Linux strikes back; gets 1/3 Netbook OS market share

This year, nearly 35 million netbooks pre-loaded with Linux shipped this year. This is surprising considering the fact that the ASUS left the Xandros (Linux OS) in the dark few months back and solely concentrated on Windows netbooks. Acer, too stopped selling their Linux Lite-based netbooks and started selling only Windows XP netbooks. Dell seems to be the only one that is still selling netbooks that come with Ubuntu pre-installed.

Another possibility can be that people bought netbooks with some flavor of Linux OS pre-installed, not from Acer or Asus, and then installed Windows OS on it. Almost all the netbooks have their XP/7 drivers online, so getting the drivers for a particular netbook is not a very difficult job.

MOD: Putting in an Accelerometer in Dell Mini 9 (with Tablet MOD)

Dell Mini 9 was the the Dell first tablet. Like the ASUS EEE 701, myriad of MODs have been done on it (take a look at the blue-LED mod done on EEE 701 here). Few weeks back, we mentioned about the very exciting Tablet Mod. Now, we present to you Accelerometer MOD on that same little Mini 9 that was equipped with a touchscreen display.

Many of us have been waiting for affordable tablet devices that run Windows OS. This MOD will also make those people envious who have been waiting for the Mac iTablet (or whatever that will be called).

Click on read more to know more about this awesome MOD!

Forget ARM Cortex A8! Meet AMD Super Mobile CPU

Looks like XP is immortal! We thought that the XP would finally meet its fate on Oct 22. After netbooks, it is now turn for the phones to get equipped with XP.

Meet the phone powered by AMD Super Mobile CPU. It has GSM, GPRS, EDGE and 3G too. For storage, you can get upto 64GB of SSD storage which would certainly make the current iPhone 3GS owners a bit angry. You can get 1GB RAM (512MB version is available)

Compared to the fruit-phone, it has bigger display (4.8-inch) which means that it can easily be used as a MID. You get built-in WiFi and WiMax too. GPS is there too so that you don’t get lost.

Commentary: ARM Cortex, the CPU that is being used in iPhone and iPod Touch is, as its name implies, ARM based. Naturally, it is not x86 and thus cannot run Windows OS. However, AMD Super Mobile CPU is fully x86 compatible and runs Windows XP OS without a hitch!

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.

CZC C9 – world’s thinnest smartbook

A manufacturer of Shenzhen, Zichuang Technology has come up with the world’s thinnest netbook, the 8.9-inch CZC C9. Since it is a smartbook, it does not run on x86 architecture, which means that running Windows OS is simply out of scope. It runs some customized version of Linux OS.

It is just 0.2-inch thick at its thinnest point and 0.5-inches thick at its ‘fattest’ point. It weighs mere 0.75kg (1.6 pounds). Rest of its specs are pretty weak.

• 8.9-inch display
• 1024×600 resolution
• 8GB SSD
• 1GB RAM
• 2 USB ports

Priced at about $220, it promises 6-9 hours of battery life. You get three colors to choose from: white, black and pink.

2GHz ARM Cortex-A9 Chip coming to the Linux device near you

Last Wednesday, ARM Ltd announced that their 2GHz version of the Cortex-A9 microprocesor. This 2GHz ARM CPU is aimed at smartbooks and smartphones. The most exciting point to note is that this powerful CPU consumes just 0.5w even while running at its peak.

ARM actually wanted its speedy cortex CPU to battle against the Intel Atom CPU which are used in most of the netbooks. Sadly, Microsoft has no plans to port it to the ARM platform. Call it fortunate or unfortunate, you will be stucked with Linux powered smartbooks. Do not get us wrong. We love Linux, especially Ubuntu, but majority of the people find Windows OS more gratifying.

I feel acutely that Microsoft should consider porting Windows 7 (or atleast Windows XP) to ARM architecture. This would enable manufactures to make phones and ARM-based MIDs run desktop operating systems like Windows XP/7 or even Mac OS X.

Archos 9 tablet PC hands-on video

This Archos has a big 9-inch display and a touch screen display. This is first tablet by Archos that runs Windows OS (Windows 7 Starter to be specific). It has no multi-touch and is bulky at 1.2 pounds. It can either be used with stylus or your fingers. It has Intel Atom Z515 processor, 1GB RAM and 60GB HDD. The Archos 9 comes with a removable 4-cell battery which should give you up to 3 hours of runtime.

At $500, we think it is aptly priced as:

• there are not many similar devices around
• Archos is a good brand
• it runs Windows 7 (although we expected something better than the Starter edition)

Here is the hands on video:

Hands-On With Archos 9 Tablet PC from Gizmodo on Vimeo.

Dell not perturbed about their Linux-netbook returns

Few months back, Microsoft said that netbooks running Linux have experienced higher number of netbook returns as compared to the netbooks running Windows OS and most (~96%) of the netbooks in the world run Windows OS . Dell, however thinks that it is not the whole truth. According to the Dell, the number of Linux-netbook returns are same as those for Windows netbooks, atleast for Dell netbooks. In fact, they are quite pleased with the stability and soundness of their Linux netbooks.

Here is the remark made was a Dell official, which is contradictory to many said in the past. Todd Finch, Dell senior product manager, says that ‘this is false, calling it a “non-issue” and that “they are making something of nothing” in response to Microsoft’s claims. He says they see about the same in return rates’.

That said, the demand for Linux netbooks is no-where as Windows netbooks. Reason is pretty simple: people do not much about Linux and their advantages over the Windows-based operating systems. Fortuntaely, Dell has realized this fact and now they are going to be little more aggressive in advertising Linux.

“If you take my marketing budget, add it to Ubuntu and Red Hat’s marketing budget it’s not even a rounding error for Microsoft. For us to generate the market awareness to say: ‘I want Linux on a netbook’ is going to be incredibly hard because we don’t have the tools to do that,” Brockmeier said.

Aware A-View netbook

Aware electronics is a Taiwanese based company, is showcasing its 7-inch netbook that has a detachable screen at the 2009 Electronics and Components China Sourcing Fair organized by Global Sources. The netbook is very cheap and retails at mere $150. The specifications are not impressive at all. It comes with just 512MB RAM and 8GB SSD for storage. The user has the choice to choose between either Windows OS or Linux OS.

Aware has plans to push their netbook in the emerging markets. That said, they have already made the Aware availbale in developed nations of Europe.

Netbook with detachable keyboard clears one thing for sure that the netboook is equipped with a touchscreen. I wonder why such design has not been so far used in the netbook industry. I hope it does not come with the 3-cell battery like the older A-VIEW netbooks.

The Fair is taking place in Hong Kong and ends today (April 15, 2009).

OLPC wants Windows 7 for ARM

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.