Lenovo delays ARM-based netbook?
Extra wait for all-day, always-on mini laptop
Lenovo may have delayed its eagerly anticipated ARM-based netbook, the Skylight, it has been claimed.
Originally scheduled to appear on US shop shelves this month, the mini notebook will not now debut until July, transatlantic title Laptop Magazine has alleged, citing moles from within Lenovo.
Lenovo's Skylight: delayed?
They said the company is taking a "little extra time... to get [the Skylight] right".
The Lenovo website still says the machine will arrive in "Spring 2010".
Unfortunately, Lenovo has yet to say when - or if, even - the Skylight will be released in the UK, but a three-month slip in the company's launch market means the ARM-book's appearance over here is now even further off.
Skylight sports a netbook-style 10.1in display but with a 1280 x 720 resolution. No Atom inside, it's powered by a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. Designed for all-day, always on internet access, the netbook contains just 8GB of SSD storage, though it also features a removable 4GB USB Flash drive and has a Micro SD card slot.
Very thin for easy portability
Skylight weighs in at 900g and measures a skinny 253 x 201 x 17mm. At the machine's first appearance, at January's Consumer Electronics Shows (CES), Lenovo said the lapto's battery will run for ten hours on a single charge. ®
COMMENTS
MSFT
MSFT is giving them problems? If Android laptops get off, and more crucially people start putting Linux on them to convert to full mobile experience Windows will land in very unfavourable position.
Same with Atom. What's the point of Atom + Win7 with 4h of battery life when you can get ARM + Linux (or Android) with 12h battery life half-price? Doing essentially the same. Too many vested interests to allow this, especially from such a high level manufacturer like Lenovo.
Smiling
All us oldie Acorn fan-bots are grinning broadly.
We knew that the ARM chip would take over the World eventually way back in the Eighties...
@ JC 2
Spot on. I edit and compile, use SSH for remote access with full GUI, play stored videos, music as well as web browsing and e-mail.
I was compiling Linux kernels with far less horsepower and memory in the 1990s.
Why Wintel
I'm not happy about the state of the Wintel market, but I do want the hundreds-> thousands of dollars worth of software (licenses) I own to run on anything I tote around regardless of whether it has modern performance or merely performance that still makes a 10 year old computer look like a dinosaur.
It's not about "can I find some alternate way to get the same things done", it's about maximum compatibility, no software retrain time.
I'm always a bit amazed when people act as though Netbooks can't be used for anything but light websurfing and email, isn't there ANYONE else out there who actually managed to be productive back when CPUs were a fraction of this performance level and monitors little if any higher resolution?
I for one, didn't wait until we had uber-GHz, gigs of memory, and 1 million pixels to learn how to get work done. Besides, on the typical high end laptop it's idle 95% of the time so that's mostly money down the drain.
@Andrew C
"how many netbooks are still sold with Linux preinstalled"
All it really indicates is the stranglehold MS has on the market !
