Anyone else interested in a flash-based inexpensive ultra-portable laptop?

[cheesehead]

Has anyone else seen the Workpad Z50?
http://www.hpcfactor.com/reviews/hardware/ibm/workpad-z50/
To put it simply, it's a PocketPC with a 10" VGA LCD and a keyboard. It's got two PCMCIA slots, and a CompactFlash slot.

Aside from the reasonable pricetag (1,000$ was not bad for an IBM laptop in 1999, if I recall), it had amazing battery life: 8 hours with stock battery, or 16 hours with an extended-life battery. Although the screen was laggy, it was a great machine for word processing or mashing things out in Excel; it could even make PowerPoint presentations through the VGA port built in.

However, it did'nt sell terribly well; IBM dropped the product in 2000. I'm still looking for one on Ebay.

Today, technology has come a long way. 1GB compact flash cards are 40$, and VIA just released a new mobile CPU, the C7M, that draws as little as 3.5 watts during normal use.

What if an OEM manufacturer (ASUS/Gigabyte perhaps?) were to manufacture a successor to the Workpad? It could be made very cheaply, using a 9" or 10" LCD intended for use in a portable DVD player. VIA's chipset has many functions built into just two or three ICs, so design would be simple and manufacturing costs would be low. Add a CompactFlash slot and install a stripped-down Linux distro, and you have a computer that can be manufactured en masse for under 300$.

Although the screen quality would be a bit lower than we would be accustomed to, such a laptop would have many advantages. Battery life would be at least six to eight hours, double that of most notebooks, even with a small pack. The size of the laptop could be kept very small; the entire laptop's footprint would only be slightly wider and longer than the keyboard, and it could be made very, very thin. (See some of Sony's Viao line for ideas; think perhaps along the lines of this: http://reviews.cnet.com/Sony_VAIO_VGN_TX670P/4505-3121_7-31516598.html).

In addition, there are other advantages to this approach. Flash RAM uses nearly no power while "idle", and does not need to be "spun up" like a standard hard drive. As opposed to suspending to RAM like a standard laptop, all it would need to do is throttle down the CPU's frequency and voltage, and turn off the display; resuming function would simply require turning back on the screen. VIA's technology allows the CPU's frequency to be adjusted very quickly, so it could be run at 100mhz when you're simply looking at what's on the screen.

So, would anyone else be interested in such a device? After all, it's no more advanced than most 300$ PDAs, and it would be even easier to make, with more room for the assorted components.

I'll end my rant here.

 

[fbrdphreak]

I just e-mailed my Lenovo guy to see if he had one laying around, LOL

Those look really cool, I'd love to get my hands on one to play with

And yes, I agree your idea has merit!!

 

[phisrow]

Sounds good to me. It wouldn't replace my main laptop; but it would be a nice ultraportable/take anywhere machine.

 

[Parasitic]

Would you be able to "mod" an existing laptop into something similar to this?
For instance, take an old Thinkpad x20 series, strip the hard drives and load in a 4GB or even 8GB Seagate microdrive as the main storage, then strip the unnesscary components by shorting them, etc?

 

[DaveSimmons]

I picked up one on closeout in 2000 for $279 nice machine, incredibly light.

Only 1 PCMICA not 2, and I think the display is 8.4" and 640x480 but I've had mine boxed up in the closet for a year so I'd have to dig it out to check.

I've never had time do some of the fun stuff like set up VNC to use it as a terminal, or hunt down a wifi card that has CE 2.11 drivers (I think at least Socket had them).

 

[cheesehead]

Woohoo! I'm not alone in my insanity!

I wonder how much battery life on a standard notebook could be improved by removing the optical drive, and replacing the hard drive with a CF card. Parasitic might not have a bad idea here; I'm looking at some old HP 800CTs on eBay. All I'd need is a PCMCIA to CF adapter, and I'd be ready to go. (The trick would be to find a later-model Pentium or a Pentium-II I could swap for the stock P1-166mhz.)

However, I think that Via's new processors would be the way to go for these laptops. The Via VX700 chipset has a graphics processor, RAM controller, PCI bridge, USB ports, and a soundcard built on to one IC. The total power use for the entire chipset plus the processor could be kept down to as little as four to five watts; I'm not sure if that's at the maximum clock speed or not.

The trick would to keep the LCD's power use low. Perhaps some LEDs could be used in place of the CCFLs; although this may slightly increase the price, it might be practical for a smaller screen, and it would help keep down the power use.

I wonder if it's possible to keep a laptop's total power use below ten watts? My laptop uses perhaps 15 watts idle, and it's got a Pentium-M Dothan. Assuming a three-watt LCD backlight and two watts for RAM, it might not be too hard.

That said, it's hard to compare to the 8-hour battery life of the Z50. I wonder how they kept the backlight's power use that low?

 

[DaveSimmons]

> I wonder how they kept the backlight's power use that low?

