[Klug-general] ultra thin Apple Notebooks

[J D Freeman]

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On Thu, Jan 17, 2008 at 10:20:48AM +0000, Alan Pope wrote:
> Me. My eee has no optical drive and I dont miss it. 
> 
> Fact is everyone has their own specific requirements for a bit of kit. Some 
> like big screens and "proper keyboards", others like long battery life, some 
> like 3g built in, others like lots of USB ports. There is no "one size fits 
> all" laptop.

There is, there is One Laptop, Per Child :p

> This can be illustrated very will with one page on the Ubuntu wiki. Mark 
> Shuttleworth asked people what they would like out of a "Free" (as in 
> freedom" laptop. Just check out the myriad of "demands".
> 
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FreeSoftwareLaptop
> 
> I made a spreadsheet pulling together the content from that page and it's 
> utter madness. People want a screen which is super thin, takes no power, is 
> a multi-touch LED backlit high (and low) resolution display. They want a 
> battery that lasts forever and a multi-multi core CPU and they want it now 
> and for less than 500USD. 
> 
> In short they want the moon on a stick.

Careful. 

I think the main issue I have with modern laptops is battery life. As
someone who spends an awful lot of time on the road, I would like to be
able to work on the train. Now whilst an increasing number of trains do
have working power sockets, not all do. 

The longest train journey I have done so far is about 20 hours. It would
be nice if I had a laptop that would stay alive for that.

The thing is. Of all the features listed above, multi core cpu is
probably the least desired item on a laptop for me. It drives me nuts
that you see these laptops the size of some cars (seriously, you should
see the cars some of the dutch drive). That have CPU's more powerful
than most desktops, and a batterylife of about 20 minutes. 

Even my loverly IBM x31, which has a life of 3 hours on battery, has a
1.6 gig CPU. However, I have it scaled down to 600 using the frequency
scaling. And do you know what as I sit here typing this email, the
machine is showing cpu usage of 30-35%. Meaning that it is largely not
being used. So why then do we need laptops with 1.8 gig cpu's and
greater? This is where IMHO, the EEEP C has really screwed up, whilst it
has the same 3 hour battery life (in theory) as my beloved stinkpad, it
could be oh so much better. The main reason being the Screen and the CPU
are over specked. There is only one laptop I see as actually coming
close to this, and thats the XO from the OLPC. They have entirely
ignored the need for speed, and built a device with the power
requirements of a digital watch. And, you can power it by a draw cord.
Completely freeing you from the need for mains power. The reason being,
they aren't trying to run MS Office on it, or OpenBloat^WOpenOffice on
it. And this I think is the main driving point. 

In realistic terms, since the release of Word 2, there have been very
few (I am struggling to think of any) features that have been added to
word that are actually really used every day, and couldn't be
lived without. Word 2 came on less than a dozen floppies, and ran on a
386. Whats more, it also ran at 640x480. You have to ask yourself then,
why do we need such powerful machines?

It's also worth noting the Psion 5 had a version of Word, Excell, and
Powerpoint (tho not under those names) which ran on a 16Mhz Arm chip
with 16 meg of RAM. It also had one of the nicest keyboards on a PDA.
Why then did they stop making it, leaving the market open to the likes
of Palm, and the iPhone? 

Right, going to shut up now and drown my sorrows at not being able to
get an XO :o(

J
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