ARMdevices.net

[...] like Acer have got plenty of nice plans for our dear Android, according to the article on ARMDevices.net, Acer is looking seriously at ARM powered laptop that have more potential for profit margins and [...]

You do know the Toshiba AC100 was a failure?  It was too pricey, Android without a touch screen was simply fail and was long before Honeycomb and better support for keyboard and touch pad or other USB devices, and its advertised features weren’t as good as advertised.

The Asus Transformer is a much better example of a successful Tegra 2 system and a much better product all around than the Toshiba AC100. 

Low cost Tegra 2 Chromebook may be a possibility, but it remains to be seen what build quality we will get for the price.

Toshiba AC100 was not a failure, it is still sold really cheap in certain countries, the only thing is Toshiba did not want to install Ubuntu on it, that would have made it more usable and Toshiba did not want to sell it outside of Germany, Hong Kong and a few other places like that.

HP also had an ARM Powered Laptop, and that one also was only for sale in a few stores in Spain, HP simply didn’t want to promote ARM Powered Android laptops too much.

Sorry but not selling it world wide is one of the factors that shows that the Toshiba AC100 was a failure, it did not sell well and there was no real demand for it to promote it getting sold more widely and thus was never more than a niche product.

It was definitely not cheap when it first came out (don’t confuse the depreciated value of it now and those trying to clear stock with it being cheap to begin with), and it was especially expensive to those who had to import it and had to pay a premium.

It disappointed many who did get it, it didn’t provide anywhere near the 8 day standby, you’d be lucky if it still had a charge 24 hours later, and the firmware updates were very late and lousy support. If you bricked the device then it could be months before you got any support to get it working again. While they stuck it with Android but no touch screen and as you said refused to put something more useful for a keyboard and touchpad device like Ubuntu onto it.

Really, even those who hacked Ubuntu onto it were never satisfied with the results, and those burnt by their experience with it probably would never consider another Toshiba smartbook unless it was either higher end, fixing all the faults of the original, or really cheaper than $200.

Fact is the Asus Transformer is the closest to a true success story to date.  It actually has gotten timely updates, it actually works pretty much as promised, it actually has good built quality and a excellent screen, it gets the long run times and standby times as promised, it actually has a capacitive touch screen with a touch optimized Honeycomb OS that also has greater support for USB and other peripherals, and it started right out cheaper than most of the competition, it didn’t need to wait for depreciation.  Not to mention they’ll likely be updating it to Tegra 3 by the end of the year, which is another sign of its success with a new model coming so soon after the original release and of course the growing demand and widening of its spread into the world market.

If you’re serious about promoting the future of ARM for portable devices like Smartbooks then use the actual good examples!

Toshiba AC100 was purposefuly not released worldwide because Toshiba
international has relations with Intel making them decide to purposefully
not release it worldwide and not support it with the right software. Same
thing for the HP Android laptop in Spain, they released them just as kinds
of R&D tests that got out.

Asus Transformer at $550 is not cheap. But sure it’s a cool worlds first
Honeycomb laptop experience, surely nice.

What Toshiba did with AC100 was just let few Germans and few in few other
countries access this R&D experiment, and in terms of form factor it is
impressive for an ARM Powered laptop already using ARM Cortex-A9 back when
it got released in 2010.

For Toshiba, HP, Acer, Asus, Samsung, it’s going to be a piece of cake for
them to release ARM Laptops that actually do get released worldwide, do get
promoted worldwide and do get the software support that they deserve. The
click that will make them decide to do that is two fold:

1. The ARM Processors prove to be fast enough with enough memory bandwidth
to run a better than Intel Atom Netbook experience.

2. Those companies get pissed off enough with Intel’s monopoly and they
decide to diversify with using ARM and work on optimizing profit margins
with that. It’s a very big deal because Intel will get very angry at them
when they all decide to do this shift in strategy.

Sorry but all you’re doing now is being stubborn.  Every problem I stated with the Toshiba AC100 is true and they didn’t release it worldwide because they knew it wouldn’t sell well.  There was originally plans to sell it more widely, but they quickly changed when negative reviews starting coming out.

The fact Toshiba could easily have given it better support and actually given it a wider release only puts emphasis on the extent of AC100′s failure and the fact Toshiba wasn’t willing to provide the resources needed to make it more successful.

R&D examples like HP are just testing of the market waters, they don’t count and Toshiba failing to offer a product in all the markets they deal with is a failure of the product.  You can’t compare a niche product to one that has truly been successful and try to call it great when it never was.

