Netbook Review, notebook review, tablet review, PC review » arm

ARM CEO Criticizes New Intel Medfield CPUs

Paul Merak — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 11:02:30 +0000

Mobile chip heavyweight ARM has criticized Intel new Medfield architecture Atom Z2460 as only ‘roughly good enough for mobile phones’, even though it is will soon appear in Motorola and Lenovo smartphones. However ARM sees Intel as ‘a serious competitor’ according to CEO Warren East, speaking at CES earlier this week at CES 2012. Mr. [...]

Allwinner A10 CPU

Paul Merak — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 11:03:29 +0000

A large number of budget Chinese tablets are appearing with a new Chines-manufactured processor known as the Allwinner A10. It sports a 1.5GHz ARM Cortex-A8 processor core with an integrated Mali-400 graphics processor, and boasts HD video capability. It can support up to 1GB RAM. But the most impressive thing about the Allwinner A10 is [...]

Windows On ARM Delay Predicted

Paul Merak — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 16:55:47 +0000

Microsoft promise to make Windows 8 run on ARM and moderate specced hardware has a catch – ARM-based devices will have to wait until 2013, because developers want to concentrate on Intel and AMD x86 devices. Mid-2013 is the new target date, apparently because programs written primarily for x86 devices must be laboriously re-written for [...]

Tenfold Increase in Mobile GPU Power

Paul Merak — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 10:01:08 +0000

Chip maker ARM has announced a new mobile graphic processor, the Mali-T658, claiming the new chip delivers ten times better performance than the Mali-400 MP GPU, which is nevertheless currently wowing users of Samsung Galaxy SII. For all that, the T658 uses the same Midgard architecture a the last update to the Mali-400, the T601. [...]

ARM chip success

Paul Merak — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 08:22:31 +0000

Thanks to an explosion of licensing contracts in the third world, British processor manufacturer ARM has announced a 44% increase in profits for the third quarter of 2011. ARM’s processor architecture is found in iPad and iPhones, amongst many other smartphones and tablets. ARM’s pre-tax earnings leapt to $72m, with turnover climbing by 20%. The [...]

80 G9 and 101 G9 tablets by Archos

Paul Merak — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 17:55:06 +0000

Archos has released two new tablets in Paris just yesterday. Archos 80 G9 and Archos 80 G101. Archos 80 G9 is an 8 inch tablet with 4:3 ratio on 8 inch display with 1024 x 768 resolution. G101 has a 10 inch display of 1280 x 800 resolution. In all other aspect they are essentially [...]

Intel to create new chipsets for iOS devices

Paul Merak — Thu, 12 May 2011 05:43:19 +0000

This gossip was kicked off by Piper Jaffray who said that Intel might be cooking up something for Apple. Reports reveal that Intel might be fabricating new chipsets for new iPad models. This news comes after Intel disclosed that it will be making the most significant announcement for the industry this year. This was disclosed [...]

Windows 8 Update: Touch-Friendly?

Paul Merak — Mon, 02 May 2011 14:42:19 +0000

It’ll be a while before new Microsoft Windows 8 arrives. Rumors suggest first quarter of 2012. Leaked images of the user interface have been surfacing across the web. Based on what the people have been seeing, it seems like the new Windows 8 is being geared towards user-friendliness that will be working much better for [...]

Galaxy Tab vs Chinese Tablets

Paul Merak — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 07:51:59 +0000

We all remember the 7 inch iPad Killer device from Samsung called the Galaxy Tab. This iPad Killer now seems a bit dated with some of its features and looks. What makes it outdated? Well, when Chinese no-name manufacturers make tablet options that match the Galaxy Tab, it’s time to upgrade. The competition has caught [...]

How to solve Megaminx with your android phone

Paul Merak — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 07:43:40 +0000

I can do rubix cube, in fact …this is long time ago…I was able to assemble it under 3 min, but I was always intimidated by this dodecahedron Megaminx. I mean, 12 faces and each with 5 sides, that just looks impossible. Now, this robot, built out of LEGO, HTC Desire smartphone running a custom [...]

