[Arm-netbook] Good netbook based on Cortex-A9

[Wojciech Meyer]

Hi Gordan,

Sorry for the late reply, thanks for your answers and thanks to others
for the answers, I had some problems with Gmane & Gnus settings, and I
hope they are solved now, I will resend the bounced posts.

Gordan Bobic <gordan at bobich.net> writes:

> On 30/07/2012 00:20, Wojciech Meyer wrote:
> AC100 is the way forward, if they are cheap in your country. In UK they
> go for £170 new (old stock) and £110 used for the model with the 3G
> modem (AC100-10U), about £10 less for the one without (AC100-10Z).

Yes, I just bought an used one with 3G modem for £129 with a case!

Thanks for the tips!

I think it's a good deal.

Partial responsibility for this situation (a very good netbook for
bargain price), are the reviews on the internet which marked down the
netbook significantly, which is actually good.

Of course it's also a lack of support for the mainstream desktop OSes,
which also doesn't hurt me at all.

M$ has already ported windows 8 onto ARM, seeing increasing interests,
in the A class embedded devices and growing user base of Android and iOS
- which is also obvious - but a bit late.

People that do want a keyboard instead of tablet, are usually simple
users that either want high end performance to play desktop games or
just use office, so having no windows is an obvious downside (as what
they perceive). That's perhaps why Smartbooks failed.

AC100 looks like a perfect choice for me, as I mostly do software
development on a console based programs, and some PDF reading, and stay
mostly in tiling WM and Emacs, performance is not as important as
portability.

Can't wait until will take my AC100 for a trip or to coffee shop.

> The process for installing a full Linux distro on them is very well
> documented, and they are reasonably upgradable, too. Have a look here on
> info on upgrading to a decent SSD, higher resolution screen, cooling mod
> to enable overclocking from 1GHz to 1.4GHz, etc.
>
> http://www.altechnative.net/tag/ac100/

Yes, I read these great articles I consider start tinkering with a
hardware, but I've never tried even to open a laptop, (complete hardware
beginner) but I plan to change that, and actually start using AC100 as a
playfield for my experiments.

> For similar money you can get the Genesi Efika MX Smartbook, but that is
> nowhere near competitive in terms of spec and value. It is nevertheless
> reasonably usable with a screen upgrade:
> http://www.altechnative.net/2011/05/16/genesi-efika-smartbook-screen-upgrade/

I looked at Efika, but it seems to be Cortex-A8, and also I didn't like
it as AC100.

In general I'm looking forward for stronger Smartbooks, based on A15/A7
chips, perhaps big.LITTLE.

The situation can only really change, when windows will be established
on Smartbooks (even if I don't want to use it), and relevant software
ported onto ARM, and that can still take years.

I'm looking forward to the arm-netbook project, and wish to support in
some or other ways, because I think at the moment the market does not
give an infinite choice of ARM netbooks (saying: does not give choice at
all :-))

--
Wojciech Meyer
http://danmey.org