Category: Laptops

Testing out Microsoft Surface and Windows RT

Posted by Charbax – November 2, 2012
Category: Tablets, Laptops, Exclusive videos, Qualcomm, Nvidia, ARM TechCon, Windows

Here’s my first playing around with the $599 Microsoft Surface with Touch Keyboard and other new Windows RT devices from Dell, Asus and Lenovo that are being released to the market.

I think the $599 is a bit expensive, and I’d like a full Chrome browser on RT, I’d like remote access to all x86 apps streamed over a cloud based x86 app hosting service, I’d like Google Search and Google Maps instead of Bing Search and Bing Maps, but otherwise I think the Surface is pretty cool! Lenovo also shows a pretty impressive 11.6″ Windows RT laptop, the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11, but at $799 it’s quite expensive.

OLPC XO-4 Touch to be Marvell Armada PXA2128 Powered

Posted by Charbax – November 1, 2012
Category: Tablets, Laptops, Exclusive videos, Marvell, ARM TechCon, OLPC

The One Laptop Per Child project is going to release the Marvell Armada PXA2128 ARM Powered Laptop in Q1 2013, thus with Marvell’s new tri-core processor and touch screen support.

Wabook ARM Powered laptops, $71 10.1″ 1024×600, $51 7″ 800×480

Posted by Charbax – October 29, 2012
Category: Laptops, Exclusive videos, Members Content, VIA, Android

These ARM Powered laptops are really cool, you get a single-core ARM Cortex-A9 VIA 8850 processor with Mali-400 GPU, the form factor is the basic open mold for these types of laptops, now let’s just get Chrome OS on ARM to run on these, as well as Ubuntu on Android and perhaps even Windows RT eventually.

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$70 7″ 1024×600 Rockchip RK3066, $46 7″ 800×480 VIA 8850 by Guobangxingye

Posted by Charbax – October 27, 2012
Category: Tablets, Laptops, HDMI Sticks, Gaming, Exclusive videos, Members Content, Allwinner, Rockchip, AmLogic, Telechips, China Sourcing Fair, Android

Guobangxingye shows their latest ARM Powered Tablets and Laptops, $70 7″ 1024×600 Rockchip RK3066, $46 7″ 800×480 VIA 8850, $67 10.1″ Laptop on VIA 8850, $42 7″ 800×480 A13, $27 Telechips and Allwinner A10 HDMI sticks and more. I’m sorry that I didn’t reply to her emails, I promise I will the next time that she sends me news I should reblog.

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$82 13.3″ VIA 8850 Laptop (Macbook Air clone) and Allwinner A10S HDMI Stick by Wabook

Posted by Charbax – October 27, 2012
Category: Laptops, HDMI Sticks, Exclusive videos, Members Content, Allwinner, VIA, China Sourcing Fair, Android

Wabook shows their newest products, a 13.3″ Macbook Air clone running on the VIA 8850 ARM Cortex-A9 processor to be sold for $82 in bulk and one of the first $32 Allwinner A10S HDMI Sticks I’ve seen shown at a trade show, the A10S is the new customized A10 processor by Allwinner specifically optimized for HDMI Sticks, thus consuming less power and enabling further lowering of the cost.

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Become a $20/year Member of ARMdevices.net

Posted by Charbax – October 21, 2012
Category: Tablets, Laptops, Smartphones, E-readers, Set-top-boxes, HDMI Sticks, Projectors, Displays, Cameras, Wearables, Factory Tours, Gaming, Robots, Exclusive videos, Android, Chrome OS, Google TV, Ubuntu

You can now become a Member of ARMdevices.net for $20/year.

For that you get:

1. Pictures/scans of business cards to all the companies that I video interview at trade shows around the world.

2. Buy some of the best value ARM Powered devices that I find, when I can get the manufacturer to agree to sell them at a good price directly to members. Consider those sample sales, but you can buy many also, and contact the manufacturer directly if you’d like to import a larger quantity. I expect to be able to provide members with some of the worlds most interesting ARM Powered tablets, laptops, HDMI Sticks, Set-top-boxes, E-readers, game players, development boards, robots, and more. Check for a status on available devices in the Members Store.

Thanks for supporting my work.

Read more about why you should become a Member of ARMdevices.net here.

