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ARM netbooks yet, soon?

I

I4AT

Platinum Member
Haven't really kept up with the latest tech, last netbook I bought (that I still use) was an AMD C-60 Brazos unit.

Is there such a thing as an ARM based netbook yet? Or are there any that have been announced that may be coming soon? The hardware seems up to snuff for everything the basic user would do, maybe not for Windows, but for a lighter weight OS whether it be Android or something else.

I'd imagine something with tablet/smartphone hardware in a netbook form factor with the larger battery could probably do 12+ hours a charge. You'd think they would've made these sooner?
 
Everyone keeps on saying that tablets replace netbooks, but I'm sure I'm not the only person who wants an actual netbook, with a keyboard and 10"-12" screen and everything, for $400 tops.

The best I can think of right now is a chromebook running linux but they keep on having bricking issues, or a nexus 7 with a keyboard, VNC and a tethered cellphone, but all together its too involved.
 
Asus has had Atom based netbooks that get 14 hours on a battery for a couple years now. Also there have been ARM based netbooks for a long time but they're just now getting to the point where you'd actually want to use one. The fastest ARM CPUs at the moment just barely keep up with the now dated dual-core Atoms so I don't really see the point.
 
lagokc said:
The fastest ARM CPUs at the moment just barely keep up with the now dated dual-core Atoms so I don't really see the point.
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The existence of a powerful and more expensive product does not render anything cheaper and less powerful obsolete. Especially not in a market where processing power takes a back set to price and power consumption.

ponyo said:
They have. It's called Samsung Chromebook.

http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-XE303C12-A01US-Chromebook-Wi-Fi-11-6-Inch/dp/B009LL9VDG

Great device. I bought one for my 10yr old daughter. It's great for her use and she loves it. Best thing is it's completely silent with no moving parts or fan. The fan noise on my Yoga 13 laptop drives me crazy.
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I bought one for the wife and ended up getting myself one as well. They've got fantastic keyboards and make a great daily driver.
 
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Oh the new chromebooks are exynos based, I only knew about the earlier editions that used Celerons.

Kind of interesting but not exactly what I'm looking for. I don't need something ultra thin and it seems like that's its only selling point. 16gb storage space and 6.5 hours battery life means the only advantage it has over a tablet is a keyboard. My C-60 netbook only cost me about $215, runs Win 7, has 4gb ram and 320gb HDD, and gets just over 5 hours on a single charge.

I'd much rather see something more traditional netbook sized that could take a 2.5" HDD and a real battery for 12+ hours of runtime (with a 6-cell battery similar to the one I have now it'd probably do well over 12 hours?). I know there were some old Atom netbooks with similar battery life, but that was with the pricey 9 cell options. Also, Atom doesn't handle HD video well at all which is why I went with Brazos.
 
tuxberg said:
The existence of a powerful and more expensive product does not render anything cheaper and less powerful obsolete. Especially not in a market where processing power takes a back set to price and power consumption.
Those Asus Atom netbooks were under $300 a year ago. Unless you can show me some sub-$300 ARM netbooks that are reasonably powerful and can match the battery life you can't really make a case that the Atoms are too expensive.
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tuxberg said:
The existence of a powerful and more expensive product does not render anything cheaper and less powerful obsolete. Especially not in a market where processing power takes a back set to price and power consumption.
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On that battery life angle how many people actually use laptops as a mobile device? Most are used as desktop replacements with AC connected all the time, or carried from point A to B once again with AC available.
 
lagokc said:
Those Asus Atom netbooks were under $300 a year ago. Unless you can show me some sub-$300 ARM netbooks that are reasonably powerful and can match the battery life you can't really make a case that the Atoms are too expensive.
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I thought we had made the point that the $249 Samsung chromebook was this thing precisely. The $199 celeron Acer (with wretched battery life) and the $4-500+ other Samsung models illustrate the point. Intel is more expensive. The arm processor is just fine for a light OS (ie. not windows) and many people do not need windows.

Therefor in this niche market it does not make sense to reject ARM solely on the basis of their inferior benchmark performance.

StrangerGuy said:
On that battery life angle how many people actually use laptops as a mobile device? Most are used as desktop replacements with AC connected all the time, or carried from point A to B once again with AC available.
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If this is the case the ultrabook craze is entirely fabricated as are Apple's sales of the macbook air. Of course, you could be right that "most," in a market-share sense, users don't care about portability or battery life, but just because "most," don't does not mean there's nobody willing to buy it. The market is, thankfully, not democratic. Even if there is a very small group demanding highly portable netbooks with great battery life: someone will probably fulfill that.
 