Archos Gen9 Cheap Tablet

Paul Merak — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 17:58:34 +0000

For more than 10 years already, Archos has been building portable media players. In recent years, they have been building low cost Android tablet options. According to some news, the company will soon be venturing to new Android tablet options. First, there is the Archos 9. It will utilize the ARM Cortex A9 Chips. By [...]

Efika MX Smartbook from Genesi

Paul Merak — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 19:56:18 +0000

The term smart book has always been overused and it seems it either has very complex meaning or no specific meaning at all. What it promises is a lightweight device for internet browsing that is quite cheap. Genesi created the smartbook just for that cause. This is an unknown company so we yet have to [...]

Review: Arnova A80KSC from Archos

Paul Merak — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 11:19:38 +0000

Russia will be the first one to experience the Archos Arnova which is an 8-inch Android Tablet. The possibilities with other countries are present. We have reported on Arnova tablet last week. Arnova was geared to be a cheap media device and tablet. It does not sport the high end or top of the line [...]

20 new tablets with Qualcomm chips

Paul Merak — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 13:17:31 +0000

Qualcomm, a popular chip maker has recently revealed its earnings for the past quarter and it has been doing really well, being able to pull its revenue compared to how the company fared last year at the same quarter. Qualcomm reported $3.35 billion in last quarter ($1.17 billion profit) of 2010 which is some 25 [...]

Brazos Chips from AMD for tablet use

Paul Merak — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 10:29:56 +0000

AMD has released a new set of chips called Brazos that include the low power Ontario and the Zacate. The company said that they are not stopping any company to use these low power chips for their tablets, these new chip sets were actually designed to work on low power netbooks as well as laptops. [...]

Leaked! Tegra 2 3D in spring 2011

Paul Merak — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 07:30:08 +0000

Time sure flies in the tech world. We have yet to enjoy the Tegra 2 chips and NVIDIA is already preparing for something new, a Tegra 2.5 update. This new chip is a dual core chip with 1.2GHz and is marketed to be capable of handling 3D on mobile. This was leaked as the T25 [...]

A Guide to the world of Android Tablets

Paul Merak — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 22:11:37 +0000

Google’s Android OS started out in smart phones but it is now extending its reach in tablet formats. Right now, you can find a variety of new tablets with a great diversity in prices created by hot brands and newer ones across the world. With this great diversity, we find ourselves in bit of a [...]

Intel purchases Infineon Wireless

Brooke — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 17:29:41 +0000

German-based company, Infineon has been bought by the chip giant, Intel that will allow the latter to introduce their x86-based processors (Atom?) into the smartphone market. However, we are still unsure if ARM architectural license has been included in the deal.

ARM processors to power servers?

Brooke — Sun, 16 May 2010 07:51:07 +0000

According to an article published on eetimes, ARM is busy preparing an ARM processor for use in servers. Here is a quote from the article

We are on par [with the x86] in performance today and have a detailed road map that will really push performance up. At least one partner is working on a port of a server version Microsoft Windows to ARM, and has access to some of the low level code needed for that job. That is a large undertaking.

Efficiency of ARM processor plus power of x86? Sounds interesting

ARM says netbooks will capture 90-percent of PC market

Peter — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 07:41:40 +0000

According to the recent reports, ARM's CEO Warren East says while netbooks currently account for only 10% of PC market, things can totally go opposite in the coming years. He is positive that netbooks are bound to get even more popular and would capture even 90% of the total PC market.

He also thinks that this would also benefit ARM in the long run. While we are doubtful about netbooks capturing 90% of PC market, we can, without a doubt, agree with Warren that ARM is going to make huge profits for sure with the upcoming smartbooks (Lenovo Skylight and Apple iPad).

Acer to be the first netbook manufacture to OFFICIALLY launch Google Android Netbooks!

Paul Merak — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 16:38:49 +0000

Although myriad of netbook manufactures have announced that they will be making Google Android netbooks, but the Acer is going to be the one that will officially launching them in the year 2009 itself. At first, we thought that it was going to be the ASUS that would launch Android Netbooks at the end of this year, but then we heard about news that they have postponed the production to the next year, 2010.Jim Wong, Acer's global president of IT products and services said something which really captured my attention,'If we do not continue to change our mobile Internet devices, consumers may not choose then any more."But, why would one need to run a mobile phone OS on a netbook? True, it will help them to save few dollars, but then we can achieve (almost) desktop-class productivity when using an OS like Windows XP/Vista/7.Good news is that Acer is not downgrading the processor to ARM and they have decided to stick with the powerful Intel Atom platform.