While the Asus Transformer is $400 in the states, it’s only $550 with the optional keyboard dock, and while a little more expensive in some other regions it remains cheaper than Motorola Xoom and other high end Tegra 2 products.  Never mind, even taking the initial parts supply shortage into account, that Asus has barely kept up with demand for the Asus Transformer and that makes it a much better example of success.

So give credit where credit is due.  Asus is the first one to push for the more reasonable price while still providing a good product without cutting any obvious corners.  Really not surprising considering Asus also spearheaded the netbook market and may have hit on what was missing with previous designs with the hybrid tablet/smartbook that not only takes advantage of the present tablet market momentum but appeals to a wider range of users and those interested in a smartbook like solution.

While others who provided lower price have only provided inferior products in exchange for the even lower pricing.

People like cheap, but they also want to get their money’s worth and so far the Asus Transformer is the closest to meeting expectations with the right balance of capabilities versus price. Never mind the large community of users means it’s increasingly easier to get things like Ubuntu onto it for greater range of usability.

More on topic, Acer is pretty good at making affordable systems but they often cut a lot of corners doing so.  So there is a question of built quality if they do release a system for $200 or less and remember many of these big companies are into making as much profit as they can get away with and that means we shouldn’t count on these systems being as affordable as they should be.

You are the one mixing things around.

Toshiba decided not to invest in distribution, software support and marketing behind the AC100 because they still had close relations with Intel and did not want to offend their main CPU partner.

In Germany, you can buy a Toshiba AC100 for 179 euros and the Asus Eee Transformer is 548 euros, that’s more than 3x more expensive. I would not call Asus Eee Transformer a reasonably priced ARM Powered laptop. The point of ARM Laptops is not to be more expensive than Intel x86, unless they somehow include crazy amazing features which are cool as well, touch screen Honeycomb is one thing, but not worth 349 euros extra.

Again, Toshiba has 203 thousand employees, they purposefully only allowed something like 12 of those employees to work on the AC100, and they purposefully did not release it outside of few very limited regions through few very limited resellers, on purpose. Toshiba is a $65 Billion company, if they want, they can do all the work with Linaro and work to release perfect software on AC100 or a new version of that with a newer faster ARM Processor with more memory bandwidth.

Same thing for all the other major Laptop makers, they are all working on this to release soon, and competition will make sure we will get ARM Laptops for cheaper than Intel Atom.

I’ve mixed nothing around, facts are facts and you’re ignoring them because you want to make the AC100 to be more than it ever was.

Again, you’re confusing the depreciated value of the AC100 (never mind it still more expensive for others to get in other regions) with what it was originally sold for and trying to compare that to a Asus Transformer, which hasn’t had time to depreciate in value yet and is a much better product than the AC100 ever was.

Never mind the AC100 doesn’t even give features like touch screen among other things.  So the Asus Transformer gives far more for the money. 

Really, if you really want to promote ARM then start using the good examples and stop clinging to the bad ones!

The Bill of Material for something like the AC100 is as low as $150. While for the Asus Transformer it’s around $200. It does not matter how much these companies decide to price them then or now, pricing is not something they do based on Bill of Materials, they do it based on how much money they think they can make out of the consumer.

I’m not trying to say AC100 sold hugely many worldwide, I am just saying that if they did not sell more AC100 that was simply because Toshiba did not want to. Of course, if they had wanted to sell more worldwide, they would have improved software support on it, for example investing 3 or 4 full time developers into porting the latest Ubuntu ARM software onto it. Don’t tell me Toshiba cannot afford the salaries of 3 software engineers if they want to. Fact is for AC100 they had a purpose to keep it quiet and low.

Toshiba is a huge corporation with subsidiaries in many countries and HQ in Japan that ultimately decides which project gets more or less R&D investments, which project gets more or less distribution and marketing.

You need to think again if you think blogger reviews or customer preferences has anything to do with it. Those huge companies decide what to sell and how many to sell, consumers buy whatever is in the store. Of course as long as it doesn’t suck, but these huge corporations can always make sure the products don’t suck if they don’t want them to.

Sorry but for one thing, pricing is a factor when products get depreciated with lack of demand and lack of value.  The going rate is usually pretty similar for similar products but the price only goes significantly down once they either want to push a newer product and/or the demand and value of the original goes down and the only way to continue to sell it is to lower the price.  Worst case selling it close to actual cost just to break even.