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tuxberg said:
If this is the case the ultrabook craze is entirely fabricated as are Apple's sales of the macbook air. Of course, you could be right that "most," in a market-share sense, users don't care about portability or battery life, but just because "most," don't does not mean there's nobody willing to buy it. The market is, thankfully, not democratic. Even if there is a very small group demanding highly portable netbooks with great battery life: someone will probably fulfill that.
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Disagree. The ultrabook "craze" is a mostly supply push by the industry to crawl out of the cost cutting spiral than anything. While I do not it deny people who need mobility and battery life exists appears those people like enthusiasts here are a minority; most people feel both doesn't justify the added costs. The rock bottom laptop ASPs and weak ultrabook sales reflect that.

The Chromebook has always been a top seller because it's cheap while Macbooks has been even longer because, well, it's Apple.
 
tuxberg said:
I thought we had made the point that the $249 Samsung chromebook was this thing precisely. The $199 celeron Acer (with wretched battery life) and the $4-500+ other Samsung models illustrate the point. Intel is more expensive. The arm processor is just fine for a light OS (ie. not windows) and many people do not need windows.

Therefor in this niche market it does not make sense to reject ARM solely on the basis of their inferior benchmark performance.
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Why do you keep ignoring the $250-300 Asus netbooks that have awesome battery life and have been available for a long time now? Atoms are pretty cheap and getting an OS that can actually run your desktop software is a perk that is important to most people.
 
StrangerGuy said:
Disagree. The ultrabook "craze" is a mostly supply push by the industry to crawl out of the cost cutting spiral than anything. While I do not it deny people who need mobility and battery life exists appears those people like enthusiasts here are a minority; most people feel both doesn't justify the added costs. The rock bottom laptop ASPs and weak ultrabook sales reflect that.

The Chromebook has always been a top seller because it's cheap while Macbooks has been even longer because, well, it's Apple.
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You didn't disagree with the proposition as I presented it. ie. The demand is there for light-weight and good battery life, not necessarily paired with processing power.

lagokc said:
Why do you keep ignoring the $250-300 Asus netbooks that have awesome battery life and have been available for a long time now? Atoms are pretty cheap and getting an OS that can actually run your desktop software is a perk that is important to most people.
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What about the existence of competitors in the market makes my argument invalid? I actually have one of those netbooks (and they've been discontinued, Acer replaced them with 11'' netbook equivalents) and it runs puppy linux. Unfortunately it was more useless than an offline chromebook with windows starter edition (which IMO is what killed the netbook).

If the argument is chromeOS is so much worse than windows starter edition, I think you're the one who's going to have to validate that claim. The only way an old netbook is equivalent to a modern chromebook is if you boot linux over windows on the netbook and don't perform the same courtesy to the chromebook. (And if your netbook happens to be atom N2600 then you don't even have this option)

To put it simply, windows and intel just didn't provide cheap, light-weight, platforms with good battery life. To the extent they tried to, they sold a lot of netbooks, but ultimately people realized they were either not delivering on battery life or their processing power to operating system drain was horrendous and moved on. Time may tell the same story for chromebooks (I don't think so, but it is possible), but at the moment they're ticking all the boxes that netbooks did while missing the familiar pitfalls.
 
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I'm still not seeing how the Exynos 5250 Chromebook is a huge step over the old Atom CPU, even with Linux on both machines you're looking at similar performance and battery life.

Show me one with an Exynos 5410 and things change a little but personally I'd be much happier with an AMD Temash.
 
I4AT said:
Haven't really kept up with the latest tech, last netbook I bought (that I still use) was an AMD C-60 Brazos unit.

Is there such a thing as an ARM based netbook yet? Or are there any that have been announced that may be coming soon? The hardware seems up to snuff for everything the basic user would do, maybe not for Windows, but for a lighter weight OS whether it be Android or something else.

I'd imagine something with tablet/smartphone hardware in a netbook form factor with the larger battery could probably do 12+ hours a charge. You'd think they would've made these sooner?
Click to expand...

Worse than Atom performance...... yuk....
 
tuxberg said:
You didn't disagree with the proposition as I presented it. ie. The demand is there for light-weight and good battery life, not necessarily paired with processing power.



What about the existence of competitors in the market makes my argument invalid? I actually have one of those netbooks (and they've been discontinued, Acer replaced them with 11'' netbook equivalents) and it runs puppy linux. Unfortunately it was more useless than an offline chromebook with windows starter edition (which IMO is what killed the netbook).