How I think that the ARM Powered Chromebook is a big deal for the industry

Posted by Charbax – October 21, 2012
Category: Laptops, Opinions, Samsung, Chrome OS

I’ve been talking about ARM Powered Chrome OS for years now here on this blog (2, 3, 4, 5, 6). So you can imagine how happy I was to hear that Google and Samsung are launching the ARM Cortex-A15 Exynos5250 Powered Chromebook now today on Monday for $249!!! Here are some of the points that I think one can consider for how the ARM Powered Chromebook is a very big deal for the industry:

1. Chrome on ARM gets optimized, to use full hardware acceleration. It’s important to have a web browsing experience on ARM in a 720p, 768p, 1080p resolution that be satisfactory to most users.

2. Chrome OS on ARM gets open sourced, means here’s an OS to run on all ARM SoCs, this means that the $89 13.3″ and $75 10.1″ ARM Cortex-A9 Powered laptops, even single-core using VIA WM8850 for example, can soon ship with Chromium OS pre-installed.

3. Full Chrome on Android, with all plugins (including Flash, Java, etc), extensions, full tabs support, user interface for mouse and keyboard. This means a merger of Chrome OS and Android. The Chrome experience on Android should be as good as on a pure Chrome OS device. You can even have resume and boot-to-Chrome as a choice on Android, if you are using a device where you just want to use Chrome and that you may not care much about the rest of Android.

4. Gives a new purpose to ARM Powered Laptops, HDMI Sticks, Set-top-boxes and more. You can get a sub-$100 HDMI Stick to use as a Chromebox on your HDTV or PC Monitor. If you’d like to use the HDMI stick in Entertainment mode, it should be able to switch to Google TV mode.

5. Chromebooks are now sub-$250. This makes them very attractive to a majority of new Laptop buyers worldwide. I think that Chrome OS is going to dominate as the main OS for laptops and desktops worldwide. Though for that to easily happen, 13.3″ ARM Cortex-A15 Chromebooks need to be sold for well below $200, the 11.6″ ones should be sold towards below $150.

6. Combine the ARM Powered Chromebook with an 11.6″ or 13.3″ Pixel Qi screen, also wait for eventual full hardware optimizations to be automatically added to Chrome OS on ARM to take advantage of the Mali-T604 GPU and much else deep level ARM Cortex-A15 optimizations and you could have a battery life on your super thin ARM Powered Chromebook above 20 hours. This is game-changing for a super thin laptop.

7. Chrome OS forces App Developers to think Web First. That means better quality web apps. Expect high-quality online video-editing, photo-editing, word processing, FTP, programming and even gaming to work awesomely on the Web pretty quickly. That means web apps with full offline support, full cached acceleration for instant web app load times regardless of connection speed, Web GL for full GPU advanced 3D gaming including streaming of game info, remote 3D rendering and streaming of the highest quality 3D games, once all app developers think first about how to use the web to improve their apps, that brings the worlds best apps to everyone.

8. Upgrading the PC/Laptop is redefined. Consumers won’t need to think about upgrading their PC/Laptop, unless they find one with a nicer design and style, with a different screen size or screen type which they may prefer. Upgrading a PC/Laptop for faster performance is going to be less and less of a reason for people to upgrade their computer. The most important specification is going to be battery life and screen technology. That is, if one can expect all web apps to load instantly on the ARM Powered Laptop, with unlimited simultaneous tabs opened smoothly at the same time, which is something we can expect on this ARM Cortex-A15 Chromebook.

9. You may think that this ARM Chromebook may not have yet an optimal performance. Consider that the web browser is perhaps one of the most advanced and complicated application on a PC/Laptop. Chrome on x86 is 50x faster than Internet Explorer was on x86 just 3 years ago. ARM Cortex-A15 is all new, so is Chrome on ARM, expect tons of optimizations to be beamed over the next weeks and months to come, as Google, Samsung and open source Chrome project engineers fully optimize the software on ARM.

10. You may think that the quoted 6.5 hours battery life on this initial ARM Chromebook may not sound like a whole lot. Consider that the power consumption governors may be cranked up to the maximum power consumption by Google and Samsung to prevent any slowdowns before Chrome for ARM gets optimized. As ARM optimizations are fully integrated in Chrome OS on ARM, you can perhaps expect this ARM Chromebook to magically suddenly be able to last more than 10 hours on the same thin and light battery.

