Category: Google

Google TV with HDMI pass-through?

Posted by Charbax – March 26, 2010
Category: Opinions, Google, Google TV

Following are opinions, not facts:

The Google TV box can be made for $50 if they use an ARM processor based platform, which is much lower power and much cheaper than Intel and provides all the same if not more 1080p and video streaming features.

The idea of implementing Google TV using the HDMI pass-through option (as “reported” by videonuze.com) and adding stuff to HDMI from the existing Cable/Satellite set-top-box sounds like a genius plan. If HDCP or however all those copy protection technologies of HDMI don’t prevent that solution from happening or to be turned off by broadcasters, then my guess is that Google could provide a $100 retail solution including HDMI pass-through and infrared emitter that would basically be compatible with all existing set-top-boxes, no matter what Comcast and DirecTV think about this.

HDMI pass-through and the infrared emitter would allow Google to replace your existing remote control with a more web centric remote control (and keyboard), display any overlay graphics and informations on any video contents, even “take over” existing programming, such as streaming customized advertisements instead of the broadcasted ads (with the agreement of the broadcaster of course). Possibilities could also include overlay chats, IMs and status updates, overlay community features like polls, discussions, ratings. It could include real-time user-generated recommendations for programming, even time-shifting to allow Google to overlay automatically generated subtitles, even translated subtitles. Time shifting could also allow for launching of related Youtube searches and videos at any time and then resume normal programming.

My guess though, even though Google TV will kill current broadcast monopolies and TV stations eventually, the Google TV solution will also completely revolutionize advertising for all TV stations. Basically, a TV station and broadcaster could opt-in to have Google manage personalized advertisment instead of the existing common denomiator type of TV advertisement. By doing that, the revenues from TV ads would go up 10 times overnight. So either they can decide to show 10x less ads for the same content, or they can make 10x more money and use some of it to create better contents.

In my opinion, the real deal here is to bring Youtube to the HDTV. But also to provide a recommendations box for broadcast TV as well. Imagine the Google TV learns what you like, because the Google TV remote control will have one big green “Like” button, users click it when they are watching something that they like. That will help Google learn your taste. And if you want to watch TV but you are too lazy to research what content is available, Google can generate recommended content queues for you, of either live or on-demand content, and a mix of both.

A cool little app that will change the TV and movie business seriously, because Google TV is open source, integrated BitTorrent downloads and RSS will not be stoppable. Which means, you want a movie, just type in the title and the device will start the BitTorrent download automatically, be it legal or not. And StreamTorrent type technology can even let you nearly instantly stream any contents using p2p technology. Net Neutrality will make this great.

I originally posted these estimates and opinions at: videonuze.com

Google subsidizes Android and Chrome OS devices with advertising

Posted by Charbax – March 25, 2010
Category: Opinions, Google

The point of Kyocera’s newly announced Android phone is to be the first pre-paid Android smartphone in the USA. It will be sold for $169 at Virgin Mobile, Cricket and MetroPCS. No contracts. The phone might be SIM-locked to that pre-paid carrier, but there is no subscription plans required to have an Android smart phone.

The fact is that Android phones cost around $150 to manufacture at the moment. The Nexus One might cost $50 more than Kyocera’s phone to manufacture (perhaps $175 vs $125), due to the more expensive components. But in general, the cost of parts and manufacturing is around $150.

Same with Android or Chrome OS on ARM processors for Laptops and Tablets. Those can also be manufactured for around $150 or even less if you don’t include the 3G modem in the device and use the lowest quality components.

Of course Google can subsidize the price of the devices with advertising. In fact, I think we can expect Google will sell $99 Android Phones and $99 Chrome OS laptops on google.com/phone and google.com/laptop within long.

For Internet access, there will be pre-paid deals for using 3G and LTE networks without contracts, and there will be WiFi-only devices or 700mhz White Spaces ones in those products, to thus route the VOIP through data and provide near-free wireless broadband usage on these products. So $99 devices without contracts, without subscription plans is doable.

The question is only how soon does Google want to disrupt the whole market?

I originally posted this as a comment here: paidcontent.org
Found via: techmeme.com

Nintendo 3DS and my feature Wish-List

Posted by Charbax – March 23, 2010
Category: Opinions, Google

Image representing Nintendo as depicted in Cru...
Image via CrunchBase

The Nintendo 3DS has now been announced by Nintendo in this official press release:

March 23, 2010
To Whom It May Concern:
Re: Launch of New Portable Game Machine
Nintendo Co., Ltd.(Minami-ward of Kyoto-city, President Satoru Iwata) will launch “Nintendo 3DS”(temp) during the fiscal year ending March 2011, on which games can be enjoyed with 3D effects without the need for any special glasses.
“Nintendo 3DS”(temp) is going to be the new portable game machine to succeed “Nintendo DS series”, whose cumulative consolidated sales from Nintendo amounted to 125 million units as of the end of December 2009, and will include backward compatibility so that the software for Nintendo DS series, including the ones for Nintendo DSi, can also be enjoyed.
We are planning to announce additional details at E3 show, which is scheduled to be held from June 15, 2010 at Los Angeles in the U.S.

I’m a big fan of Nintendo, while I would be very impressed if this 3D screen technology (rumored to be Sharp/Hitachi’s parallax barrier) actually doesn’t look like some blurry crap, which is my opinion of all the 3D screens that I have seen at consumer electronic shows so far these past few years, with and without glasses. Here are my feature wish-list for Nintendo’s next portable game console:

– It should be possible to deactivate the 3D screen effect and the screen must be just as clear as the market’s best LCD screens

– Game downloads, Nintendo needs to be bold and provide $1 Game downloads, for all games, including affordable $15/month game subscription plans that gives access to all the games. Online games means they get updated often and new games could even be streamed when they are based on pre-installed game engines.

– 3G module for extra $50, there should be a module slot in the back of the device where users should be able to add such things as a modem for 3G and its SIM card. The 3G module shoulds be unlocked so anny SIM card on any carrier can be used.

– Android OS, Nintendo surely has enough money and power to do their own OS if they want. I would find it much more interesting if Nintendo was so courageous and simply base their next portable on Android. At the same time announce that games will work on other Android phones that have graphics hardware acceleration. This would instantly add thousands of apps to the platform and make all UI and feature design work compatible with the rest of the industry.

