Inventec may be preparing to ship 60-70 thousand ARM Powered laptops running the Chrome OS laptop starting later this month according to Taiwan based rumor and fact website Digitimes.com. This may be the absolute demonstration of the shifting trend to come in laptops, where Intel and Microsoft will not be needed anymore and laptops can run ARM Cortex processors with fast I/O, good RAM, flash based storage, very thin and light form factors with very long battery runtime and instant boot, all running full Chrome web browser OS, one that loads all websites at full speed and provides fast web browsing.
Can the ARM Powered laptops run a web browser at full speed, this will be the start of the revolution, as full speed web browsing is the main performance requirement for a mass consumer laptop product. If an average consumer and experts are able to browse the Internet on the ARM Powered Chrome OS laptop at similar or better speed than current Intel Atom based laptops, then this should mean the success of this platform.
See my video of an ARM Powered Inventec laptop presented at Computex 2009: Inventec ARM Laptop powered by Snapdragon also see the pocketable laptop form factore presented by Invented at Computex 2010: Inventec Dr eye and try to imagine the progress Inventec has been able to achieve for a Chrome OS type of full sized laptop platform since then.
Which processor do you think is going to be used for Chrome OS ARM Powered laptops? Do you think ARM Cortex-A9 will be a requirement? How much RAM? And how do you think they achieve fast enough I/O bus speeds to provide for a full performance web browsing system? Do you think ARM Powered Chrome OS devices will provide a full Native Code, Flash, 3D, local storage and fast javascripts/ajax support that can be required?
My opinion: If they ship it for $199 out of any contracts, with a good ARM Cortex-A9, good RAM and I/O hardware design, preferably with the Pixel Qi dual-mode screen for upwards 30-60 hours of battery runtime on a super thin and light form factor, well then, I think this can only become hugely successful.
Related articles
- Google-branded Chrome OS smartbook launching this month? (engadget.com)
- Google Chrome OS About To Sneak Up On Everyone This Month (inquisitr.com)
- Shhh! Chrome OS Releases in November! (slashgear.com)
- Component Makers Whisper That Chrome OS Will Ship In November (crunchgear.com)