Let me know in the comments if you have any other informations about how optimized Google and Samsung have made Chrome OS on ARM yet, if Google has announced much more about their plans to open source Chrome OS on ARM, if it’s already open source, what you think we can expect for Chrome OS on lower power cheaper ARM SoCs such as RK3066, VIA 8850, Allwinner A10 and other processors that can be used in making much cheaper ARM Powered Chromebooks. Write also in the comments how many ARM Chromebooks you plan to buy, you are welcome to use my amazon link!

SDC Technology shows RK3066, A10/A13, Tablets, Laptops, Set-top-box, HDMI Sticks and more

Posted by Charbax – October 19, 2012
Category: Tablets, Laptops, Set-top-boxes, HDMI Sticks, Exclusive videos, Members Content, Allwinner, Rockchip, HKTDC Electronics Fair, Android

$130 9.7″ IPS RK3066, $80 8″ IPS RK3066, $75 7″ A10 with 3G, and lots more interesting stuff from SDC Technology!

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Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! ARM Powered Chromebook launched by Google with Samsung Exynos 5 ARM Cortex-A15 on board, $249!!!

Posted by Charbax – October 18, 2012
Category: Laptops, Opinions, Samsung, Google, Chrome OS

The day has come. The ARM Powered laptop revolution is here. Chrome OS on ARM, not just any ARM, the fastest ever ARM Cortex-A15 from Samsung, Exynos5250, 2GB RAM, 16GB Flash storage. This announcement is of course pure awesomeness. So, I guess, Google wanted to wait for ARM Cortex-A15 for what they may think to be satisfactory ARM Powered web browser OS performance. Consider this has to support all plugins, native code, OpenGL web, extensions, advanced AJAX-heavy Javascript web apps, caching of web apps for full offline sync and web acceleration on slow connections, tons of simultaneous opened tabs for everyone to feel fully comfortable! Videos coming:

Google Official:

Gigaom:

Sundar Pichai at unveil event by ubergizmo (until Google posts the full official event video):

I’ll add more videos of it here as bloggers post them!

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Archos 80 XS and Archos 97 XS

Posted by Charbax – October 13, 2012
Category: Tablets, Laptops, Exclusive videos, Rockchip, Texas Instruments, HKTDC Electronics Fair, Archos, Android

Archos is launching two more sizes for their Generation 10 Android Tablet series, including the $199 Archos 80 XS and the $299 Archos 97 XS, each with the optional $49 Archos Coverboard Keyboard Dock. I’ve been using my Archos 101 XS every day during these past 45 days, replacing my broken $1000 Intel Ultrabook for all of my on-the-go productivity and 10.1″ Tablet usage. It’s much thinner and lighter than an Intel laptop, the thin and light keyboard dock ads productivity to the already very awesome OMAP4470 tablet. The same priced $299 Archos 97 XS runs on the same OMAP4470 and the $199 Archos 80 XS runs on the Rockchip RK3066 processor to achieve thus a Nexus7-like price point with its own awesome thin and light magnetic Keyboard dock.

Rockchip RK2928 and RK2926 launched at the HKTDC Electronics Fair

Posted by Charbax – October 13, 2012
Category: Tablets, Laptops, Smartphones, Set-top-boxes, HDMI Sticks, Exclusive videos, Members Content, Rockchip, HKTDC Electronics Fair, Android

Rockchip Vice-President Chen Feng presents their new single-core ARM Cortex-A9 SoC for cheaper, faster, lower power consuming tablets! They call it the Single-core Terminator. They simplify to lower the cost of the SoC thus of the entry-level ARM Powered device all the while improving the performance to provide for better entry-levels tablets.

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$89 13.3″ Laptop on VIA WM8850 ARM Cortex-A9 single-core by Hivision

Posted by Charbax – October 13, 2012
Category: Tablets, Laptops, HDMI Sticks, Exclusive videos, Members Content, VIA, HKTDC Electronics Fair, Android

Here’s one of the latest interesting ARM Powered laptops by Hivision, powered on VIA’s latest single-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor. With Ethernet, HDMI out, 2 USB Host and more.

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$116 13.3″ Allwinner A10 Laptop by Yones Toptech

Posted by Charbax – October 12, 2012
Category: Laptops, Exclusive videos, Members Content, Allwinner, China Sourcing Fair, Android

Check this cool size for an ARM Powered laptop with a 12-hour battery life. Now all we need is Chrome OS fully merged into Android 4.2 or 5.0, so the Chrome experience on Android can 100% the same as on Chrome OS on ARM for an ultimate mouse/keyboard laptop usage, some of the faster ARM processors, perhaps more RAM, Ubuntu on Android support and we’re there!