– SD card slot but perhaps even a built-in hard drive compartment. Adding a 1.8″ or 2.5″ hard drive in the back of the device could be really cool to thus have enough storage for hundreds of big games, videos and music.

– HDMI output, this should basically be even more powerful than the Wii in terms of graphics outputting full 720p and 1080p games to HDTVs.

– At least dual 4″ screens, perhaps a larger version with dual 4.8″ screens. The screens should be close enough to each other so when the device is opened or put on a table, it would look like one big screen.

– Keyboard add-on should cover one screen and thus turn the device into a pocketable laptop form factor. The keyboard should be foldable, thus providing a full sized keyboard typing speed.

– Nintendo should do the marketing for using it for VOIP and IM, it should be compatible with SIP, Skype, Google Voice, video-conferencing and more. Over WiFi and 3G and even other networks as the modem module shall be replacable with other networking technologies. Thus Nintendo should market this as a replacement for smartphones.

– Full video codecs playback at up to 1080p and full bitrates also for high profile. Somehow video playback battery runtime should be at least 10 hours. Youtube HD support should be included.

– Pixel Qi screens so the Nintendo portable can be used for reading, with 50 or more hours of battery runtime. Comon Nintendo, when you order 100 million screens, you can make any screen technology you want. Be the first to announce 4.8″ Pixel Qi LCD screens. Including even that 3D layer on top if you want.

– Usable for education. Instead of teachers and schools banning the Nintendo DS from the classrooms (I’ve seen this happen for some of my young cousins), Nintendo should work to include the hardware in class rooms. Thus it needs educational contents, it needs to provide productivity such as the web browsing and text input needs to provide a full speed experience.

– Pricing should be below $200, preferably $150 without the 3G module.

What do you think?

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I am on the Meetmobility podcast episode 45

Posted by Charbax – March 13, 2010
Category: Tablets, Laptops, E-readers, Set-top-boxes, Opinions, CeBIT, Archos, Google

You can hear me featured on the Meetmobility podcast episode 45 with JKKmobile, Sasha Pallenberg and Steve Paine available at http://meetmobility.com/2010/03/12/meetmobility-podcast-45-cream-of-the-expo-cebit-2010-roundup/

I talk about the Archos 7 Home Tablet, Gigabyte’s Android-based e-ink e-reader, Android on set-top-boxes as well as my 10″ Firstview VIA ARM powered Android laptop which I will post a video-review of here one of these next few days.

ARM Powered OLPC XO laptops coming within a year

Posted by Charbax – February 8, 2010
Category: Laptops, Opinions, Marvell, Google, Pixel Qi, OLPC

When the OLPC project’s XO laptops are used in schools, the results are transforming education around the world. It’s getting children excited about school. It’s getting attendance to increase by 100 percent, which it does in most places where OLPC has deployed laptops, where more girls go to school, where the truancy drops to zero, where children take laptops home and teach their parents how to use them.

The One Laptop Per Child engineers are working on an ARM Powered XO 1.75 laptop which is going to be released within a year from now. My guess is that they might be optimizing it for using the Marvell Armada 610 or 510 processor.

The OLPC’s official power consumption target is 2W of power consumption. Though I wonder, is 2W of power consumption really the goal? Not even lower?

For example, the Pixel Qi screen is supposed to consume only 0.1W when backlight is turned off, once Pixel Qi has optimized refresh rates and other details which they have said they will be able to do over the next few months. The whole ARM Processor System on Chip should not consume nearly any power at all when nothing is moving on the screen, when the student for example is just reading an e-book. Then how low really can the power consumption go? Shouldn’t 0.2W power consumption in offline e-reader mode be a realistic goal? Thus shouldn’t the child get 100 minutes of use for 1 minute of cranking?

Since most of the children served by laptops from the OLPC project live off the grid, and may not get electricity for many years, getting the power consumption down on the laptops is one of OLPC’s main engineering goals. This and lowering the cost of the laptops to below $100 per laptop are the main goals of the OLPC project.

I’d like to see all the major ARM Processor makers announce that they will support OLPC in that goal, so that the XO 1.75 may not only be based on the Marvell processor, but that other processors will be optimized for it as well. All ARM Powered laptops shall point towards the same goals in my opinion, also in terms of software optimizations. We need fast and smooth web browsers, have Google and everyone else focus on optimizing the web browsing speed using the Chrome browser. While having everyone focus on one OS for all ARM Powered laptops may be a good idea eventually, until we figure out which OS are the best for which use, having easy multi-boot menus work and utilizing a minimal of extra storage space to ship laptops with multiple choices of Linux OS such as shipping ARM Powered XO laptops with Fedora based Sugar OS, with a Gnome desktop alternative, and with eventually an alternative based on a combination of Android and Chrome OS may be the best solution.

Free wireless broadband is also a priority. Sure a combination of existing cellular, ADSL, Fiber and WiFi Mesh networks of the OLPC project can already achieve a lot. But perhaps the generalization of use of 700mhz spectrum for wireless broadband all around the world will help lower the cost of deploying ubiquituous wireless broadband, especially in countries that deploy the OLPC project without having pre-existing broadband infrastructures in place. The TV spectrum needs to be used for free wireless broadband for all.

Rich countries need to prioritize the OLPC project in deploying revolutionary education using computers and Internet technology all over the world.

Source: smartplanet.com

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Chromium and Firefox within Android

Posted by Charbax – February 3, 2010
Category: Tablets, Laptops, Software, Opinions, Archos, Google, Android

The default Android web browser is really awesome in terms of speed, it even works amazingly fast on the ARM9 Powered web browser of the Hivision PWS700CA that I tested in my video-review a few days ago. Though for Laptop form factors, also known as ARM Powered Netbooks or Smartbooks, and for Android Tablets like the Archos 5 Internet Tablet that has a HDMI output and supports USB and Bluetooth keyboards and mice, the default Android web browser might not be enough.

This is why the support of the full desktop-like experience using Chrome and Firefox web browsers within Android are really going to be nice. Perhaps the June 2009 release of the Native Android SDK can help developers reach this goal.

The Mozilla team is showing this screenshot of Firefox running within Android (check also Mozilla’s wiki entry on Android: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Android):

Since Google is now working on releasing the full Chrome OS for ARM Powered devices, perhaps it would make sense to take the source code of that Chrome web browser for ARM, and make it into an Android application. This way on a Pocketable Android tablets or phones the default Android web browser would still be used, but when in HDMI output mode to a HDTV and when using USB or Bluetooth keyboards and mice, the Chrome browser or Firefox would thus be the browser of choice.

