Monday, May 2, 2011

Smartbooks - to be ola or not to be ola *(ola - online always)

 So, here we are ladies and gents almost mid 2011. The tablet-hype reached it's peak. Nowadays even grandma wants to read the news online or check the e-mail  - most of which could be spam anyway. You can find touchscreen tablets everywhere, ranging from dirt cheap to the full price of a Core i5 powered Notebook. I won't get into much details cause stirring up an Apple fanboys rebellion it's not my cup of tea, at least not today.
 So let's take a look at the big picture: Smartphones, Netbooks, Touchscreen Tablets - they all fit in the MID (mobile internet devices) bucket. What about smartbooks? First time I heard about 'em I was like wtf? A mobile OS designed for touchscreen usability transferred to a netbook form factor? As I got the chance to experience Android 2.2 on a Asus Eee PC 900 (fresh OS install by me) I had a sudden change of heart. Everything fell on place just like a 3 year old puzzle. Using keyboard and mouse with the Android OS it's not a bad user experience after all.
 Nowadays I'm eager to get my hands on a Toshiba AC100 Smartbook. It's powered by a nVidia SOC (system on a chip) Tegra 250 with dual core cpu, full HD capabilities and it runs Android 2.2 Froyo. Don't know if an update to Android 3.0 Honeycomb would be available but still, hardware wise it's more than a match for most Netbooks out there powered by Intel's Atom cpu's. So I'd like to hear from you, don't be shy and post your own opinions/comments on the matter. To be continued...

Links you might be interested in:

Porting Android OS to x86
Smartbook - Wikipedia
Toshiba AC100 Smartbook

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