So don’t even pretend to try to justify the price difference you tried to pass off as even remotely valid.  The AC100 didn’t even have a touch screen, let alone meet its claimed performance and features.  While the Asus Transformer has excellent build quality, actually meets most of its claimed performance and features, and provides more value to the customer than the AC100 ever did.

Two, as already pointed out Toshiba originally did want it to be sold widely and only changed their plans after it got bad reviews.  They even had advertisement in countries in which it never sold.  The only thing that changed was that they knew it wouldn’t sell well!  They’re in the business of making profit and the only reasons for them not to pursue profit is if they know they won’t be making enough of it!

Really, you really are not thinking if you think customer demand, or in this case the lack thereof, had nothing to do with their decisions!  Yes there are other considerations, but nothing you have stated changes anything.  The AC100 was as products go for a big company like Toshiba a failure.  They may do better with another model but that’s neither here nor there. 

Fact is the AC100 didn’t live up to its promise and Toshiba never put the effort into fixing it or ever bothering to providing even half way decent support for it.  Even if they had bothered to put Ubuntu on it it would not have sold any better anyway.

Companies like Sharp have already tried similar and never made much market headway at all, since it will take more than just putting a proper OS on a device to make it sell.

So the Asus Transformer is the only real example of true success to date in this product category.

Really, stop clinging to the terrible examples and start using good examples.  The Toshiba AC100 was never a great product, let alone “Awesome”!  It failed on so many levels its not even funny that you would argue otherwise.

OK, you know what those Japanese Toshiba bosses decided and why. Toshiba’s long time near-exclusive partnership with Intel and Microsoft had nothing to do with it.

The Toshiba AC100 is awesome because it’s the first ARM Cortex-A9 Laptop in the world, it’s super thin, light, has an awesome keyboard, decent screen and Bill Of Material is obviously very low being Flash memory based. It’s also awesome because Mark Shuttleworth held it up at his conference and said it was the cooolest device he has ever seen http://armdevices.net/2010/11/01/mark-shuttleworth-loves-the-toshiba-ac100/ he was right, the only thing missing to it was better software support, distribution and marketing.

If you don’t believe my BOM numbers go look in the factories in China, go to ifixit.com or how those sites are called that do BOM analysis of Laptops and tablets online and list the bill of material estimate. A good ARM Powered laptop can actually be made for $100 in the Chinese factories, that means those can be sold for a lot less than the Asus Transformer.

Anyways, my point is Toshiba knows how to make this, they already put out one prototype that people could buy in Germany and few other places, they can easily do a Toshiba AC200 before Christmas, provide better software support with Chrome OS, Ubuntu, Ice Cream Sandwich and Windows 8 and sell it worldwide for $199, do a lot of marketing for it, differentiate it with 30-hour battery with a sunlight readable Pixel Qi screen and make more profit on each sale than on an Intel Atom netbook.

Charbax, the Toshiba AC100 may have been the first ARM Cortex-A9 Smartbook (ignoring failed attempts like the Mobinnova élan Smartbook) but it was not the first Smartbook and it won’t be the last and no it did not have that great build quality and frankly the Asus Transformer beats it in every way.  The screen on the AC100 was only a WSVGA TruBrite screen with only a 1024×600 resolution, while the Asus Transformer uses a far superior IPS screen at 1280×800 resolution just to show one example. So you’re arguing for a inferior product when there are much better examples you could be using.

The only thing that was ever really cool about the AC100 was that it allowed the hacking community something to play with back when Tegra 2 was still a fringe product.

Fact is though that the AC100 never lived up to its promise, many actual owners who bought into the hype will gladly condemn it for how badly it lived up to its promise and how badly Toshiba handled support for it, and was clearly a weak product for a company that could have easily produced something better.  No matter what else you may think of there is nothing to get around those facts that for the average consumer it was a failure!

Really, get over it, stop using early hype as examples of how supposedly great it was, and start using the real good examples of ARM products that did it right and are provably successful and stop with this nonsense already.

Using bad examples will just make people disregard your opinion. Especially those who know better and have actual experience with the bad products you’re trying to praise.

Now I for one look forward to low cost but good ARM solutions but I won’t be holding my breath expecting them to come out soon.  Too many people are willing to pay the pricing the big companies are still using and the lower cost systems cut too many corners.

Really, you should be thanking Asus for starting off the price war as being the first to offer more for less than the others were willing to offer.  It’s the first step to getting the competition to force each other to offer more reasonable prices and not put such a high premium for their profits on top of the cost of the system.