I think it would be nice as well if it was possible to provide a full speed browser experience even on cheap ARM Powered Android devices that come with little RAM memory such as only 128MB or RAM, still enable the use of unlimited amounts of opened tabs by somehow perhaps saving the state of each tab into ROM memory and be able to quickly in few milliseconds be able to pull that back into RAM memory when the specific tab is selected.

On the other hand, I also think it would make sense to support all Android applications within Chrome OS, thus this might mean that eventually Android and Chrome OS will merge.

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Pricing and availability on Archos 7 Internet Tablet (8GB) leaked

Posted by Charbax – February 1, 2010
Category: Tablets, Opinions, Texas Instruments, Archos, Google, Android

If the leaked pricing rumor of £149 for the Archos 7 Internet Tablet is correct, this may mean that it will be sold for only $199 in the USA. Consider that European retail pricing always includes around 20% VAT taxes which are not included in US retail pricing.

In September 2009, Archos did announce that they would upgrade to 1ghz processors, thus I expect it may be the new Texas Instruments OMAP3640 that is a 45nm process or a 1ghz version of the current OMAP3440 processor.

Archos 7 Internet Tablet (8GB)

The cheaper $199 Archos 7 Internet Tablet, means the Archos 5 Internet Tablet will probably also be available $50 to $100 cheaper. It is currently sold at $249 at Radio Shack. Thus by March, pricing for the Archos 5 Internet Tablet (8GB) may be lowered to around $179 (I am speculating here).

Archos 7 Internet Tablet (8GB) specifications

It’d be really nice to see Archos come during the next few months with more screen sizes from 4.3″, 4.8″, 7″, 8.9″ and even 10.1″ Android Tablets. I speculate on what the overall pricing of those may be in this post: http://archosfans.com/2010/01/29/my-recommendations-on-archos-cheap-android-tablet-revolution/

Most importantly, if full Google Marketplace can officially be supported on larger screened Android Tablets, and if all bugs are fixed soon for very stable full Android and VOIP usage, I think this positions Archos and the whole Android Tablet segment as a really good value alternative to the $499-$829 Apple iPad.

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Update on my wishlist for my next HD camcorder

Posted by Charbax – January 31, 2010
Category: Cameras, 4K UHD, Opinions, Google

Here’s an update on my August 2nd 2008 wish-list for features of my next HD Camcorder:

Since the beginning of 2008, I have been using my Sanyo HD1000 camcorder to post about 1000 videos in 9mbit/s 720p HD quality (h264 baseline Sanyo recordings) to Youtube and before mid-2008 using 3.5mbit/s DivX 720p HD to my server when I posted all my technology videos at http://techvideoblog.com. In 2005-2007, I was using my old Sony HDR-HC1 for my 1080i HDV recordings to video-blog in 3.5mbit/s DivX 720p and Google Video.

I consider myself to be a professional video-blogger, thus I really would like to see the HD camcorder industry to include video-blogger features in next generation camcorders.

I would like to see Sanyo release a compact pocketable HD3000 model in the next couple of months, with following features:

– built-in WiFi upload to Youtube HD, like the Eye-Fi but WiFi uploads should be fast at full WiFi speed with resume of uploads supported and very easy to use user interface in the camera to manage uploads and automatic-uploads.
– built-in Android touch screen interface (for editing titles/descriptions), with USB-host or Bluetooth for keyboard text input to edit titles/descriptions
– faster/better H264 encoding quality per bitrate with more lower bitrate options such as 4mbit/s 720p (which should be at least as good quality as 9mbit/s encoding on the older Sanyo HD1000) for quicker upload to Youtube.
– Wireless microphone using Bluetooth or RF built-in would be nice as well.
– Live WiFi streaming with overlay chat API for Qik/Ustream would be nice as well while it also records HD versions.
– If possible, it should record both 4mbit/s 720p or 1080p 8mbit/s for Youtube and 20mbit/s 1080p for archiving.
– It should support automatic editing of intro/outros in all videos. Thus I could record a new intro/outro for each new event and it should just automatically edit that in.
– Let me pause recordings to thus edit videos while I film and let me join/cut videos within the camcorder faster than on HD1000
– It should let me point to a transparent PNG file to use as Watermark in all videos by default, the Watermark should be applied while filming thus not loosing any quality in re-encoding later.
– Version with built-in SIM card slot for HSDPA features would be nice, constant overlay live IRC chat would be nice to receive live questions and suggestions from live viewers
– 4.3″ or 4.8″ screen would be nice as viewfinder compared to the 2.7″ of the HD1000.
– Built-in 2.5″ or 1.8″ hard drive compartment would be nice for adding built-in storage upwards 500GB.
– Otherwise a second built-in SDHC card slot would be nice.
– Some clever system to swap battery while filming without having to interrupt the filming would be impressive.
– Built-in wide-angle, I film everything in wide-angle so I’d rather not have to buy an add-on wide-angle lense. Yet it’s ok if Sanyo make the lense look wide an cool by default (small lenses don’t look as professional).

Dear Camcorder industry, if you want to differentiate your HD Camcorder with good optics (better than a basic Flip camcorder), and not let Smartphones get HD camcorder functions built-in before we see some of these things. These features are it! Once you have got these features integrated, you can start aiming towards Quad-HD resolution recording for cheap if the HDTV LCD industry can follow as well, instead of making those ridiculous 3D HDTV.

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I uploaded 72 videos from CES 2010

Posted by Charbax – January 21, 2010
Category: Opinions, CES, Archos, Google

LAS VEGAS - JANUARY 08: Consumer Electronics ...
Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Wow, I beat my record for the amount of videos that I filmed and have posted from a 4-day consumer electronics conference. I uploaded 72 videos to Youtube from CES 2010 in HD 1280×720 9mbit/s quality. And I am still not done. I still have at least 2 more videos that I can think of that I forgot to upload yet (one because I had to edit it) which I will get to upload during the next couple of days as soon as I find them.

22 of those videos have so far reached audiences of more than 1000 viewers, which I think is lower than I would have hoped for. I did not have any time during my trip in the USA to try to promote my best videos for trying to get them embedded on the big technology news blogs. And also, the big technology news blogs like Engadget and Gizmodo had their own armies of 20+ bloggers each doing all the coverage that they needed. Engadget for example brags about having published 700 posts during CES (I didn’t count them), that wouldn’t leave much space for them to think about embedding any other small video-bloggers videos even if those might be better than their own ones.

