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It does seem sorta weird. They have a resource-constrained platform... and decide to run the whole thing under "Not-Really-Quite-Java-OS".

Well, Android runs on much less powerful devices, so it should work just fine on these ARM netbooks.

Then again, why you'd want an ARM-based netbook when you can just as easily get a full-featured x86 one remains a bit if a puzzle for me. Sure, as a geek I'd love to have one of these to play with and I hope they succeed, but as a normal customer? I fail to see the benefit in buying into a platform that runs less software. With x86 making strides in power usage as well, the relevance seems to dwindle a bit for ARM-based netbooks.

That's a very reasonable point. And I figured it would be pointed out to me. (I started to include it as an aside in my previous post, but decided it might be more enlightening for someone to point it out, possibly including extra details.) But it seems like it would be even a poorer match for the less powerful devices. Maybe if I had hands-on experience with an Android device something that I am missing now would become clear to me. I hope there is more to Android than just the Aura of the "Big G".

P.S. I like your new avatar, BTW.

Edited 2009-02-17 11:43 UTC

Quoting from the original article:
"claiming they would yield better battery life than the Atom-based netbooks of today"
There's your answer. As long as they can beat the Atom based notebooks in power usage by a significant enough margin then I'm interested. Of course if they can't I'll agree it's kind of pointless.

Isn't that the claim that didn't work for Transmeta? Suddenly, it was "common wisdom" that it was the display and not the processor which was the major determinant of battery life. (I wonder who started that rumor?)

Transmeta was bought out before Atom was ever released. Tramsmeta only really competed with VIA anyways.

The ARM runs linux and linux runs Android. Which application can you run on Android that can't run on ARM?
Moreover, the ARM is much more power efficient than the x86. You're not going to play the latest 3D games on those device anyway. If you wanted to, you would not buy a netbook but something bigger. netbooks are netbooks, they're not desktops. They're small and they run longer.

Well it's all about battery life. The ARM powered devices have a much better battery life than atoms. They are much more suited to this kind of device.

And in this market a ARM device running linux (even though were talking andriod here) would not really be lacking much software. Most linux software runs on the ARM platform.

Edited 2009-02-17 22:46 UTC

Battery power and efficiency? Having more time to use a laptop, and especially a netbook, is always a good thing. IMO, their batteries still die too quickly. From what I understand, the ARM is just much cleaner and more efficient; it doesn't *need* all the tweaking x86 does to perform well with limited power.


I would say there's only "less software supported" if you're locked into x86 binary-only software in the first place (ie. you use Windows and a lot of proprietary software, and for whatever decide to run it on a netbook). I honestly don't know why you'd want a full-fledged Windows desktop on a machine whose purpose is *not* to be a full desktop PC, but if that's what someone wants there's always the Intel Atom models.

Also, there's still a lot of open source software that can run on an ARM processor... just about anything that runs currently on x86 and has its source available can be ported (if it's not already). It's only binary stuff like VMware (I seriously hope no one expects to run that on a netbook...), Opera, Flash and similar programs that would cause a problem, and it's up to their makers to release an ARM version of their programs. Opera is good, I have faith in them to release an ARM version if it ever takes off, but who knows about Adobe.


Competition is good. I want to see more alternatives available. As it is now, in most cases, it's x86... 32-bit or (increasingly) 64-bit or... well, nothing. It won't hurt to have an ARM version to choose from. Again, there's always the Atom if you really want Windows that bad.

ARM based netbooks should be much cheaper in high volumes. Longer battery life with cheaper & lighter battery (and no fans) will be a big deal as well.

x86 netbooks are not so much more "full featured" than arm based ones if you are going be using Linux anyway and don't care too much about being able to run Wine. Open Source in general benefits greatly from a big installed base of non-x86 devices with a general purpose OS. I'm not sure I see the point of Android here though - the whole point of Android was to bring an open platform to phones (which didn't exist previously). With netbooks, we already have several open platforms to choose from.

Seriously, about the only thing you'd be missing out on aside from Wine with a non-x86 netbook is the majority of flash content, and probably Silverlight as well (at least at first, though moonlight/Mono could be ported). Gnash and Swfdec can handle some of it, but there are still quite a few pages they will not handle. Of course, depending on your point of view, that might not be a bad thing at all, given how over-used flash content can be.

I fail to see why Android can't be a full OS

Cortex a9 is not to go live until 2010. Cortex A8 first started shipping early 2007. That's a 3 year release cycle.

Atom came out last summer and they're soon to release generation 2. Nine month release cycle.

So which atom will vapor Cortex A9 thrash?

Just bringing in reality...if ARM doesn't change their way of doing business -- fast -- they won't have a market and Cortex A9 is probably too late for netbooks.

Android might be interesting. However it's an unknown. Open source programming has never adopted java for the desktop so they won't appeal to those developers.

I'm guessing current android development is phone oriented only. This won't help provide an android netbook with much appealing software.

No, the apps I've written for the G1 won't scale well to higher resolutions. Though I guess you could always run phone based apps in a phone sized window.

Well, Android doesn't use it (and given the design of Dalvik it never will), so what?

I agree. I myself would love to build a system from scratch using an ARM version of Debian as base, and choosing what I need.

I myself am waiting for this particular model. Why? I only mostly want a netbook for light web surfing, mobile writing, and/or chat. And I don't want and don't need some high tech 300 or 400 dollar device. It's overkill for what I want. This netbook, at a <200 USD price point, is extremely attractive to me, especially since I use Linux anyways.

Yes, the Android code is available. The reason why there isn't an Android distribution you can try, is because it runs on ARM-based processors, not on x86 processors. Unless you typed that message on an Acorn Archimedes, you've got no hope of running Android on your current desktop computer :-) (even then, an Archimedes wouldn't run Android).

Well, there is an Android development environment using QEMU, that's available for Linux on x86.