Interview: Intel Talks Moblin, Netbooks, Windows, ARM, More
Linked by Jordan Spencer Cunningham on Fri 9th Oct 2009 21:12 UTC
Intel "Imad Sousou is the director of Intel's Open Source Technology Centre, which is behind the Moblin project aimed at providing optimized Linux technology for netbooks and mobile Internet devices. ZDNet Asia's sister site ZDNet UK caught up with Sousou at the Open Source In Mobile 09 event in Amsterdam last month to discuss the nature of Moblin and the hardware on which it will run." The interview also covers Intel's views on the netbook and MID market, Windows 7, ARM as a competitor, and Google's Chrome OS and how Intel is working with Google.
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RE[4]: Yeah, right.
by Laurence on Mon 12th Oct 2009 16:56 UTC in reply to "RE[3]: Yeah, right."
Laurence
Member since:
2007-03-26

My point wasn't that it couldn't be done, it was that the experience would be, well, less than desirable. This post screen is roughly 12KB without any of the graphics. So, at best, you'd have an early Lynx style text-only browser, which means you wouldn't see things the way they were intended to be seen.

Contiki actually does support graphics (although they will be low res)
SymbOS (for Amstrad CPC models) can support graphics at a much improved resolutions, but you'd need 128KB to boot

So yes, you can have a functional web browser on a retro system.


And that is where all of this is headed. The vast majority of web sites are made with "full featured" browsers in mind. In a very distant second place are the web sites made specifically for the mobile market (read: fewer features). So, until relatively recently, you pretty much had to deal with poorly formatted and/or incomplete web sites or surf from a device capable of displaying all of the content. The mobile devices (I'm referring to non-laptops, of course) are just now starting to catch up to a PC with full browsing capabilities.

The internet is far more than just webpages.
For example, many people mainly use the internet to play video games.
Some use it just to send e-mails and others might keep their connection alive just to chat to friends over their IM of choice while watching TV.
Myself - I stream lots of music and TV on my media centre.

And to say that phones have only recently been able to view webpages is also a little unfair as there were hundreds of phone models around that were capable of viewing WAP pages long before mobile-optimised HTML sites existed.

So in reality:
* HTTP/HTML is only one small slice of the bigger internet pie.
* x86 PCs are only one section of devices that make use of the internet. (you can even buy internet-ready fridges!)


We could argue all day whether that guy interviewed is really disillusioned enough to believe that using the Internet in any way requires an Intel PC. I do not believe he is that stupid.

I don't believe he was stupid.
I believe he is intentionally misleading people to promote the image of his products.


So I read his comments as a generalization that the bulk of Internet traffic is designed for "higher class" machines, full-featured PC's being included in this, regardless of which company made their CPU, chip set, or graphics card.

Not so long ago, a lot of these "higher class" machines were downloading the data from even more "higher class" machines - many of which were not running x86 (such as Google).
These days this is less of the case - but only because x86 offers the best power per price (ie old x86 chips are cheap as, erm, chips)

Reply Parent Score: 2

RE[5]: Yeah, right.
by jgagnon on Mon 12th Oct 2009 18:37 in reply to "RE[4]: Yeah, right."
jgagnon Member since:
2008-06-24

I understand that the Internet is far more than web browsing. I've been using it since 1990 on a regular basis (excluding my trips to BBS's prior to that time). One of my first experiences with the Internet was using Gopher, not HTTP. I "grew up", in the Internet sense, playing games via telnet (MUD's and the like). My first experience with web browsing was with Lynx and I thought it sucked compared to what Gopher offered. Times change and so did my opinion.

Recreationally, I use the Internet mostly for MMO gaming and to a much lesser extent, surfing. Web pages just happen to be, arguably, the most popular choice for interfaces to web technology. Anymore, when people say Internet, I just think of the distribution layer and not the content moving through it. Most people I know, however, think "surfing the world wide web" or something equivalent, which I why I chose the words I did earlier.

I'm not trying to argue with you. I was just trying to present another interpretation of what he said.

Reply Parent Score: 1