My new site http://ARMdevices.net is also only just launched right now before CES, I need to work on optimizing the features, especially the comments and social networking aspects of it. Please do subscribe to my RSS feed if you do use that kind of technology so you will automatically know when I post new awesome videos.

My plan is now to film my next extensive consumer electronics show video coverage at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona from 15-18th February, where Google might be releasing Nexus Two, Three and Four, so definitely check back for that!

Until then, I plan to release some awesome video reviews of amazing new products. I have right here the Android based Hivision Mininote laptop, it is absolutely amazing and I have been preparing to film my extensive video review of it to be published imminently. I should hurry up as I am probably one of the very few very lucky people on this planet with a real ARM Powered Android laptop. I also got a Pocketbook 360 e-ink e-reader which may well be the most pocketable e-ink e-reader on the market, I will soon post a high quality video review of that one. I just got a Huawei e5830 Mifi adaptor, awesome to always stay connected to the Internet, I will test VOIP Android applications on Archos 5 Internet Tablet using its new Donut-based Android firmware 1.7.33 and the hacked Google Marketplace using it to see if that can fully replace a mobile phone.

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Still many more videos to be uploaded

Posted by Charbax – January 15, 2010
Category: Opinions, CES, Google

I am in a third world country when it comes to Internet connection speeds. Neither do any hotels in Las Vegas nor San Francisco provide any decent Internet upload speeds. Since I left the Press Room at the CES convention center on the 10th of January, I have barely been able to upload any of my 9mbit/s 1280×720 videos. Here are the places I tried:

– Imperial Palace Hotel Las Vegas : Internet sucks, it costs $10 per day, disconnects constantly, I couldn’t upload anything, Youtube would disconnect. The speed was actually 0 for most of the time. I had to call the ISP HKI Wireless and hold for 20 minutes to get one of their technical service representatives to remotely reboot the WiFi router so that the Internet would work at all. They did not provide a full refund for bad Internet service.

– Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas provides Ethernet connection but the upload speed is very bad, I was not able to upload any video successfully, it would always disconnect in the middle of file transfers (Youtube does not support resuming of uploads) and the upload speed was generally below 30kb/s. Connection cost $12.95 per night included in the “Resort fee”.

– Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas did not provide any decent upload speed either. I was not able to upload any video from that Hotel even though I stayed there 2 nights. All uploads got interrupted and were far too slow, upload speed less than 50kb/s over their Ethernet. Price $14.95 per night for the Internet though it’s included in their “Resort fee”.

– Treasure Island in Las Vegas did provide below 80kb/s upload speed, I managed to upload a couple of videos overnight. The Internet access is available using Ethernet and is included in their “resort fee” as well. Though it was much too slow for me to upload anything significant. I might have uploaded 1GB overnight from there.

– McCarran airport in Las Vegas provide decent 200kb/s upload connection, sponsored for free by Google. So I was able to upload 1.5GB to Youtube while waiting for my airplane to leave.

– San Francisco airport does not provide free Internet access so I did not try. One has to pay T-Mobile some unreasonable amount of money to connect.

– Marina Heritage Hotel in San Francisco has very crappy Internet access. Those are unencrypted WiFi hotspots provide by a company name HotWan. It sucks so bad, nothing was achieved and even checking Emails and browsing the Internet was unbearable.

– I tried about a dozen Netcafés in San Francisco, including Café Trieste on Market, Cyber Café on Geary Street, Quetzal Café on Polk Street, and half a dozen other places. Including the Fedex Kinkos on Van Nesse Avenue. None of them have any usable Internet upload speeds. They are all at less than 50kb/s and a couple might be around 80kb/s if I leech their whole connection (making things slow probably for everyone else in the net cafés), thus making it impossible for me to upload any of my videos without squatting one of these Internet Cafés for 15-20 hours. That’s not going to happen. ISP company named ZRnet provide WiFi at several of the places and hotels, their customer support line has no idea what bandwidth they provide and they disconnect users after 90minutes of use, making Youtube uploads impossible.

It would have been useful if there was some kind of user generated map of Speed Testing of all the download and upload speeds of all the hotels and netcafés. I wouldn’t mind paying $1-$3 per GB, as long as the speed is guaranteed 100mbit/s upload. I thought San Francisco was the Silicon Valley and that they would have decent Internet here. I get much faster private Internet over ADSL2+, Cable or Fiber in Copenhagen Denmark for $40-60 per month than US Hotels provide to all their guests combined.

So please check back within the next few days and I will hopefully have found some ways to upload my remaining 7.5GB of HD quality videos from CES 2010. At the least I will have them uploaded once I am back to real European 2mbit/s to 100mbit/s Upload speeds.

Most importantly, if you know where I might be able to find decent 10-100mbit/s upload speeds in San Francisco, please send me an email at charbax@charbax.com

I have arrived in Las Vegas

Posted by Charbax – January 5, 2010
Category: Tablets, Opinions, Texas Instruments, CES, Archos, Google, Android

And here is what you can find in all Radio Shack stores in the USA, the Archos 5 Internet Tablet (8GB) selling right there for a very affordable $249 price. If Archos markets this device the right way and provides a perfect Android firmware for it with full Google Marketplace integration, and soon announce 3G and 7″ versions and solutions for Camera and Compass, I think Archos has a huge opportunity right there to make a very big influence on the market.

You can follow my extensive HD quality video coverage from CES here on http://138.2.152.197 during the next few days.

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CES video coverage on ARMdevices.net

Posted by Charbax – January 2, 2010
Category: Opinions, CES, Google, Pixel Qi

Consumer Electronics Show
Image via Wikipedia

I will be in Las Vegas to film up to 50 HD quality videos from January 4th to 11th of the best ARM Powered® devices to be shown at the tradeshow. I will try to film behind-the-scenes Interviews with Engineers, Product Managers and other experts in the ARM Powered® Tablets, Mobile Phones and Laptops that are going to be shown at CES and launched hopefully soon thereafter at attractive prices.

The big question for me will be to notice the actual performance level reached by those latest ARM Cortex A8 or ARM Cortex A9 processors to be embedded in those devices. The certain crucial performance levels that we need to see working smoothly and fine are following:

– The web browser needs to browse on websites fast and with multiple amounts of opened tabs.