Even if the Toshiba AC100 had been a good product, it never had that effect on the market.

Everyone know that Intel have paid 1 billion euros For Violation Of European Antitrust Laws for abusing its dominance in the market for computer chips to exclude its biggest (and frankly, the only serious) rival AMD by paying computer manufacturers Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and NEC as well
as retailers to postpone, cancel or downright avoid using or selling
the latter’s products.

This are facts, not only opinions.

This is only in Europe Intel have done , imagine in the world… This explain better why until now the producer have not push ARM and others platform on notebook.

info via:
http://techcrunch.com/2009/05/13/intel-fined-over-e1-billion-for-violation-of-european-antitrust-laws/

Everyone know that Intel have paid 1 billion euros For Violation Of
European Antitrust Laws for abusing its dominance in the market for
computer chips to exclude its biggest (and frankly, the only serious)
rival AMD by paying computer manufacturers Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and
NEC as well as retailers to postpone, cancel or downright avoid using or selling
the latter’s products.

This are facts, not only opinions.

This was (and still happen, from my opinion) what Intel have done in Europe , and I think it have done even worst in others countries of the world. This
explain better why until now the producers had not push ARM and others
platforms on notebook or desktop.

Could be that now for survival  the producers understand it’s more secure to broke the Intel hidden “agreements”, and left the real innovation to develop, we will see…

This video in some way talk about that:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndhuEUX1kIU&feature=player_embedded

info via:
http://techcrunch.com/2009/05/...

The problem is that Android is not optimized for laptops.  Google don’t have any official support for it and there are not alot of apps that is supporting tablets today as it is.  Perhaps we have to wait until Microsoft releases windows 8 for ARM then we will see more device makers for arm based laptops.

Ubuntu or others gnu/linux are already perfectly running on ARM notebook. You don’t need to wait Windows!

For be onest I’m so happy that doesn’t already exist Windows for ARM! I heavly use only gnu/linux from 10 years!

Charbax you need to understand something an Arm laptop won’t be popular because of these reasons lack of software support (Ubuntu on Arm and Windows 8 doesn’t cut it), lack of processing power compared to rival Intel and Amd, and their is also the fact that Arm netbook would cost just as much as an Intel Atom or Amd Fusion netbook. Most of the cost of a notebook comes from screen, keyboard, and the motherboard removing x86 from the equation would only make that notebook slightly cheaper because processors are bought in bulk to keep costs down. I do like the idea of a Arm notebook though. Something with 12.1 or 11.6inch 1366×768 that is viewable outdoors screen, plus one of those seagate thin harddrives and 16gb of Rom for the OS, Ubuntu on Arm fully optimized, super thin design, and the basics like USB and HDMI.

I think these can be the most popular Ubuntu laptops ever but I am even more confident Chrome OS is the software that will make these most popular. As soon as the ARM Processors are fast enough to run a full Chrome OS, that is when they will dominate the market.

In terms of Bill Of Material for an ARM Laptop vs x86, you can save over 40%, -$10 on cheaper PCB, -$10 on cheaper processor, -$25 on cheaper 4GB Flash instead of 250GB HDD storage, -$30 on not needing to pay for Windows7 netbook edition software. That means the ARM Powered Laptop can be made for $100 instead of $175 companies currently pay for an Intel Atom Netbook. That means the ARM Powered Laptop running Chrome OS can be sold for $199 in stores making this the obvious choice for all consumers rather than the $350-500 Chromebooks that have the Intel Atom.

Ice Cream Sandwich likely adds Laptop features to Android, although Honeycomb is already quite cool for Laptops with a web browser that looks quite similar to a normal Chrome browser. Ubuntu is ready now and Chrome OS on ARM can be ready before Christmas to launch commercially.

AC100 is way lighter and thinner than Asus Transformer. Asus Transformer at $548 is not cheap, it’s a trick to make people think it’s cheaper when they make 90% profit margin on the Laptop Dock. AC100 remains awesome for industry insiders for hackers and ARM Laptop enthusiasts, and it wasn’t meant for the “average consumer” but with slightly more official software support, marketing, distribution, it could have been, I already explained why Toshiba decided not to provide those. The ARM Laptops that Acer, Asus, Samsung, Dell, HP and others are working on will look and be sold at prices closer to AC100 than they will Asus Transformer.

