netbook

Atom - on its way to becoming a system on a chip?

There must be more nuclear physicists over at Intel than I realized; they’re splitting Atoms faster than any scientific team I know of these days. Kevin C. Tofel,  Intel’s Newest Atom CPU Is Already Splitting

Today’s WhatIs.com Word of the Day is Intel Atom.  It’s a low-power processor designed specifically for mobile devices that have Internet capabilities. It debuted back in March of 2008.

This week Intel announced Atom v2, code-named PineView.  If you listen to the blogosphere buzz, Pineview, which has a CPU, GPU and memory controller on a single die — is well on its way to becoming the holy grail for netbooks and nettops: a system on a chip. As it is, the new version of Atom moves from a three-chip design to a two-chip design, with graphics and memory controllers moving onto the processor.  The second chip, which provides I/O functions, is being called ‘Tiger Point’.  The combo (Pineview + Tiger Point) is being marketed as the “Pine Trail Platform.”

Overheard - Switching operating systems is like going to Burger King and trying to order a Big Mac

People encountering Ubuntu for the first time will find it very similar to Windows. The operating system has a slick graphical interface, familiar menus and all the common desktop software: a Web browser, an e-mail program, instant-messaging software and a free suite of programs for creating documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Ashlee Vance, A Software Populist Who Doesn’t Do Windows

There’s a big blogswarm right now about about whether or not Ubuntu is easy to use.

It all started when a college student in Madison Wisconsin bought a Dell laptop for a distance learning class and the computer arrived with Unbuntu Linux as the operating system.  She was not a happy customer because she wanted Windows — so she went to the local TV station to get some help. The story got picked up by Digg and by Slashdot and Linux bloggers everywhere and the poor girl was bombarded with hate comments.

I’m just not getting it.

Is this an Ubuntu story?  Or is it a dissatisfied customer story?  It’s certainly NOT a story about how girls are stupid idiots and should not be allowed near a laptop running Linux.  But that’s what you might think from reading some of the trash floating around the blogosphere.

Sure, Ubuntu might look like Windows — but hey guys, does it work exactly like Windows?  That is, can you really expect the average college kid who’s grown up using Windows to open a laptop running Ubuntu without a hitch?  Apparently someone at Dell tech support thought so.  That is until he started getting blaimstormed in the media for ending this Wisconsin student’s college career.

The whole thing is kind of silly.  It’s not the girl’s fault, it’s not the tech support guy’s fault and it has nothing to do with Ubuntu.

You’d have the same problem if you asked a Windows’ user who’s never used a Mac to start work tomorrow using  OS X . There are going to be some moments of confusion and getting lost.  It would be silly to presume otherwise. Yeah, the basics are still the same, but things are put in different places and tools are called by different names.  It’s just OS culture shock.  You have a panic attack and you get over it. That’s all that happened to that poor girl in Wisconsin.

The real story here is “What is Dell doing shipping laptops with Ubuntu as the default OS?”

Aha! Now THAT’S an interesting story.  You see, Mark Shuttleworth — who describes himself as a billionaire, bachelor and ex-cosmonaut — has teamed up with Dell to make Ubuntu the operating system of choice for low-end laptops.  And he’s not doing it for the money. He’s doing it because he likes the challenge.  (And what’s more challenging than selling something the customer can get for free?)

His company’s name is Canonical.  According to New York Times it’s worth $30 million right now. Keep an eye out for Mark Shuttleworth.  Like Bill Gates, he’s an intriguing mix of businessman-humanitarian.  Mark Shuttleworth is going to be a very interesting personality to follow as the world’s economy recovers from the Crash of ‘08.

Overheard - 2009, the year of the netbook

Just as General Motors must wean itself off lumbering SUVs, so may Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Sony, Toshiba, et al., be forced, to some extent, to wean themselves off high-profit notebook computers. Brooke Crothers, Intel warning casts cloud over CES

Netbook is the big buzzword this year at CES. I remember having what vendors are now calling a netbook about ten years ago.   I couldn’t load any software on it, but I could access email and the Internet. At this very moment, I can’t remember what it was called — but I remember getting it at Circuit City and using it in the classroom with WinGate as my proxy server. (For several years, WinGate was the bane of my existence.)

On a totally unrelated note, Jeopardy is celebrating its 25th anniversary with host Alex Trebeck by filming 11 episodes at CES. You have to love a show that gives quizzes and penalizes contestants for not using the words “what is….”