Free Software Linux

Another week, another 34 Weeks of OHA from the great guys AndroidGuys. This week they feature Intel, the leader in Computer Processors who is a member of the OHA and are manufacturing a 2GHz Micro Processor for Mobile Devices called ATOM.We will be seeing the ATOM processors get implemented in Android Devices for sure in the coming years. Don't believe me? Watch this space, anyway enough of my rambling. From Article: What they bring to OHA and Android: Intel is savvy. They know what’s going on. They can see the future of personal computing as surely as you or I: smaller, more personal, pocket-sized computing platforms. They know where the action is. Intel also has a history of chip designs intended for more mobile platforms. Names like Centrino, Pentium M, and Santa Rosa are the marketing front ends for a number of low-power-consumption processor and/or mainboard and/or video chipset combinations intended for use in laptops. My current laptop runs a Santa Rosa platform (even the video card, which was a little bit of a mistake, but I was attracted by Intel’s healthy open-source driver support; unfortunately just because a driver is open-source doesn’t mean it’s good open source). Intel was a part of the initiative that gifted us with the UMPC (which stands for Uber-Mini PC or something) devices, many of which use the chip maker’s low-voltage processors. Now, I’ve never actually seen one of these in the wild, although I know manufacturers keep revealing new models, hoping someone will bite. They look like a neat concept on paper: take a laptop, make it really, really, small, add some dedicated-function buttons, make it almost as powerful as a full-sized notebook, and sell it for business use. Problem is, they’re pretty expensive for something that is too small for full-time use but too large to fit in a pocket, and I think they’re getting squeezed out by Blackberries and smartphones on one end and low-cost ultra-portables (like the EEE PC) on the other end. Intel seems to have some to a similir conclusion, and is now behind an initiative to re-purpose UMPCs for the Internet-browsing media-viewing consumer crowd. They’re calling this new class of device the MID, or Mobile Internet Device, and basically it’s a UMPC minus office apps with a couple of inches shaved off. In other words, it’s even closer to a smartphone. Intel has indicated that these devices will run Linux; they’ve even partnered with the Ubuntu folks to create an Ubuntu for MIDs distro. [Source: read more, AndroidGuys]

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