Smart Something is in the air and is about to come down hard on netbooks: smartbooks. True to its name I think smartbooks will be really smart when it comes to maximizing performance without needing a whole lot of power. There are three components that will make up the ultimate smartbook: Pixel Qi’s 3qi display, NVIDIA’s Tegra chipset and Google’s Android OS.
Android Smartbooks will eschew the weakest part of the equation: Windows (or Linux). Instead of these clunky operating systems*, smartbooks will use the lightweight smartphone-geared Android OS from Google. Advanced features such as touch, auto-tilt, etc. can be easily integrated and a good number of developers are coding cool apps as I type. There are some limitations. One glaring one is the lack of background processes. But if Palm can get that to work on the Pre, I’m sure the brains at Google can too.
Tegra Intel Atom? You consume too much energy. Good bye! Welcome Tegra! NVIDIA’s Tegra chipset provides awesome graphics while sipping power. With Tegra you don’t need to compromise graphics performance and you’ll get many more hours to play with your smartbook than if you had an Atom powering it.
Ultra-low-power LCD The last but certainly not least component that needs to change is the display. Current LCDs even with LED backlights consume quite a bit of power. I’d say around 25 to 30 percent of an entire netbook system. Just a hunch. To bring power consumption down considerably there are a couple of options: one is the hope that some day we’ll see an OLED display large enough and cheap enough to be used for $399 netbooks. I’m not holding my breath. The best alternative now to the regular LED-backlit LCD is Pixel Qi’s 3qi display that has two modes. One is full power, full color, transmissive mode. The other is ultra-low-power reflective mode that looks even better than Amazon’s Kindle’s E Ink display.
Losers in this transition from netbook to smartbook? Intel and Microsoft. The winners? Pixel Qi, NVIDIA and Google.
*Big, slow and requiring hefty hardware resources compared to Android, which was designed with smartphones in mind.
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I like your way of thinking, and you have good premises. However you lack with facts (please check it at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartbook):
1. “Android instead clunky operating systems like Linux & Windows”
Android IS (derivate of) LINUX! If that bother you: Maemo (from Nokia), WebOS (Palm)… I think all -with exception of Windows CE- are driven on Linux. Iphone OS is derivate of OS X which is, same as Linux, just a derivate of UNIX. Fancy GUI above is just that – fancy GUI. ANDROID is Linux+Java on top of it. You can’t be sure which OS will win, but favorite is Android.
2. Tegra is great, but it is not about Tegra chipset against Atom, it is about ARM. Tegra is just one of the producers – 1 derivate of ARM chipset. Nvidia signed for MS -> Zune and then mr. Rayfield from Nvidia said they preferre Windows CE over Android. So much about it! On the other hand, you got e.g. Qualcomm’s SnapDragon, TI’s OMAP etc producers of mighty ARM chipsets. THEY will fight Atom.
3. Pixel Qi‚Äôs low power LCD technology, evolved from OLPC (you see similarities?) IS definitely compatible, XXI century technology for Smartbooks. However, it is still evolving… but you point at well.
We are talking here about ultra light weight, ultra thin, fully transportable with full day (8-12 hours) autonomy computers, starting with price under 100$. It is brand new niche and Wintel (x86 Atom & Windows) are XX century abandonware in this story.
BTW, Intel is member of Open Handset Alliance (read it: Android)!!! :-D
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Handset_Alliance
Google announced its Chrome Operating System yesterday night. I think it will have a big impact on the netbook market. The small size of the Chrome OS will likely make netbooks more speedy. Even with full-blown notebook PCs if the user is mostly tied to cloud computing the Chrome OS will make them much faster too. Can’t wait to try Chrome OS on my 5-year old Inspiron 9300 and see how quickly I can get online.
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