Jolicloud renamed to Joli OS

Jolicloud is bound to release the ver. 1.2 of its OS in the coming days but it won’t b called Jolicloud 1.2. Rather, it will be known now as the Joli OS 1.2. They tend to shift in their focus for the OS. This was initially designed as an OS for netbooks. The idea is [...]

7-inch netbook Windows CE netbook from Shenzen for kids: just $98

There are many reputed brands in the market which are doing their bit to provide cheap netbooks for kids. Some very nice examples we have are Disney netbook from ASUS ($350) and Dell’s Latitude 2100 (Mini Nickelodeon)($369). Clearly, the prices of them are now way less than the normal netbooks that you see in the market.

Shanzai has now unveiled a Windows CE nebtook for $100 only. Clearly, it must have been a difficult task for them to bring the price this low. It has a 7-inch screen; runs ona 266MHz ARM processor has 128MB RAM. Shabby, we know, but what more do expect from a $100 netbook?

Our take on it: It does not run Windows desktop OS and it does not even supports it as it is ARM based. Windows CE, although looks a bit like Windows XP with a classic theme, cannot run your windows apps. So, keep that in mind before purchasing a netbook running Windows CE

ARM to overtake Intel in Netbooks and Smartbooks? – We DISAGREE!

Currently, there is no doubt that Intel is the uncrowned king in the netbook market, but according to the market analysts, ARM will surpass Intel by the year 2012. According to this analyst, Intel-powered netbooks have started to become very expensive and cost more than $200 and offer just 3.5 hours of battery life. On the other hand, ARM-powered netbooks will cost less than $200 and will also last much longer: 8 hours.

Our take on this:

The comparison is baseless. People want Windows OS on their netbooks. They want to use their desktop apps on their netbooks for which they require Windows OS. Unfortunately, since Microsoft has already confirmed that it has no plans on bringing their desktop OS to the ARM-architecture, you are left with nothing but Linux or Google’s Chrome OS.

We believe that smartbooks can never surpass netbooks in terms of sales even if they are offered for less than $100. Clearly, they offer little advantage over the current slew of smartphones which do much more than emailing and web-browsing alone. Also, in their comparison, they said netbooks have 3.5 hours of battery life. Wrong as most of the netbooks these days come with 6-cell batteries which offer more than 5-6 hours of run-time with active Wifi usage. Looks like these analysts have been taking in account the netbooks that were released last year.

Samsung Q1UP UMPC perfect for retro-gaming!

An author at arstechnia who was on a tour sometime back did some retro gaming on his Samsung Q1 Premium UMPC that comes with a 1.33GHz CPU, 2GB RAM and runs Vista Business OS. According to him, it can be underclocked from 1.33GHz clock speed to 800 MHz without suffering any noticeable performance hit while playing some of the retro games on it.

He was able to play Torment Planescape game for 5 hours straight on a single charge with WiFi off and CPU throlled to 800MHz, which is great for a UMPC. Later in his article, he admits that using a desktop OS on a small screen does sometimes gets a bit difficult and unusually complex.

Microsoft can do a lot more in adapting the desktop OS according to the MID environments by making them more streamlined and more finger-friendly. That will happen in Windows 8, perhaps? Let’s face it, Microsoft has never put the UMPCs in their top priority list and has always neglected this small, yet exiting market of UMPCs.

EEEBUNTU 3.0 REVIEW (Base and Standard Editions)

Learn why we consider the EEEbuntu as the best Linux distro for netbooks. EEEbuntu works out of box and everything works!

Nokia N900 coming – Nokia Tablets are not dead!

Nokia is soon going to release Nokia N900, a MID (Mobile Internet Device) running Maemo OS. It is going to be equipped with WVGA display, 32-48GB storage memory, a 5MP auto-focus camera with flash (!). It will hit European retailers in the month of July.

Although, we are not huge fans of devices, which do not run Desktop OS like XP or Ubuntu, but we are happy to know that Nokia has not completely forgotten its loyal Tablet fans. Also, it is great that Nokia is bumping up the storage memory to 32GB, which will allow the users to store a lot of data, but the overall package could have become better if they had decided to bump up the resolution to something like 1024 x 600. WVGA (800 x 480) is commonly found in HTC Phones and MIDs need to have some sort of edge over the phones.

Stupid statement by RIM: Smartphones will dominate netbooks

Research In Motion co-CEO Jim Balsillie said that since the Smartphones are more pocketable than the netbooks, they will always rule over the netbooks. I am little shocked by this bizarre statement. Smartphones and netbooks are two very different products. Netbooks are much (much) more powerful devices that run on x86 platform that allow the users to run desktop class applications on their small computers.

“Form factor is a personal preference but it’s got to be something that lasts the better part of the day and you can hold up to your ear and clip onto your belt,” he said in response to our question about his vision for future products. “Those are a very tight systems constraints for a netbook.”

Till date, no smartphone runs Windows XP or equivalent OS. For doing serious work, you always have to use the desktop OS. Although, most of the smartphones these days come with some sort of office functionality, but it is just enough to read data on-the-go. You just cannot think of doing heavy word processing on it as it just does not have the adequate amount of horsepower.

Conclusion: RIM is comparing Apples to Oranges. They are two very different creatures