processor is severely under clocked...it would just get too hot with no fan. So even though part of the description eluded to PC hardware I hope they go with an ARM SoC.

Also, I'd like to point out hardware has come to such a point economically as to be completely irrelevant. Even if the graphics and capabilities can't go much passed ~2002 era, that's still Morrowind era. That's enough to run the source engine or an old version of the Unreal engine. In other words it would be "good enough" for a budget "console" (I'm just assuming for the pictures they're not trying to compete with existing consoles).

The thing that would really cost time and therefore money would be software to run the thing. Will they go with a lowest bid slap-it-together with duct tape and bailing wire? Or will it be relatively bug free and usable? If it were me I would pick the easiest to mass produce cheap hardware of sufficient quality...and spend 90% of the time polishing the software and how it works. But I have no reason to think this "Atari" would do that. Technically I don't have much reason to think they wouldn't either.

Come to think of it the closest similarity to this thing would be the PlayStationTV. That had an existing library games, and an online store, a household brand name associated with it, and a major multi-national corporation backing it. And it was on clearance for $20 at one point. And yet it never really caught on. Ya, I think the odds are working against them.

You're forgetting one minor detail: post-purchase support. With the iPhone locked down to be one specific way consistently it's much, much easier to support. Less time per support call means more calls-per-hour and fewer over all calls. Support just eats into profits, doesn't make the company any money ya see. So anything Apple can do (from their point of view) to decrease number of calls is a win for them.

I can only imagine what it must be like trying to support an Android OS. All those launchers, different versions of the Settings screen, different UI mods. And that's without rooting it. Sounds like a nightmare.

I bought a gaming laptop from an OEM called Sager in early 2014.

As I learned when I was researching the purchase, almost all gaming laptops (I think the Dell/Alienwares are different) actually custom fit/rebrands of one manufacturer: Clevo.

Since probably very few have heard of either Sager or Clevo it seems closer to "non-branded" although technically it has a brand on it (Sager). I did buy it without an OS pre-installed though. Saved a little money.

Anyway, non-famous brand gaming laptop. Missing poll option. Sort of.

UnknownSoldier ( 67820 ) wrote:

I used to be a hardcore gamer but I find I would rather spend my time programming, working on my backlog of interesting programming projects, also known as just wasting hours accomplishing nothing.

There, fixed it for ya. Or that's just me.

There are still devices available for sale now, like the winter mini PC/atom SoC. I bought one of those instead of a raspberry pi and it runs well if quite hot. My version at least wouldn't boot a 64-bit ISO, seems be a purposeful (arbitrary?) limitation added to the UEFI firmware.

As you can see: 2gigs RAM, only 32 gigs storage. Having two versions of all those runtimes would make a difference. And those devices are well in the time period.

I think you found the answer. Where I work there are still applications will run on 32-bit and not 64-bit, although technically that's speaking of Windows 7 as OS. Not sure the software in question would run windows 10, 32 or 64-bit.

I did buy some windows tablets and a small Raspberry Pi-sized device that run Windows in the last couple years (something about sub-$100 windows devices, I don't know, novelty I guess). The Raspberry Pi-sized device identifies the Atom as a "64-bit CPU" but for whatever reason the UEFI has locked it to 32-bit only operating systems. Which does conveniently prevent Windows 7 from being installed on the device (32-bit 7 doesn't do UEFI while 64-bit does). Maybe I could do some kind of GRUB magic, I don't know. The devices have as little as 16 gigs of storage or sometimes 32gigs with 2 gigs of RAM so I don't feel like I'm missing out on that much with the limit of 32-bit.

So another reason could be there's still hardware out there that literally can't run 64-bit windows that are still technically within the support time frame and/or under warranty. Apple doesn't have to worry about generic off-brand Chinese OEMs using weird UEFI firmware/SoC combos but technically Microsoft does...