No ARM/Android netbooks until Q1 2010

Paul Merak — Fri, 01 May 2009 14:50:50 +0000

Asus has published its financial results today and it has revealed some interesting facts.

Asus will continue to produce netbooks powered by Windows XP in 2009
According to Asus CEO, X86 processors are more popular due to wide spectrum of applications available
Netprofit decreased by 94% (this includes overall netprofit though)
Netbooks running other operating system will emerge in Q1 2010. Not before that.

I think it is a right more by Asus. I believe the netbook market is still not enough ready for Android netbooks. The Android OS needs to become more powerful and more mature a bit more before vendors start putting it in their netbooks

ARM netbook coming to AT&T

Paul Merak — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 12:13:30 +0000

AT&T is soon going to offer ARM based netbooks running Linux OS. Glen Lurie, President of emerging devices for AT&T says,

“There are a lot of people who will dive in and build netbooks, including folks like cellular or wireless OEMs who never built a computer before. There will be a lot of innovation around what a netbook looks like and what the use cases are, and we will see this evolve very quickly,”

He thinks that the ARM based netbooks would do just fine as people are doing their work via Cloud-based applications and thus do not need a lot of horsepower in their netbooks. He also showed keen interest in the MIDs, which he refers to as "smartphones on steroids."AT&T is already selling four subsidized netbooks: Acer Aspire One, Dell Mini 9, Dell Mini 12 and LG X110.PS: Lurie also manages AT&T's relationship with Apple to sell the iPhone in the U.S.

Android Netbook by Skytone

Paul Merak — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 13:50:27 +0000

Yesterday, we posted about the ibuddie netbook which would be powered by Android OS. Now, Skytone is also going to release its Android powered netbook.It will come with following specifications:

533MHz ARM processor
7-inch touchscreen
800 x 480 resolution
128MB of RAM
1GB of storage
SD card slot
3G (optional)

The netbook may seem pretty underpowered when compared to the netbooks powered by Atom processor, but we must not forget that we are talking about a netbook that runs mobile OS. Android OS is certainly not 'that' tasking on the CPU and hence, does not a lot of horsepower to run.It is nice to the option to get one with 3G built-in though.

OLPC wants Windows 7 for ARM

Paul Merak — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 11:45:24 +0000

Looks like the rumors of OLPC opting ARM instead of Atom processor were true. The OLPC has finally decided to go for the ARM platform. The current XO-1 is very power-frugal and uses just 5 watts of power on an average, which is really efficient for an X86 machine. That said, if the company opts ARM, it would nearly triple the battery life of these devices with the same capacity battery. ARM has much better power management features and also has built-in WiFi. However, the desktop version of Windows does not support ARM processor, which means no XP or no Windows 7.The OLPC has requested Microsoft to make a special version of Windows 7 that is able to run on an OLPC. In case that happens, this will ultimately kill Windows Mobile as a lot of Windows Mobile devices run on ARM platform. That is why, I feel that OLPC will need a do a lot of persuation to the Microsoft for making an ARM-compatible Windows 7.Note: Windows Mobile fully supports ARM. However, we understand that Windows 7 would be more suitable for the children.

“ARM Sparrow” processor for Netbooks, MIDs

Paul Merak — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 13:32:43 +0000

ARM processor is widely used in variety of phones including the likes of Windows Mobile, iPhone and Nokia. At the Mobile World Congress, the ARM announced their new processor. This time, it was not for the mobiles, but for the netbooks.

Canonical bringing Ubuntu to ARM-powered devices

Peter — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 17:13:38 +0000

It was inevitable, really – now that ARM processors are bound for netbook and the like, it follows logic that ARM would tag team with Canonical to bring Ubuntu to their shells. The two firms have collaborated in order to bring full Ubuntu Desktop operating system to the ARMv7 Processor architecture to address demand from [...]