Comment by swernli | Hacker News Reader

Comment by swernli | Hacker News Reader

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I wish I could downvote articles. This is a shoddy regurgitation of the Techcrunch article from last week, with slightly more formal language (and thus misleading with its implied certainty). Let's compare:

Techcrunch: "But our source tells us that HP is not satisfied with Windows 7 as a tablet operating system and has terminated the project (something CrunchGear mentioned months ago). HP may also be abandoning Intel-based hardware for its slate lineup simply because it’s too power hungry. That would also rule out Windows 7 as an operating system."

AfterDawn: "Sources say HP was not happy with the overall performance of Windows 7 on their unreleased tablet, saying the OS was too power-hungry... TechCrunch says also that HP is set to drop the Intel processor used in the tablet, which would completely kill off any chance of Windows 7 being used."

Funny how the echo suddenly changes it to the OS being too power hungry instead of the chipset, huh? It saddens me that this is how "news" often gets reported. People keep repeating mistaken versions of what they heard without doing any investigation of their own, until the facts get completely muddled. It's like a giant game of telephone...

It is a pretty awful article.

But isn't it Windows fault that it requires a power hungry x86 CPU? You can run other OSes on multiple types of hardware and have your engineers pick the best hardware for the device's needs. Or you decide "We're going with Windows!" and now your engineers are trying to figure out how to stretch the battery long enough to run this x86 CPU. If not for Windows being stuck on one platform I don't think we would have ever had the Atom.

An interesting point, though I don't think it justifies the way the new article chose to change the meaning of the original by rephrasing it.

I don't think it's just Windows that encourages x86 use; it's also the fact that the ecosystem is richer for that chipset anyway (hardware compatibility for things like the webcam and card reader come to mind). If you decide to go with a linux distro on top of custom hardware, then you might have to develop drivers yourself, as well as build up some UI paradigms customized for touch. WebOS gives them a great starting point to do just that, so in the end their actions still look consistent with their goals.

> it's also the fact that the ecosystem is richer for that chipset anyway

Well, it's richer mainly because that's the platform Windows runs on exclusively (or near-exclusively; there are probably a few non-x86 Windows installs out there still) and thus dominant. If you had more competition in processor architectures I would expect that you would not have such an unbalanced chipset and onboard-hardware ecosystem.

Also, I'm not really sure why things like webcams or card readers would depend on processor arch; most webcams (even built-in laptop ones) that I've worked with interface over USB. Same with most recent card readers. It's not like they're plugged right into the FSB or anything.

The worst part isn't the x86 processor, but the ancient standard x86 hardware platform that can never be changed because then Windows XP won't boot.

The Atom might only use 2.5W, but the chipset to go with it uses 9W!

I wish I could un-upvote articles.

Actually, it was my fault for doing the pre-emptive upvote thing. I need to stop doing that. It works on reddit, because I can undo my upvote, but even then it's a bad habit.

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