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Sony Xperia Tablet S

Posted by Charbax – September 2, 2012
Category: Tablets, Laptops, Exclusive videos, Nvidia, IFA, Android

Tegra3, a new thin form factor with a bunch of docks for it from keyboard, to standard dock, desktop dock to speaker dock. Sony is customizing Android with a few features such as overlay widgets and more.

ChuangZhiCheng 7″ 1280×800 Tegra3 Tablet at IFA 2012

Posted by Charbax – September 2, 2012
Category: Tablets, Laptops, Exclusive videos, Rockchip, Nvidia, IFA, Android, Windows

ChuangZhiCheng also makes some Dual-core RK3066 Tablets, some Ultrabook and some rugged computer.

Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet 2

Posted by Charbax – August 31, 2012
Category: Tablets, Laptops, Exclusive videos, Intel, IFA, Windows

Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet 2 uses an Intel Atom processor, runs Windows 8, supports digitizer pen input, comes with an optional keyboard dock. It’s about $499.

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon

Posted by Charbax – August 31, 2012
Category: Laptops, Exclusive videos, IFA, Windows

One of the thinnest, lightest but sturdiest new Ultrabooks on the market, price starting at $1249 with a Core i5.

Archos 101 XS review, Ultrabook-killing machine

Posted by Charbax – August 25, 2012
Category: Tablets, Laptops, Exclusive videos, Reviews, Texas Instruments, Archos, Android

In this video, I show web browsing speed on this OMAP4470 ARM Powered Laptop/Tablet convertible. This ARM Powered Laptop loads web pages faster than the Ultrabook, both over the same WiFi home network! I load web pages like Engadget.com, Gizmodo.com and TheVerge.com faster on the $400 Archos 101 XS than on the $1000 Toshiba z830 Ultrabook! And the firmware isn’t even Jelly Bean yet! It’ll get the Jelly Bean firmware by the time Archos starts selling this device next month in Europe or the month after that in the USA! Everyone knows Jelly Bean and Linaro speeds up Android even more!

This Archos 101 XS likely provides one of the industry’s fastest performance for productivity on Android, it’s the first OMAP4470 device announced and demonstrated that I know of. Productivity is in Chrome on Android and a few other productivity apps that can be the Office suite (included for free for word/excell/powerpoint stuff) and that can also be Remote Desktop for enterprise professionals who want productivity that way using Teradici and Citrix on Android stuff. I would like Archos to integrate Ubuntu on Android also, I hope they call Canonical to get that included with the Jelly Bean firmware. Thus you’d click on the Ubuntu icon to switch to Ubuntu in a second, do whatever you want in Ubuntu including run any Ubuntu application, and then have the same icon on Ubuntu to switch back to full Android in a second too.

While we’re waiting and looking forward to even faster ARM Cortex-A15 with Mali-T604, that likely doesn’t reach consumer devices until next year though. Right now, the latest and best class of ARM Cortex-A9 processors, with OMAP4470, with 32nm Exynos 4412, with 28nm Qualcomm S4 Pro Quad-core, with HiSilicon K3V2, i.MX6 Quad, we’re getting some excellent memory bandwidth performance on ARM allowing for fast enough full 720p/800p even 1080p web browsing speeds on Tablet, Laptop screens and on any external monitors as a Desktop/Set-top-box with full fast enough performance for productivity!

The time we’ve been waiting for is here! The ARM Powered Laptop is faster than an Intel Atom Netbook! It’s even faster than an Intel Core i5 Ultrabook!!!

While at $299 and an unlimited amount of cash (think: French/EU Francois Hollande national IT investment project) for mass production, I think Archos can single handedly be able to sell more Android Laptops like this one than all the Intel/Microsoft Ultrabooks/Netbooks and new Windows 8 convertibles put together. At $399 introductory Manufacturers Suggested Retail Price, Archos can still get in there and sell as many as Archos can afford to manufacture, selling easily at 50% cheaper than the iPad3 with keyboard ($598), at 63% cheaper than the Asus Transformer Prime/Infinity with keyboard ($648), this is the thinnest, lightest 10.1″ ARM Powered Laptop/Tablet convertible yet. And it has features other tablet makers don’t have such as full hardware accelerated video and audio codecs support, MicroSD/HDMI and USB Host, Bluetooth 4.0, WiFi Direct, 1080p@60fps/3D@1080p@30fps and multimedia streaming features such as Samba/Upnp and DLNA.

