Expect lots of Smartbooks in coming months
Many manufacturers, including Acer, Foxconn, Compal, Pegatron and Inventec will start shipping ARM-based smartbooks. The new ARM-based smartbooks will be smaller in size, and a bit cheaper, contrary to Atom powered netbook. But obviously they won’t be as good, and also won’t be able to run a proper version of Windows. You will stuck with Linux or Win CE, and may see Android in few of them, too.
Asustek, the second biggest netbook maker, is looking to launch its smartbooks later in November or December. Reason? They believe that therer is not enough demand for such devices and would rather wait for the feedbacks of this new product class.
That said, the main advantage of these netbooks will be that it will be very compact. The first models are expected to have 8.9-inch displays and will cost around $200.
[via digitimes]
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You make it sound like being “stuck” with Linux is a bad thing… sounds like the best possible result to me. I wouldn’t buy a Windows-based netbook/smartbook (and certainly not a WinCE-based one – don’t be ridiculous), but I’d snap up a Linux-based smartbook with 10+ hour battery life, at a low price… And I’m not alone.
Dave
I am myself a huge Ubuntu fan, but let’s face it, Windows XP based netbooks totally overshadowed linux netbooks in terms of sales
Unfortunately, (most of the) people are not ready to learn something new
Stuck with? I have been waiting for a Linux ARM/Tegra smartbook for nearly a year now.