– The web browser needs to load advanced Javascripts and AJAX based websites just as fast as on an Intel-based Laptop.

– Flash 10.1 support needs to be just about as smooth and good on ARM Powered® devices as on Intel-based ones.

– I’d really like to see the first demos of fast and smooth Google Chromium OS demos running on ARM Powered® Laptops and Tablets. The full Google Chrome browser optimized to use hardware acceleration of the ARM Powered® Laptops and Tablets is crucial for the success of the platform. That is, it would be surely great to see Firefox and Opera browsers also working fast and smooth for all those advanced things.

– Some level of advanced 3D hardware acceleration for 3D game platforms such as the Unreal Engine, Quake3 demos, even N64 emulators demonstrated to work on all the latest ARM Cortex based technologies would be really great and would add a certain level of confidence in ARM Powered® devices from the bunch of 3D gamer geeks that do represent a large part of the blogosphere.

– In general, it would be extremely great to see working implementations of full hardware acceleration in Android and Chrome OS, as well as in Ubuntu 9.10 and any other Linux ARM based OS that can really be used well to optimize the use of hardware acceleration.

Then in terms of business models, ARM Powered® devices should have more opportunity to be sold to consumers at attractive prices. Subsidizing the devices with telecom contracts running up to more than $2000 over the 2-years is one way to do it. What I would really like to see are official announcements that the ARM Powered® Laptops and Tablets are not only very powerful in terms of Javascripts/Flash/3D performance, but also that they can be sold significantly cheaper to the end consumer than devices based on Intel.

The $200 ARM Powered® Laptop and the promise of $100 ones for consumers to buy totally unlocked and without contracts, that is where the biggest opportunity lies with ARM Powered® devices in my opinion. By bring the PC/Laptop industry to a lower cost level, could also mean that 1 Billion or more people around the world will be able to afford to have full access to the web. And if all those devices can add the Pixel Qi low power sunlight readable screen and even function in Tablet mode, run 20-40 hours on a low cost and light battery, then all the greatest. It would be really nice to see actual product announcements at CES in just a few days.

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The blogosphere reports my Nexus One pricing speculation as rumor

Posted by Charbax – December 16, 2009
Category: Smartphones, Opinions, Qualcomm, Archos, Google, Android

Several blogs have been reporting my speculation on Nexus One pricing as a rumor. Which is okay, but I am only freely thinking what to expect Google will do about the pricing. What I think Google should do. I don’t have secret infos from Google insiders, at least not yet. Although I am sure Google insiders are monitoring what the blogosphere is talking about so if they see a lot of people getting excited about disruptive pricing and VOIP features, then it could well encourage them to actually really make the big announcements and make it happen at the launch.

My speculation is based on following:

1. Manufacture and Bill of Material of a 3.7″ AMOLED touch screen smartphone has been calculated by isupply and others to cost below $150 all inclusive when mass manufactured. Although an AMOLED WVGA screen is probably a bit more expensive than a 3.5″ 480×320 LCD screen. Manufacturers and resellers make very high profit margins when they sell unlocked smartphones at $400-500, and I think, those prices are only a deterrent to unlocked phones and to push consumers into signing $2500 2-year contracts for getting those phones.

2. My speculation is that when Google will be selling its own phone (even manufactured by HTC or other Smartphone manufacturers in Asia), my speculation is that Google does not need to profit on the hardware, but plans to profit over time on mobile ads and services.

3. Google does not own spectrum, yet my basic suggestion is that Google may be able to approach telecom carriers internationally and offer to buy Petabytes of bandwidth on 3G networks, at a given rate per GB, and my speculation is that 3G bandwidth data should definitely cost less than $10 or 5€ per GB. If Google is able to purchase 1 Petabyte of 3G data from a telecom carrier for $10 per GB, guaranteed best effort bandwidth not throttled for VOIP, then what would stop Google from offering 100MB free bandwidth per month to users of unlocked Android phones, to use for basically as much VOIP over 3G using Google Voice, Gmail, basic Gmaps and basic Web browsing as most users would need. Thus get an unlocked Android phone with a Google SIM card and get unlimited free VOIP and 100mb/month data for free on ad-supported Google services or purchase more data for a certain price for example $10 per GB to use whenever you want, not needed to be renewed each month. I am probably far over-estimating the cost of 3G data bandwidth, the price per GB is probably below 1€ per GB, unless telecom carriers just refuse the deal and that they wouldn’t accept to sell any 3G cellular bandwidth to Google.

I have been campaigning for free VOIP on WiFi and 3G for years, since I have been very active fanboy of all Archos Internet Tablets since the Archos PMA400 released in 2004 on my other site http://archosfans.com, where my hope has always been to some day have better telecom system that doesn’t try to sell you a $2500 2-year contract with a $150 smartphone. But instead move towards improving the smart device, implement better optimized software through Linux (Android enables that for the first time), larger higher resolution screens (4.8″ 800×480 like Archos 5 Internet Tablet is my favorite size and resolution), and also some day, make it possible for people to just buy the bandwidth that they need and not charge unreasonable prices anymore for voice and sms services.

Here are some of the sites that have been posting my speculation over the past couple of days:

http://www.androidguys.com/2009/12/14/reuters-nexus-one-available-directly-through-google-website-january-5/

http://www.phonesreview.co.uk/2009/12/15/google-nexus-one-phone-price-details-cdma-version-may-follow/

http://news.softpedia.com/news/More-HTC-Nexus-One-Details-Availability-Pricing-Boot-Animation-129741.shtml

http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/patterson/62660/google-phone-rumor-roundup-fcc-approval-pricing-and-availability/

http://www.product-reviews.net/2009/12/15/google-nexus-one-pricing-details/

http://androidandme.com/2009/12/news/android-rumor-report-nexus-one-to-cost-199/

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Burnette/?p=1517

http://www.i4u.com/article29235.html

http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2009/12/google_nexus_one_to_cost_199.html

http://www.slashgear.com/peek-ceo-gets-google-nexus-one-hands-on-price-speculation-increases-1666131/

http://www.geardiary.com/2009/12/16/nexus-one-google-phone-pricing-rumors-round-up/

http://www.mobilemag.com/2009/12/15/google-to-sell-nexus-one-unlocked-for-199/

http://pixelatedgeek.com/2009/12/more-google-phone-rumors-grain-of-salt/

http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/aexhb/google_phone_199_without_contract99_for_google/ (1088+ comments!)

