

Nvidia prefers Windows CE over Android for netbooks - shoomery
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9134522&intsrc=news_ts_head

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ajross
It's all just FUD, sadly. They need the MS cooperation to get the sale, and MS
wants something back. So the business guys cooperate on a technical-sounding
press release. Boring.

I counted only two technical points in the article. The first is that
Android's icons are too big (?!). The second is that "all video and graphics
rendering in Android is done today by the operating system's Java code", which
just plain incorrect.

Edit: I should probably elaborate. Android on the G1, at least, does video
decoding using the Qualcomm DSP cores on the chip. 3D work has access to an
ATI-based OpenGL ES 1.1 part, with relatively good texturing performance. The
media frameworks are in C++, and available to native code. Only the UI library
and top-level application framework is Java/Dalvik.

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wmf
_"all video and graphics rendering in Android is done today by the operating
system's Java code", which just plain incorrect._

NVidia is saying that _on Tegra_ the rendering is done in software _because
NVidia hasn't written a Linux 3D driver_. Clearly that isn't Android's fault.
I wonder how many months or years it will take to get the driver written.

~~~
ajross
The port of their windows Geforce driver to linux was reported to have taken a
few months. As I understand it, they're still maintained from the same tree
and share essentially all code but the minimum necessary glue (much to the
annoyance of the linux kernel folks, it should be added).

Tegra is, no doubt, based on the same hardware components they're shipping in
their other products; and its driver is surely similarly portable. This isn't
a technical point, it's just FUD.

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sadiq
Wow, Nvidia's guy is really full of crap.

"The world soundly rejected the first netbooks that came out with Linux," he
said. "Printers didn't work, and devices didn't get recognized. The whole
thing was a mess."

So their master plan is to ship Windows CE? An OS with even fewer drivers?

I'm also not sure where he got the "soundly rejected" from. The first
generation Linux-based Asus Eee were sold out for months here in the UK.

I'm also not entirely convinced on Android on a netbook. I own a G1 and
absolutely adore it but while it's a great fit for the size of the screen and
capabilities of the phone, i'm not sure i'd want the same thing on a 10"
screen.

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chanux
First they ignore you...

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chaostheory
not sure how smart it is to favor a proprietary OS, that increases costs for
device manufacturers, when the world economy is in a downturn

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rbanffy
It's a good idea if it makes your competition follow what you say while you do
something else.

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chaostheory
I don't see Intel biting; they're too in love with Linux

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rbanffy
When companies act insane like this it's usually to ward off threats. I wonder
if it's that they supply their chips to Microsoft for their newer Zune
thingies of because they want to sweeten any deal with Intel regarding their
patent disputes.

I also wonder if it is not the same mechanism we saw in action with Asus a
couple days ago.

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wmf
I don't understand the Android netbook meme at all. Moblin seems to make much
more sense since it was actually designed for netbooks.

~~~
rbanffy
Well... I love Ubuntu on my Aspire One.

That said, it's a dual-threading 32 bit CPU with 1.5 gigabytes of RAM and a
slow, but spacious, 160 GB hard disk.

This was good for a beefy server a couple years ago.

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rbanffy
I can understand Nvidia's position. It was either endorsing CE or losing
support in future versions of Windows...

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ilyak
Windows CE on a netbook downsides: \- No software that can work more than on
800x480, also every program thinks it's on a tiny touch-screen, full-sized,
with two control buttons. \- No drivers. Maybe USB storage would work. No
serial cables, no webcams, forget all of that. Irony: I doubt there's a Host
ActiveSync, so no Windows CE smartphones syncing. \- Operating system sucks,
therefore everybody beefs it up with proprietary "shells". \- The only descent
browser, costs 30$.

upsides: \- It's Windows, so tehre should be PROFIT!