Sorry but you’re comparing a essentially bare bones system with the AC100 to a full system with the Asus Transformer. The AC100 had no touch screen, a lower build quality, a lower resolution with lower quality LCD, a much smaller battery, and fewer features. Even if the build cost difference isn’t huge the value for what the customer got is most definitely significant.  Especially given the better support Asus is giving and the better capabilities of the system.  Even with it’s new depreciated value the AC100 is still charging too much for what little it gives in comparison.

So really, knock it off already.  Nothing you have stated means a damn thing to the end consumers and they’re the ones who will ultimately decide what they will buy!

Reality is the big companies are still selling at far higher prices and the Asus is the first to buck that trend and start offering more for the price. It’s irrelevant if you consider it not enough yet.  The price drop has to start somewhere but you’re way too fanatical to bother seeing the big picture and show the real trend setters instead of focusing on the failed bumps in the road that ultimately changed nothing.

Did the AC100 create demand for low cost ARM solutions, no it didn’t!

Nothing has changed from before, even companies like Augen who tried to produce really low cost products ultimately failed.  Never mind the attempts at making $99 smartbooks out of cheap off the self spare parts never took off either.

Did the AC100 cause other companies to lower their prices, no it didn’t!

In fact the Motorola Xoom and Atrix 4G came out after and they raised the bar on pricing to the extreme.  The big companies took their lead from the presently best selling Apple iPad.

Did the AC100 push what is possible with ARM solutions, no it didn’t!

It was a bare bones product from a company that was fully capable of producing better and didn’t even bother to give it proper tech support.

The only product really bucking the trend and making the other big companies alter their strategy is the Asus Transformer.  They undercut the other companies pricing and offered more than they were offering to boot.

So give credit where credit is due and stop being so blind to what’s really happening in the market.  They haven’t gone far enough but change doesn’t happen over night.

We all want cheaper and more capable solutions but you need to step back and start seeing the forest for the trees.

You aren’t really saying anything. Asus Transformer is $548, it has double battery cause they did not manage to put a kick-stand and it would not work without a counter-balance in weight by doubling the battery, making the ARM Laptop way too heavy and fat. You think $548 is “pushing down the price of ARM Laptops”, fine on you. And Augen has made millions of dollars selling $99 ARM Laptops in all the US super markets, good for them. In fact Augen sold these ARM Laptops after watching my videos such as this one http://armdevices.net/2010/01/29/android-laptop-review-hivision-pws700ca/ I actually was asked by the manufacturer to send that prototype directly to Augen after they saw my video review of it. I told you already Asus Transformer has about $50 higher manufacturing cost mostly due to the more expensive touch screen and extra battery. AC100 costs below $150 to make, Asus Transformer costs about $200 to make. In fact, a device like AC100 can be made for below $100 now thus can easily be sold $199 in every super market.

No, the Asus Transformer is $400, and the price will drop when the Tegra 3 version comes out.  The keyboard dock is optional and yes it includes a battery that practically doubles the run time for the Transformer and also provides USB ports and SD card reader.  There is also carry case like the EP121 has so it can be used without the keyboard dock and be propped up.  Along with accessories much like Apple has for the iPad.

The AC100 never even met its claimed standby time by a whole week!  You were lucky to last the day!  It was a limited Smartbook, stuck with a touch optimized OS with no touch screen, and gave less performance than a netbook and the run time was equivalent to many netbooks.  Nothing but fail all around for end consumers.

Facts are facts Charbax, the AC100 gives far less for the price than the Asus Transformer and you aren’t taking that into account with the price difference.  Never mind still clinging to the depreciated price when the original price was double what you can get it for and in countries like the US it still will cost me about $500 to get one imported.  Just to show how lopsided and dishonest your comparison really is.

As for Augen, think again…

http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2011/07/06/rip-augen-2009-2011-e-reader-tablet-maker/

Sure, cheaper version of the AC100 can be made but with all the features and capabilities that gets removed and the general lower build quality in that price range means there would be less demand for it too!

People want to get the most bang for their buck, not just the cheapest thing the manufacturers feel like giving them!

Stop with the fanboy thinking and start doing some real critical thinking Charbax.  Being one of the few sites that actually gives decent coverage for ARM devices I’d hate to see you lose viewers because you can’t separate your enthusiasm from the facts.

The Asus is not a Transformer for less than $548. The Asus is not an ARM Laptop for less than $548. Asus Transformer is 548 euros in Europe, that’s $787. So if you want to continue claiming Asus Transformer is cheap, go ahead.