http://www.phonesreview.co.uk/2009/12/15/google-nexus-one-phone-price-details-cdma-version-may-follow/

http://www.hackchasers.com/news/nexus-one-le-5-janvier-2010-date-de-lancement/

http://richard.gluga.com/2009/12/googles-nexus-one-with-free-data.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/14/AR2009121403454.html

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More of my speculation on Google Phone Nexus One hardware and services pricing

Posted by Charbax – December 14, 2009
Category: Smartphones, Opinions, Qualcomm, Google, Android

EDIT: Google has not confirmed any pricing for the Google Phone Nexus One. You can read my latest post backing up my speculations on what I expect Google will price it, what I think Google should price it: http://138.2.152.197/2009/12/16/the-blogosphere-reports-my-nexus-one-pricing-speculation-as-fact/

As I have been posting in comments on mediamemo.allthingsd.com, gizmodo.com and androidguys.com, I enjoy speculating about features and prices of phones and business models. So let me post here the prices that I expect this first Google Phone to be sold at and some of what I expect of its hardware specifications:

– $200 sold through all retailers, Best Buy, Amazon, Wal Mart and any others. Unlocked, for use on any network, but I think it may come with a so-called Google SIM card (read further below)

– Google may provide a subsidy up to $100 for long-time and very active Google users. So if you buy it online using your Google Account, they may provide you with an instant rebate. If you buy it for $200 in retail stores, Google can still provide you the online $100 rebate to use on the Google Android Marketplace, on Google Checkout stores or even on extra data for your Google SIM card (read futher below).

– My speculation is that Google may provide up to 100mb of free data usage per month to all Android users with a Google SIM card (read futher below). The 100mb per month would be enough for as much Google Voice, Gmail, Gtalk, and basic web browsing that most people need (disabling bandwidth intensive things such as images can easily be setup). No contracts needed for those 100mb per month, but those may only work for use on Google services, for low bandwidth Android apps or for basic web browsing. In any ways, there would be a bandwidth usage counter clearly displayed at the top of the Android user interface next to the battery meter. The free 100mb per month may be throttled and may sometimes be limited to GPRS type of speeds.

– Extra bandwidth could be purchased in one click, such as I expect 1GB for $10 or 5€ is possible. That extra GB of bandwidth would be usable at any point in time and not need to be renewed every month.

– A monthly $30 or 20€ bandwidth package would provide up to 5GB in the USA or 10GB in Europe per month of unrestricted and full speed 3G bandwidth usage.

– Thus the overall Bill Of Material and Manufacturing costs for a Google Nexus One is probably below $150, so Google can very likely sell it below $200 with 8GB built-in storage and with MicroSD for storage expansion. Google doesn’t look for making profits on hardware, they will make their profits on ads over the several months or several years that the hardware is being used.

The Google SIM card speculation:

– All those bandwidth speculations would work using the Google SIM card on any unlocked Android phone. Though since the Nexus One would be unlocked, any other SIM card could be used as well. And thus, competitors or telecom carriers themselves can provide SIM cards with pre-paid, with or without subscriptions for other packages of data usage. I think Google would allow Microsoft and others to take part in financing those free 100mb per month so users would be able to use competing online services and VOIP providers for free as well.

The calculation and speculation for a worldwide Google SIM card bandwidth service should thus be based on trying to not only guess if carriers will allow Google to turn them into dumb pipes of bandwidth, on the other hand, we should try to guess what price Google may pay to buy 3G data bandwidth in bulk from the carriers and thus at what price Google may sell it back to Android users without the need of monthly data subscriptions. My guess is that $10 per GB in the USA and 5€ per GB in Europe should be more than enough payment for the 3G data bandwidth. And that most likely Google should be able to purchase that for much lower prices if Google negociates deals for several Petabytes of 3G data bandwidth with the carriers. Thus giving away 100MB of bandwidth per unlocked Android user per month, would most likely cost a lot less than $1 per month to Google, thus that would be something Google should be able to give to unlocked Android users for free. But even if carriers would charge Google as much as $10 per GB for 3G data bandwidth, I believe that my speculation on the Google SIM card could still make a lot of sense.

Because Google would negociate for 3G data bandwidth with all carriers in every country. I believe that it should be possible for users to seamlessly and freely roam for data usage in other countries. That is, as long as they do use a Google SIM card for unlocked Android phones.

Google Phone Nexus One
Source for picture: http://www.engadget.com/

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The Google Phone, guessing on the price and a possible picture

Posted by Charbax – December 13, 2009
Category: Tablets, Laptops, Smartphones, Displays, Opinions, Qualcomm, Archos, Google, Android

This may be a picture of the Google Phone:

Google Phone Nexus One

From rumors on Techcrunch, this may be a pre-paid only $100 device, for WiFi and pre-paid 3G Voice over IP usage such as on Google Voice. Exactly the revolutionary business model that I have been talking about for a while. My guess on the Google Phone price, or what I think it should cost is following:

$100 for the 3.7″ high density WVGA Google Phone Nexus One
$150 for the 4.8″ medium density Google Tablet Nexus XL

All should come based on ARM Cortex A8 processors, probably OLED capacitative on Nexus One and LCD resistive on the Nexus XL. My suggestion is basically that the Nexus XL may be similar to my favorite consumer electronics device the Archos 5 Internet Tablet which I talk about in countless videos: http://138.2.152.197/?s=archos and on my other site: http://archosfans.com

The most important factor here would be if the rumors are true and if my guessing is right, that the Google Phone and Tablet will be the first pre-paid Android phone and tablet. Affordable, my guessing also may even make it so that Google may not only sell it through all retailers like Amazon, Best Buy, Wal Mart, Media Markt, Aldi and such, but that one may even be able to buy it on google’s own website and based on how active one has been on Google over the past few years, Google may even subsidize the purchase price of the phone or tablet. That is, cause Google can know it will more likely make more money on mobile ads from users who use Google services a lot. This way, look forward to Google Phone at $50, Google Tablet for $100 and even the Google Laptop/Tablet/E-reader at $150.

Some times, I think that it does take a big giant technology company like Google to really invest not only in the platform, not only in software, but also dedicate teams of hardware engineers into actually releasing own branded hardware on the market and push the boundaries in terms of business models to apply to the distribution of such technology. To push things forward faster, Google needs to make hardware.