If the argument is chromeOS is so much worse than windows starter edition, I think you're the one who's going to have to validate that claim. The only way an old netbook is equivalent to a modern chromebook is if you boot linux over windows on the netbook and don't perform the same courtesy to the chromebook. (And if your netbook happens to be atom N2600 then you don't even have this option)

To put it simply, windows and intel just didn't provide cheap, light-weight, platforms with good battery life. To the extent they tried to, they sold a lot of netbooks, but ultimately people realized they were either not delivering on battery life or their processing power to operating system drain was horrendous and moved on. Time may tell the same story for chromebooks (I don't think so, but it is possible), but at the moment they're ticking all the boxes that netbooks did while missing the familiar pitfalls.
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Don't know what the big deal is with chromebook. 6.5 hours is hardly anything to write home about. If all you are allowed to do is browse the web and write emails, the old x200 gets 6 hours easily on a 6-cell battery. The point is ARM is hardly any more energy efficient than x86, they are just gimped down. If you make your core2's run at minimum speedstep you get the same battery life. Frankly I prefer the extra option of being more powerful when needed.

Seriously, try an x200 for the same price as the chromebook before complaining "windows and intel just didn't provide cheap, light-weight, platforms with good battery life".
 
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The X200 is cheap because it is a legacy system supplanted by the X220. These systems were made to cater to the customers with more income who would then dump the systems into the used channel when the new toys come out. Pretty much, the ones available now are coming from expired corporate leases. But they were $1000+ systems when initially released.
 
I'm using an ARM netbook (samsung chromebook) right now, and it is quite speedy. I don't believe I have seen any other ARM-based laptops around, though.
 
jihe said:
Don't know what the big deal is with chromebook. 6.5 hours is hardly anything to write home about. If all you are allowed to do is browse the web and write emails, the old x200 gets 6 hours easily on a 6-cell battery. The point is ARM is hardly any more energy efficient than x86, they are just gimped down. If you make your core2's run at minimum speedstep you get the same battery life. Frankly I prefer the extra option of being more powerful when needed.

Seriously, try an x200 for the same price as the chromebook before complaining "windows and intel just didn't provide cheap, light-weight, platforms with good battery life".
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Sounds like you don't use chrome tools, which is fine, but you clearly have no idea what a chromebook is capable of. If you buy an old thinkpad instead you're quite likely to spend more and there's no way in hell a used battery is going to hold that much of a charge. That's before you get into the age issues all laptops (even thinkpads) have from general wear and tear.

I have two classic thinkpads myself (T61 and X61t), but neither one of them is as lightweight, silent, cool, or efficient for mobile productivity. 9 of 10 things I need to do on a daily driver is accomplished through the chrome ecosystem or ssh.

Seriously, unless you ~BigBrotherBraveNewWorld~ about cloud applications and storage, there's no benefit to not using a series 3 chromebook over an old x-series. I grant you there are things out there for which I must use one of my laptops, but to the extent that the chromebook is obsolte? Not a chance.

My point stands.
 
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tuxberg said:
Sounds like you don't use chrome tools, which is fine, but you clearly have no idea what a chromebook is capable of. If you buy an old thinkpad instead you're quite likely to spend more and there's no way in hell a used battery is going to hold that much of a charge. That's before you get into the age issues all laptops (even thinkpads) have from general wear and tear.

I have two classic thinkpads myself (T61 and X61t), but neither one of them is as lightweight, silent, cool, or efficient for mobile productivity. 9 of 10 things I need to do on a daily driver is accomplished through the chrome ecosystem or ssh.

Seriously, unless you ~BigBrotherBraveNewWorld~ about cloud applications and storage, there's no benefit to not using a series 3 chromebook over an old x-series. I grant you there are things out there for which I must use one of my laptops, but to the extent that the chromebook is obsolte? Not a chance.

My point stands.
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Like I said, try setting cpu powermanagement to minimum, you'll be surprise how cool and silent the old core2's are. Mine x200t fan is off most of the time.
 
jihe said:
Like I said, try setting cpu powermanagement to minimum, you'll be surprise how cool and silent the old core2's are. Mine x200t fan is off most of the time.
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There is no disputing core2 thinkpads are great. As I said, I use them too. I just don't think they're mutually exclusive. 😉
 
The titanic failure of Windows RT, a terrible excuse for an OS, doesn't really have anything to do with ARM.
 
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