[Arm-netbook] The Potential at Hand. (Was: device tree not the answer in the ARM world)

[Oliver Schinagl]

On 10-05-13 16:26, Scott Sullivan wrote:
> On 05/10/2013 06:20 AM, Vladimir Pantelic wrote:
>> On 05/10/2013 10:04 AM, luke.leighton wrote:
>>
>>>     ok, let's try this.
>>>
>>>     do you buy a product and then throw it away after 18 months when it
>>> is obsolete?
>>>
>>>     please answer that question first and we will move on from there.
>>
>> no, my DVD player is now 10 years old
>
> Then that is an example of a well built, long lived device and not the
> subject of what EOMA-68 is trying to address.
>

How so? I think this is also exactly what the EOMA-68 is after.

Lets assume Vladimir only plays legally obtained DVDs, doesnt care about 
Blu-ray or whatever is the new fad and is happy with its resolution. But 
having a swapable CPU card, would allow this fine DVD player to live 
even longer. Swap out the old 200 MHz DVD player dedicated card (if it 
would have  had that) and put in the new 1 Ghz A10 card. With a mini-USB 
wifi dongle, you now have a DVD player that can also browse the web. 
Stream media from the network or simply playback burned dvds with a 
various amount of codecs, so that new high-res tv that you got, can be 
usefull with your same dvd player.

So yes, I even see potential here. TO me, I think back when you first 
had those DVD players that had USB ports on it, that could playback 
divx, but nothing much after that.

Granted however, a DVD player can be had for 25 euros these days so that 
might be a bad example.

But if you look at really  old  stuff, I see a lot of devices that have 
been obsoleted because of performance reasons, not really hardware 
reasons, as said before over and over, screens, keyboards etc are all 
still fine, just that CPU is way to slow in our current day and age.

People who care about their wallet should see the potential in this 
eventually, people who care about the enviroment should really see the 
advantage of this, I really dont see the downside to this project, 
besides the I have a lot of money, so i just dump old crap in landfills 
and buy new stuff. Who cares about old garbage anywhere, its not my problem.

<snip>

Oliver