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Chrome OS is better

Posted by Charbax – November 19, 2009
Category: Exclusive videos, Opinions, Google, Android

Chrome OS Laptops will cost 50 dollars and run 20 hours on a battery, and come with free unlimited 3G internet data connectivity.

Chrome OS is not going to be companion to Windows/Mac, Chrome OS is destroying Microsoft/Apple and even Intel.

You will be able to run powerful and free image and video editing software using Native code and hardware accelerations functions of Chrome OS and HTML5.

Chrome OS works offline just as well as any other laptop. Want to write emails while offline and auto-send them when you find a web connection? That is possible. Want to write documents offline and sync them when you find a WiFi? That is possible. Want to watch video while offline? Just connect USB storage and that is possible. I am sure Chrome OS laptops will even come with extra storage and hard drive compartments built-in if you really want to carry a lot of stored data to do a lot of things offline. Otherwise, by that time, there will be Google Drive to store a TB of your personal files for less than 50 dollars per year, thus only slightly more expensive than buying a TB hard drive. And if you will want to store divx or mp3 files on your Google Drive that other users have stored on Google Drive already, you won’t have to actually upload it, a quick scan and a copy is on your Google Drive and storage costs will be shared by all the users who will have access to a copy of the file.

Chrome OS works on touch screens, uses whatever hardware you want. Most importantly, with a 50 dollar ARM laptop the experience will be just as good as on a 400 dollar Intel laptop.

OLPC is a success

Posted by Charbax – July 26, 2009
Category: Exclusive videos, Opinions, Google, OLPC

Thanks to OLPC, we have soon 50 million netbooks in rich countries. Intel and Microsoft’s profit margins per laptop are shrinking rapidly.

Thanks to OLPC, children have soon millions of cheap lower power laptops in poor countries.

Thanks to OLPC, the PC/Laptop industry’s interpretation of Moore’s law has totally been reshaped, every 18month now PC/laptops will be half the price instead of 2x more powerful and with 2x more bloatware.

Sure, I would have been happier, and so would most other Linux geeks if OLPC had shipped 100 million laptops to poor children by now, and not just 1 million units. Reason for that not happening yet in multi-hundred million scales though are several:

1. Intel will do anything it can not to be killed off by a non-profit laptop technology revolution. Including abusing of monopolistic situations and corrupting politicians.

2. AMD is not much interested in helping OLPC succeed in lowering the cost of laptops and PCs. Lower cost also means less profits and margins for AMD, and AMD has enough problems with profits and margins as it is.

Looking forward, to reach those 100 million poor children sooner rather than later:

1. OLPC needs to find an alternative to AMD as soon as possible. VIA is planned for XO-1.5 which could hopefully ship a few millions of units in a few months time, if VIA supports this move of OLPC creating a cheaper and lower power market using their processor. XO-1.5 could reach the $150 pricepoint soon and enable dozens of commercial netbooks using the VIA processor and also copying on the way OLPC is using the VIA processor.

2. OLPC needs to implement the worlds best ARM processor based laptops for XO-2 working with Google to implement the so called Chrome OS on those. Cloud computing can work also for places without stable internet access, HTML5 supports offline web apps and offline databases. OLPC needs to push Google to make it work on WiFi Mesh networks as well. XO-2 can start at $100 when released and reach the $50 price point, when manufactured using any of half a dozen ARM processor companies chips. All of TI, Qualcomm, Marvell, Freescale, Nvidia and Samsung, all those ARM processors should fit in the XO-2 design. Competition will bring the prices down faster.

Also, to reach those 100 million children, OLPC needs to have more than just a couple dozen engineers working on the whole optimizations of hardware and software for the project.

What OLPC managed to build in XO1 and XO-1.5 with 30 employees and the little budget that they could get is absolutely amazing.

But what OLPC probably needs for XO-2 to absolutely work and sell laptops soon at $50 to revolutionize education worldwide, is thousands of engineers and the support from Barack Obama and the European Union.

So OLPC’s political agenda definitely needs to be more targeted towards the politics of education and aid of the USA and Europe and with much more ambition to make things happen in huge scale as quickly as possible.

Chrome OS = Android 2.0

Posted by Charbax – July 16, 2009
Category: Exclusive videos, Opinions, Google, Android

I would link to the Masterful John C Dvorak for some very clever guessing: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/is-googles-new-os-more-than-just-a-bluff?siteid=

I do not believe John C Dvorak is 100% right in his funny column, though I do believe he is right when he says that this is all a super clever public relations trick put on by Google and that all of it is just the Google OS coming up. John C Dvorak is mostly right about most things that he says.

I believe it will be released open sourced in a couple of months, with the first ARM Cortex A8 and Tegra based laptops.

Android 2.0 and Chrome OS is the same thing. It doesn’t matter what Google says and what bloggers think. There is only one way Google is working towards:

– Making full Chrome browser work on ARM embedded laptops even better than on x86 based laptops.

Now, you might know me as the contiunous x86 basher, I kind of am. But what I believe Google wants is more competition in both hardware and software space for PCs and laptops. This is what Google OS is all about.

The reasons Google might caution Google OS on ARM fans to wait for are a few technological breakthroughs which Google might need before the worldwide availability of perfect $100 Google laptops can happen:

1. ARM Cortex A8 needs to be fast enough for a full browser. If it’s not, then Google needs to wait for broad availability of ARM Cortex A9 starting early next year.

2. Google and the whole ARM community needs to optimize browsers, flash, HTML5 features on DSP and GPU cores of laptops, especially ARM laptops, so that $100 laptops can run a FULL browser and cloud computing experience. Nvidia, Qualcomm, Freescale, Texas Instruments were promising hardware acceleration for the browser, Flash and HTML5 at Computex, but they didn’t really show it yet. I believe they can make it work as a 2003 X86 based browser (something like a 512MB RAM or less system), though that may not be enough for the full mass market to adopt the first version, thus Google might prefer to wait for full launch for it to work better than 2009 x86 browsers.

3. Google wants better connectivity. Google is strongly hoping to start implementing White Spaces worldwide as soon as possible, this will enable free unlimited wireless Internet for all (and destroy all ISPs and telcos in the process). Optimized Connected standby features for ARM devices might only really start working perfectly early next year. First generation ARM Google OS laptops might not have LED lights that turn on instantly on incoming emails, feeds, pings, IMs, VOIP calls and other such crucial presence and social networking web apps which Google needs on the Google laptops for it to really feel like revolutionary products compared to the established systems.