Augen made millions of dollars in revenue, good for them. So what if they closed down, they were like 3 employees or something, just rebranding Chinese stuff and selling it in the US market.

Asus would sell many tablets no matter how they made it. If they’d have not done it a “transformer” you can be sure the base tablet would have been sold more than $400. They do it as a trick to then make most of their profits on selling a keyboard+battery dock for $149 that costs them about $14 to make.

If AC100 did not work right, that is mostly, I say it again, because Toshiba DECIDED not to provide it support. And I will say it again, that is mainly to not offend it’s long time near-explusive CPU partner Intel who does absolutely not appreciate when its biggest customers start making ARM Powered devices like that. Basically AC100 was a great project which Toshiba CEOs in Japan decided to abort before completition because they decided that the timing was not yet right, they could still milk the Intel cow for about another year and bring their ARM Laptop designs out now as this is a better timing for them to optimize the profit margins on these. Toshiba took the AC100 design and sold is as Intel Atom netbook, making it one of the best and cheapest netbooks on the market. AC100 is basically the same hardware as Asus Transformer, just minus with a cheaper screen and lacking the heavy extra battery.

Sorry Charbax but again your facts are wrong.  The Asus Transformer is in fact £359.99 (~$586.75) in places like Amazon UK…

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004TB0EMK/ref=asc_df_B004TB0EMK3729013/?tag=pgelec-15-1047-21&creative=22110&creativeASIN=B004TB0EMK&linkCode=asn

$399 is the common price in the US, and I can get it even cheaper in some places. 

So you’re comparing worst pricing example as well as not factoring import tax adjusted pricing for actual product pricing.  Like I pointed out for me to get the AC100 I too would have to pay a pretty hefty import cost too.

Never mind just about a week ago I could have gotten a $100 off deal from Staples for even lower pricing and such deals turn up every so often and will likely be more common once the Tegra 3 version comes out and they want to clear stock of the Tegra 2 models.

Let’s also not get carried away with the price break down of parts.  It’s normal for most companies to charge more than double the build cost and Battery are typically sold for more than $14, along with keyboards and other accessories. 

I for example clearly pointed out that the big companies are still taking their lead from Apple and their iPad for pricing.

While the Asus Keyboard dock provides, the battery, the keyboard, the dock, USB ports, and Card reader.  So it’s not insanely over priced for what it gives.  The Motorola Atrix dock typically costs much more, especially if you buy it separately.

You are also of course are still ignoring the fact the other big companies are charging even more than Asus and providing less.  So my point is valid!

Regardless of what Toshiba decided, the AC100 failed the people who invested in it.  Never mind it’s not upgradeable and they have no choice but to get a whole new system anyway, which is a fault of many of these devices but the point is how badly the AC100 did not give the people their money’s worth.

The AC100 was also never a netbook, marketing spin nonsense aside, it could never run the same range of software and provided even less performance.  At best it was only a step up from those cheap $99-$139 smartbooks running Win CE.  But like them it’s already obsolete and we can only hope Toshiba’s next attempt will be more serious and provide a truly good product this time around.

Sure, Ubuntu is ready on ARM and should prove a fun product.  Hopefully a lot better than say past products like the Sharp PC-Z1 experience had been.

But there’s a reason Linux never gained much traction against Windows.  Aside from Chrome, Windows 8 has the best chance of getting a significant number of people to switch to ARM.

Though personally, I think I’ll stick to hybrid solutions like Cupp Computings PunkThis module for best of both worlds until they get all the early growing pains out of the way.

There is still no substance in what you are saying, and it gets really boring to argue with Asus fanboys like you.

AC100 is sold in Germany for 179 euros. Asus Transformer with keyboard is sold for 541 euros with keyboard. Cheapest German prices you will always find at preissuchmachine.de 

AC100 is 3x cheaper than Asus Transformer. AC100 is basically the same hardware as Asus Transformer except the screen that is basic netbook and non-touch. End of story.

Charbax, you have a lot of nerve to try to pin fanboy on me when you’re the one ignoring all the evidence.

I’ve given you example after example and showed where you got your facts wrong.  I personally don’t give a damn which company it’s from.  I go by how good the product is period!

Never mind I’m not even interested in the Asus Transformer, I have no stake in which product to promote.  Unlike apparently you!