Edit: by using simpler DSTN "passive matrix" like some of the other color panels of the time. I'd guess the backlight is lower-power than on active matrix displays

 

[cheesehead]

Perhaps. I do know that active-matrix TFTs are horribly inefficient.
Also, don't cheap DVD player screens use this resolution? An el-cheapo Linux laptop based around an Intel PX255 (PDA) processor would be really, really cheap and easy to make. Heck, look at the Gumstix line of micro-PCs:
http://gumstix.com/store/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=27&products_id=154
All you'd need to do is have someone code a custom version of Linux for the ARM (it's already out there, and a custom version would be pocket change for IBM or Sony), and add a LCD controller. The end result would essentially be a portable DVD player with a keyboard in place of the DVD drive, which would get excellent battery life and cost very little.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Sounds like a good idea, given the size of flash cards there's no reason why a device with a fixed set of apps in ROM/flash needs a hard drive.

Soon there will be cheap enough extended-life flash or nonvolatile RAM that machines like that could go into suspend mode without needing to still power the dynamic RAM like the workpad does.

Put it in your closet for a month and the battery may empty out but as soon as you plug it back in it will wake up exactly where you left off.

 

[razor2025]

Actually this platform would be great for today. A ultra-portable terminal computer. Back then, they didn't have Wi-Fi, so they probably considered this as over-sized PDA. Nowadays, with prevalance of WiFi, these will serer as excellent terminal computer or just simple office/productivity computer. Use the flash memory for OS booting (store them on 1-2GB size of your favorite flash memory) and attach a USB 2.5" external hard drive, and you'll have a perfect small sized, networked laptop.

 

[Ruptga]

Why do we need flash anyway? I know it's a lot cheaper, but MRAM has better performance for reads and writes, but especially writes, and most importantly, it lasts much longer. Flash memory erases stuff by surging whichever block you're deleting, which damages the cell a little bit with each write operation. Flash memory typically lasts for a million writes, I believe. Flash is plenty fine for camera cards or even thumb drives, but I don't really want to put an OS on it. As for MRAM being practically implementable, it already is, sortof. Wikipedia has on it's Freescale Semiconductor page that "Freescale started commercial shipments of the 4-Mbit MRAM on July 10, 2006, with small volume sales priced at $25 per chip." It also has on its MRAM page that Freescale is currently the only company making commercial sales. So it's not immediately available, but it takes some time to get any new system designed and ready for production anyway.

 

[cheesehead]

Originally posted by: ADDAvenger
Why do we need flash anyway? I know it's a lot cheaper, but MRAM has better performance for reads and writes, but especially writes, and most importantly, it lasts much longer. Flash memory erases stuff by surging whichever block you're deleting, which damages the cell a little bit with each write operation. Flash memory typically lasts for a million writes, I believe. Flash is plenty fine for camera cards or even thumb drives, but I don't really want to put an OS on it. As for MRAM being practically implementable, it already is, sortof. Wikipedia has on it's Freescale Semiconductor page that "Freescale started commercial shipments of the 4-Mbit MRAM on July 10, 2006, with small volume sales priced at $25 per chip." It also has on its MRAM page that Freescale is currently the only company making commercial sales. So it's not immediately available, but it takes some time to get any new system designed and ready for production anyway.

25$ for 512kb is far too high.
I would suggest Flash for use as a storage device, not to be used as a standard hard drive. The system would run entirely from RAM; the flash drive would be used to save files.

An example of what I'm looking for (admittedly, with a smaller screen and no keyboard) is the Gamepark GP2X. It's inexpensive(about 170$), and, from what I've read, has a dual-core ARM CPU running at 233mhz.

http://www.gp2x.com/

All that would be needed is to add a bigger LCD (not necessarily more expensive; think portable DVD player) and a cheap keyboard. Everything else is there already; it gets a whopping 4+ hours off of two AA batteries, so imagine what you'll get off of 30 watt-hours!

 

[Ruptga]

25$ for 512kb is far too high.

Of course 25 bucks for 512kb is nuts, it's 512MB. I know that's expensive as well, not a terribly good plan for a small computer, but two of them would work for an overgrown PDA.

And in any case, I was talking about the near future for MRAM, after a couple business cycles the capacity will double a couple times and you'll have 2GB for $25, what would you think then?

 

[6000SUX]

This has been my dream for some time. I don't know why they stopped making those machines, or maybe they were just ahead of their time. With such a thirst for ultraportability these days, and low-power processors really providing more than enough power for mobile computing, NOW is the right time for such a machine.

I did some extensive shopping for such machines used before, but never wound up buying. I was just afraid of buying something so old-- would the battery still take a charge? etc. etc.

You'd think universities would really push for this, and any product manager worth his/her salt should realize the huge potential market. Just about anyone could afford such a computer. There's no reason such a machine couldn't even be built with a very slim modular bay, into which you could slide a hard drive for extra storage or an extra battery.

Lenovo should make this. Imagine a Thinkpad keyboard and a decent screen on a 2-pound machine for $500.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: ADDAvenger

25$ for 512kb is far too high.

Of course 25 bucks for 512kb is nuts, it's 512MB. I know that's expensive as well, not a terribly good plan for a small computer, but two of them would work for an overgrown PDA.