4. Political aspects of this might start being put into places early next year as well such as real competition on HSDPA connectivity, maximum prices of $20 per month pre-paid data-only plans for most of the world and no more contract-plans and other voice and SMS plans forced onto consumers by monopolistic telcos. Also political decision on net neutrality, white spaces, sustainable energy consumption of consumer electronics and servers and crucial for Google to succeed on this global cloud computing plan.

I see it as inevitable, that Google will create Google OS, a super tiny embedded Linux open source OS less than 50 Megabytes for the whole highly optimized OS, and that in a couple of months we will start seeing it ship on $150 ARM based laptops with all types of screen sizes (large screens and keyboards aren’t much more expensive than small ones, consider $50 upgrade for 15″ and full keyboard instead of 10″ and tiny netbook keyboard).

Those $150 Google laptops will be running ARM chips by half a dozen competing ARM processor manufacturers and manufactured by all the major laptop manufacturers in the world. Effectively putting out of business all of Microsoft, Intel and Apple. Together with most of Silicon Valley. That is for the better. For the first time billions more people will have access to this technology very quickly and we will all for the first time really find amazing new ways to use the technology.

As for technical details on Native versus Cloud apps. I believe natively you will have everything needed for a full computing experience. Basically it’s not just the browser, it’s not just flash support, it’s not just HTML5 including native code plugins for the browser and 3D in the browser, it’s like providing you the hypervisors, user interface APIs, clever caching and seamless interface optimizations, which will enable you to not only have a full 2009 x86 style computing experience, it will plug you into the full cloud, in fact giving you infinately more computing power for all the most processor intensive tasks that the biggest professionals would want to use. You can definitely encode videos using grid server encoding, I have been doing that for over 2 years for all my HD video encoding needs, just have a fast enough upload to upload your source files from your camcorders. Google Gears type database and web application caching not only lets you do things while offline, it can turn all web applications into feeling exactly like native applications, they respond instantly without having to wait for any online service to stream the user interfaces back at you. The user interfaces will be locally cached on the machine, only processed data is streamed from the cloud, and clever pre-loading algorithms mostly will not make you feel any difference than processing everything using a local X86 processor. In fact, things will feel much faster cause you will be able to have the power of an unlimited amount of cloud servers to render, process and encode any of your media intensive tasks.

Google OS will take over the world, also for Corporate types

Posted by Charbax – July 15, 2009
Category: Exclusive videos, Opinions, Google, Pixel Qi, Android

Ryanair and Easyjet are full of Corporate World types, who just enjoy that they can save money on flight tickets. Sales of Business class tickets on any airline company are tanking. Saving money and getting smaller, better, cheaper laptops is absolutely a universal thing, not only for the mass market, also for corporate types.

You will get £100 Google OS Laptops, running 15-20 hours on a 3-cell battery, fully sunlight readable with the Pixel Qi screen, highly optimized with built-in HSDPA always-on connectivity, connected standby features (rings or blinks an alert light from full standby on incoming emails or calendar alerts), all Google OS laptops will be based on ARM Processors.

Basically Chrome OS = Android 2.0 optimized for Laptops. It will absolutely take over the world, as the absolute best OS for ARM Laptops, instantly putting Microsoft, Apple and Intel out of business.

I posted this as a comment on http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/15/google_chrome_os/comments/

ARM and Android, the future of laptops

Posted by Charbax – April 1, 2009
Category: Opinions, Google, OLPC, Android

The main goal of the OLPC, and thus, of the whole computer industry at this point, is to lower the cost of laptops by lowering the power consumption. The best way to achieve that, is to limit the way applications get full native access to the deep internals of the computer system. Intel’s X86 standard and Microsoft’s Windows OS were designed only for that multi-purpose backwards compatibility where the same unoptimized bloated software would work across thousands of hardware configurations with often full root access to the deepest internals of a computer system. For most of the applications that most people need, you do not need full native code support in third party applications. By limiting full native access for third party applications, you take care in one swoop of all the security problems that one has on Intel and Microsoft based PC and laptops. You basically make spyware, viruses, hacking and all of those problems impossible by design.

That is how Android is made. Android provides a totally sandboxed JAVA-based software layer, which only interacts with the hardware features through totally controllable software-to-hardware APIs. With Android on ARM, you have a complete shift in the way third party applications are run compared to X86 Windows XP/7, MacOSX and even most of those X86 Desktop Linux distributions that have been going around, including Ubuntu and Fedora.

The open source native Android Linux code hacking happens exclusively at the manufacturer stage. Which means, you want to have a manufacturer in control of everything, you want the manufacturer to customize Android for the very specific mass produced hardware in question, providing all the standard and non-standard software-to-hardware APIs for third party software developers to gain access to the all of the devices standard or special hardware features.

What you have backing Android is the worlds absolute best company in Google, comprised of the worlds largest concentration of PHDs and Engineers with the most experience in Web and computer technology. The role of Google with Android is to make sure that the native Android code works in the most optimal fashion with the most optimal hardware configurations that manufacturers are making for it. Google helps manufacturers prepare that Android native code customization for each different System On Chip, for each different variation on the ARM Cortex processor profiles by each of the industry leading ARM processor manufacturers among Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, Broadcom, Freescale, Samsung, Nvidia, Marvell and others.

If you want to change the default Android user interface layer and make it look more like the Sugar User Interface layer (which for XO-1 was built on top of an optimized X86 Fedora Linux installation), you definitely can do those changes and customizations. Those would come from the manufacturers, thus in the case of OLPC from the whole OLPC organization, in cooperation with Google or anyone else helping to create a more education-laptop friendly user interface. But Android applications remain the same, and appart from slight porting that can be required, all Android applications are designed to work in full screen mode, and management of multi-tasking, notifications, memory and processing power consumption, all those are managed the same way accros all implementations of the Android OS.

HP has just announced that they are working to support Android in future HP Laptops. Asus has also announced to be working on Android laptops. Look forward to Android ruling over all ARM Laptop implementations, at least for these where the lowest cost and the lowest power consumption levels have been achieved. Look forward to $100 Android ARM laptops. Look forward to the empire of Intel and Microsoft crumbling under the inevitable hardware and software revolution that comes with the XO-2 and with the whole industry’s shift to lower cost, lower power consumption using ARM and Android in all laptops.