I think it’s great value and I’m looking forward to try to use this as my main 10.1″ tablet/laptop instead of my ultrabook for the next few weeks and months. Let me know in the comments what specific features you’d like me to test on this device in my next video of it.

Archos 101 XS launched, check back for my video-review tomorrow

Posted by Charbax – August 22, 2012
Category: Tablets, Laptops, Texas Instruments, Archos, Android

Sure $299 with keyboard would have been nicest, but even at $399 it’s a no-brainer:

Archos 101 XS with keyboard: $399
Asus Transformer Pad TF300 with keyboard: $528 (+33%)
Acer Iconia Tab A700 with keyboard: $598 (+50%)
Asus Transformer Prime with keyboard: $648 (+63%)
iPad3 with keyboard: $598 (+50%)
Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 with keyboard: $598 (+50%)
Microsoft Surface with keyboard: $599 (likely) (+50%)

Archos 101 XS is the thinnest, the lightest, has better performance than Tegra3, offers fastest GPU and memory bandwidth on the market (the 32nm Exynos4412 probably beats or equals though), offers features none of those more expensive devices have.

Check back for my initial extensive video-review of Archos 101 XS Gen10 tomorrow!! I expect to use this as my favorite 10″ device to replace all other 10″ tablets, Netbooks and Ultrabooks in the months to come.

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FCC does it again, leaks new Archos generation

Posted by Charbax – July 29, 2012
Category: Tablets, Laptops, Texas Instruments, Archos, Android, Chrome OS, Ubuntu, Windows

Another year, another Generation of Archos tablets is leaked exclusively through blurry pictures on the FCC leaking machine. Same happened with G5 in 2007, G7 in 2009, Home Tablet in 2010, G8 in 2010 (2). Here’s the Archos G10 XS (all FCC documents):


Rumored or confirmed:

TI OMAP4470 ARM Cortex-A9 processor
New Proprietary Dock for the included Keyboard Dock (maybe something else too)
Kick-stand (called Tablet Stand) is on the Keyboard Dock
Keyboard doubles as thin screen protector and seems to use a new twist function (with or without magnets) to attach and detach from the tablet.
Micro-SD, Mini-HDMI, Micro-USB (dunno if doubles as host)

Is there some kind of conspiracy? Why does the US FCC always leak Archos new devices before Archos decides to unveil those products to the press officially?

Consider some reasons why Archos Generation 10 can be very attractive to massive audiences:

– Price can start $299 for 10.1″ with the included Keyboard Dock.
– That can be $200 to $300 cheaper than Microsoft Surface.
– No technical reason that Archos G10 can’t also dual-boot into Chrome OS for ARM and even triple-boot into Windows 8 for ARM, Windows RT, if Microsoft simply allows Archos have a triple-boot on it (give the option to the consumer to pay for the Windows RT licence if they want to be able to triple-boot into it).
– This at $299 can be a very attractive ARM Powered Laptop/Tablet combo. Why not triple-boot Ubuntu, or Archos pick up the phone and talk with Canonical to ship it with the Ubuntu on Android app.
– This is the first TI OMAP4470 Tablet that I hear leaked and talked about. Texas Instruments dominated the market by the end of 2011, they can do it again and Archos has a long relationship with TI always shipping TI’s latest most advanced processors early. Expect a wide range of smartphones and tablets other than Archos to also use OMAP4470 before the end of the year, that helps provide a foundation for good software support, such as Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean using the OMAP4460 Powered Samsung Galaxy Nexus as the reference design. That makes it easier for Archos to always stay up to date on the latest version of Android.
– OMAP4470 uses the SGX544 GPU, one of the most powerful GPUs on the market yet.
– OMAP4470 increases memory bandwidth further from OMAP4460, memory bandwidth is one of the most important functions of a powerful ARM Powered device, often more so than Ghz, number of cores and other.
– Consider this ARM Powered Laptop/Tablet combo can weight less than 500 grams. When productivity proves itself sublime on Android, Ubuntu on Android, Chrome OS dual-boot and an eventual Windows RT triple-boot, this form factor can prove itself to be one of the most demanded by consumers.

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