And in any case, I was talking about the near future for MRAM, after a couple business cycles the capacity will double a couple times and you'll have 2GB for $25, what would you think then?

No, 4 Mbit = 0.5 MByte = 512K for $25.

"AUSTIN, Texas ? Freescale Semiconductor Inc. started commercial shipments of its 4-Mbit magneto-resistive random access memories (MRAM) Monday (July 10th), with small-volume sales priced at $25 per chip, said Saied Tehrani, the director of the MRAM program based at Freescale's Chandler, Ariz. facility. " (EE Times)

Given Moore's Law, in 3 years 2MByte of this ram will still cost $25.

 

[whistleclient]

you could get a d420 and replace the hard drive with one of the new samsung flash "hard" drives coming out. well, when they make them in 2.5" form factor.

 

[Ruptga]

Quite right DaveSimmons, don't know what I was thinking there...

 

[soccerballtux]

Yeah def I am. But for some reason nobody wants to actually make a DECENT flash notebook. I think I read about one with the 16GB flash drive. "Sweet! That means good battery life!" I thought. But then I read on to see that it had a Celeron M and 3-cell battery, and 256 or 512MB of Ram. Very lame IMO. I'll pick one up when we've got 32GB, 1-2GB RAM, Core Duo, and 6 cell with option of 12 cell battery.

 

[6000SUX]

soccerballtux, you're missing the point. It's not to make a standard notebook with a flash hard drive. It's to make a capable Windows CE-like device useful for most computing tasks, that's very thin and light, has great battery life, and a decent keyboard and screen in a laptop form factor. As soon as the flash drives hit the street you'll probably be able to slap one in any old notebook, but the notebook will still be just as big and heavy, take as long to boot, and have about the same battery life.

 

[imported_OrSin]

Isnt the OLPC notebook pretty much what your saying.
I know if i could load xp on it I would get it for twice the money.
For me (just me) All I use notebook for is GPS, Web browsing and maybe some file email.
I'm looking for cheap 7-12' notebook to do only that. And I can't find it at all.

The 2 closest I can find are these
Fuji
New fuji
Hammerhead

If any of these had updated CPU (just asking for 1Ghz really) I might get it.
I list ebay auctions only becuase it the only place I have found them right now.

Any one see a recently new machince similar to these, but with more ram and better CPU for under $500 (really should be under $300)

 

[cheesehead]

The Stylistic 3400 will do almost all of what you want. IIRC, it has an upgradeable CPU. Averatec also made one or two REALLY cheap tablet PC's.

Well, soon I will be able to find out if my ideas make any sense.
My younger brother needs a small laptop for school, due to a learning disability, and my parents balked at the price of an AlphaSmart. (150$ for 1 line of text? Bogus!)

I'm currently looking to get one of the following for him.

-IBM Z50. The king of the proto-laptops. Weighs 2.5 lbs., and gets up to 16 hours on an extended battery. Woo!
-HP Jornada 820. Very similar to the Z50; weighs 3 lbs. Has a slightly larger screen, and batteries availible on eBay for 10$.
-Intermec 6651 laptop. Rare as hen's teeth, expensive, and it occasionally goes for 10$ when people miss them.
-Sharp Mobilon Tripad. I've actually got two which are being sold "as is" which I might score; I hope to get one working Tripad from them both. Touchscreen is sweet, but they've got a rep for not lasting long.

 

[namityadav]

I was looking for an ultra-ultraportable machine to carry around for meetings etc. I bought both, an IBM Z50 and a Jornada 820 (Along with Wireless and Ethernet PCMCIA cards. Its important to make sure that the cards that you're buying work on your version of WinCE / *ix that you'll install on the machine) for around $70 / $100. Obviously the WinCE 2.1/3.0 running on these machines is more or less useless because the best browser that it can run is IE4. Moreover, there aren't that many applications for WinCE 2.1/3.0 anyway.

So, I looked around to find out if I could run some stripped down version of Linux or BSD. I found that the best possible candidate for Jornada was JLime .. but it just wasn't ready for prime-time at that time. For Z50, I could use an hpcmips NetBSD. After two days of serious hard work, I could get the wireless / ethernet / power settings / X11 etc .. all working. But then I realized that running compiling any useful application like Firefox was just too heavy for the tiny processor. Dillo was the best browser that I could get running .. and it couldn't really serve the purpose on my https heavy office intranet sites.

Then our office started using VPN for wireless security and we were needed to use Cisco VPN client. Trying to compile that client on my version of NetBSD was a horrible pain on this tiny processor and flash I/O. I was also concerned about the life of the drive anyway. So, in some time I just lost hope and bought a regular laptop and installed Ubuntu on it (Dell m140). I guess sometimes it's just better to let go of legacy products and move on to newer things ;-)

To end the long story, I sold the two machines (Surprisingly with profit. Sold the Jornada with the Wifi card for $170 and Z50 with Ethernet card for $110) .. and am a full-time Ubuntu user on m140 now. I hope my story helps you make up your mind or helps you in your purchase.

ps. Oh, don't forget to check out Libretto. Not really flash based, but sound awesome.