The AC100 is not the same hardware as the Asus, aside from both being Tegra 2 the Transformer has better hardware all around.  I’ve pointed this out extensively already.  You can’t compare a basic resolution 1024×600 resolution screen with poor viewing angles to an IPS 1280×800 screen.  Specs alone prove my point!

The AC100 may be sold for 179 Euros in Germany now but it cost significantly more when it first came out.  You’re comparing a last year product that has plenty of time to depreciate in value to a product that was released this year.

Examples after example shows and proves my points.  So end of story is you’re wrong and you can’t admit it.   Congratulations on showing you can’t separate your opinions from facts.

Yes but Asus is releasing a 200 dollar netbook with many others to follow, Arm doesn’t bring much to the table for notebooks other power efficiency something that will improve greatly in the following months. Also the windows license is subsidized by by bloatware (though I could see that as being an advantage for Arm Laptops). I see it more likely that Honeycomb or Ubuntu will be found on these Arm notebooks for the sake of functionality that isn’t offered by Chrome OS. Honeycomb or Ubuntu is a better laptop platform in my opinion. Anyways even if Arm notebooks are cheaper there is still the problem of marketing and the fact that Arm notebooks are very niche devices, hopefully acer can solve that.

You are absolutely right that the AC100 is a big FAIL for Toshiba.

In fact, it is a big shame on Toshiba that they even came out with it.

Everyone expected a much better machine from Toshiba and they damaged the smartbook market. If they had come out with a proper smartbook, we would be seeing a lot more smartboooks on the market.

My biggest problem was the 512MB of RAM which made the AC100 inherently unfeasible to use with Ubuntu. The Android version they shipped was simply crap and completely unusable for this form factor.

The standby power draw was also a show stopper.

Asus has been saying they’d do a $199 Intel netbook for 4 years but they never did it. They only announced it as FUD anti-OLPC marketing but when it came to actually shipping cheaper netbooks they never wanted to do it.

ARM makes it possible for these companies to sell $199 Chromebooks and actually make more profit per sale compared to $299 Intel Atom netbooks. Also Google may pay some subsidy to companies shipping Chromebooks, as much as $30 or so depending on how much actual usage each user does on Google’s sites that are ad-supported.

I prefer Chrome OS for laptops cause it’s simpler, more secure, cheaper, least bloated OS in the world. I believe Google and others are developing HTML5 that can actually enable Chromebooks to do anything anyone would want to do with a Laptop, including offline caching, native code, 3D in the browser, enabling even the most advanced video-editing, photo-editing and 3D games to work.

Yeah, it’s a real shame.  The Smartbook market originally had such promise but we’ll see how these new attempts work out.  Like the old saying goes, better late than never…

Personally, I’m hoping they adopt a more modular design.  The rapid End Of Life cycle of many ARM systems may be fine for the mobile market but won’t be good for the laptop market where people tend to keep the same system for at least a few years.  While it will also make it easier for end customers to customize and even have the possibility of upgrading, which is practically unheard of with most ARM systems.

Many companies just find it hard to provide good features and still keep the costs low. While they also have an invested interest in wanting to keep us buying new products from them each year. 

Though the nature of Chromebooks puts the emphasis on the OS with the cloud instead of the hardware and that may work well with the ARM product cycle.  So we’ll see how it works out and whether it will truly take Windows 8 to get most people to consider ARM systems.

Absolutely agree on the need for a modular approach.

In fact, I believe most normal laptops should come with upgradeable baseboards. The rapid evolvement of ARM systems would make this an apeealing feature.

For example, I would definitely buy a Tegra2 based system if I was promised that I can upgrade the baseboard to a Tegra3 based one later.

There have been anti-competitive practices going on for years but this only slows and doesn’t really stop most products.  Since consumer demand can usually overcome even the worst any of these companies have done, if the demand is high enough.

Netbooks for example are something quite a few companies would rather not have succeeded because it forces them to give up quite a bit of profit and they bent over backwards making sure it didn’t wind up effecting the rest of the market. But the problem is demand hasn’t been great for Smartbooks for several reasons.

Like for example ARM is only now starting to rival even low end Intel ATOM for CPU performance.  However, they remain 32bit processors and have only started adopting 64bit memory management.  Many are also still manufactured 40nm or larger.  So depend heavily on SoC designs to improve efficiency and reduce space requirements.

While software wise, it took a few years before Flash was even supported on Android, and aside from a few custom linux distros it has also taken years to get a proper full port of a linux distro but is not yet applicable for all ARM systems since not all ARM GPU’s support the full range of features that desktop GPU’s support.

