Taiwan vendors to offer dual-platform tablet PCs due to Wintel market status

digitimes.com

2 points·borisk··3 comments

I have been hearing about these arm netbooks... but they have been 'coming soon' for several years now. I think I've seen one or two things that could maybe be called arm netbooks that I could actually buy during that time (none of which had usable keyboards.)

edit:

Example: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Lenovo-s-ARM-Based-Linux-Skyl...

Did the Ipad kill it? damn you, jobs, and your devices that lack keyboards!

Really, I want something in the sony viao P series form factor (e.g something small and built around a keyboard with a trackpoint rather than a touchpad) Hell, if you gave me arm-level battery life and good Linux support, I'd even pay sony prices for the thing.

There are quite a few ARM/Windows CE netbooks designed in China. Ubuntu clones are available for most of them.

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.42015

http://www.dealextreme.com/search.dx/search.netbook

yeah, but from what I read, it's quite difficult to jack the bootloader to load Linux, and the hardware looks like it's at the level of the OLPC, which is pretty much unusable. (keyboard-wise, not cpu-wise)

I don't know of anyone who uses these seriously and really, before I buy something where touch is as important as a laptop, I'd like to either try the keyboard in person or at least hear someone on the 'net describe it. (I mean, for that kind of money, I'll take some risk... but I'd like at least some evidence that they might not be complete crap.)

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