The Sharp PC-Z1 for example ran a custom linux but it was too sluggish to be very useful with the hardware available at the time.

Android also took a few years before Honeycomb for proper support of tablets.  Since the OS was originally designed for Smart Phones.

ARM allows manufactures a lot of leeway to customize and optimize, which for the most part is part of why it is thriving so well, but this also leads to some fragmentation of the platform that can keep some software from working the same on all devices.

Such limitations is why MS is putting such strict restrictions on the requirements for any ARM system to be considered capable of running Windows 8. 

Android and iOS systems only seem speedy because they are running very light OS and software that was designed to be usable on very low end hardware. But more powerful OS require more powerful hardware to run them properly.

The Tegra 2 just barely runs Ubuntu without too noticeable responsiveness issues for example.  While most big companies have followed Apple’s lead on pricing and that has led to many products being priced higher than many people think they’re worth.

All of the above being just some of the common reasons why Smartbooks haven’t been successful yet.

But we’re entering the next phase of ARM development that will be a game changer as performance starts to rival Intel ATOM and then will start exceeding it.  While increased competition between the big companies will slowly bring the pricing to more reasonable ranges.

However, Intel and AMD aren’t standing still either and we’ll have to wait and see how it’ll play out as we won’t know for sure until at least 2014 and all involved have shown what they can offer, versus what most people decide they want from these devices.

The original Tegra was released on a SO-DIMM RAM type module board.  Even Tegra 3 will apparently still be 40nm though.  So they may not be able to squeeze it on that small a board but there are larger standards that are pretty common in the embedded systems market and it’s not like it will take up much space in something the size of a smartbook, let alone the sizes they are making Chromebooks.

Though it would also help if whatever modular format they wind up with that there are some universal standards.

Laptops use to be more modular, like the graphic cards, but they were proprietary solutions and that made it very hard to get replacement parts or find anything that could work as an upgrade.  Especially with the limited tolerance those systems allowed for any change in hardware.  But on some rare occasions it could be done.  Like or example I once upgraded the graphic card on a old Dell 8100, but that’s above the skill level of the average user.

But it has been done in the embedded systems market by companies like Toradex, you should check out some their product demonstrations on youtube from the last tech show they attended.  Covered everything from x86 to multiple ARM solutions.  So it should be doable.

Yes and no, yes it’s been something they have been claiming for years but the X101 is a real product and it’s coming out.  They never showed us a product before.  So they’re finally getting serious about it. 

It’s a weak offering though considering the small drive capacity and they’re still basing it on Pine Trail instead of the newer Cedar Trail.  So a next gen ARM solution would have a good chance of easily rivaling its performance and significantly exceeding it graphically.

But while switching to ARM looks promising it may not lower Chromebook costs by enough to reach $200 if they still insist on all the hardware specifications they are presently using in existing models.  Cost of the screen, etc will remain the same as someone else already pointed out regardless of what you use to run the system with.

The Genesi notebooks you covered previously for example are $200 but they’re smaller 10″ systems with lower specs than the larger Chromebooks being sold right now.

 
We’ve fixed the story. There was a PR firm responsible for
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Charbax how much do you think ARM powered Windows 8 Tablets cost?

Microsoft can charge $30 license to the manufacturer as they usually do on netbooks, but retail price may be similar around $500.

Wow, they must be charging you a premium in your area.  Amazon UK has Windows 7 Ultimate for £166.41 for full retail version, Win7 HP goes down to £111.09, and I can get Ultimate for around $200 in the states.  Still not cheap but someone besides MS is profiting if you have to pay $500 for it…

I was estimating at $500 the price of the full Windows 8 tablet which is why for the consumer buying products from the big expensive tablet brands such as Asus/Acer/Motorola/LG/Dell/Samsung it may not be much if any price difference between Android and Windows 8.

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Still waiting for your news to become reality.

They should make $200-$300 Chromebooks based on ARM, and $400-$500 Android notebooks like Asus Transformer – with touch.

It did not happen or I have missed the announcement.

Who knows, maybe Acer has it ready and waiting for the right timing to do more announcements and show it to the press and release, maybe Intel grabbed the phone when they heard the news and threatened Acer not to release it or offered Acer rebates on intel processors in exchange of not releasing it.

Me too, let me know anyone who hears about the news of these new Acer laptops that the new Acer CEO talked about according to the linked article.

Well, it not Acer, but the Hard Disk equipped TrimSlices are out

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