MicroDigital expands mobile RISC OS range

17 inch Pentium 4 Alpha laptop spells overkill or anywhere heaven?

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17" laptop seems to coincide with the move away from having portable laptops, towards having laptops which are just desktop replacements. I wonder if one of these with the 3.06GHz P4 could out-do an Omega - must at very least wipe the floor with a Kinetic, seeing as a 1.5GHz can generally outperform a J233. I thought Psion went tits up last year? -- C'mon, mod me down, PUNK! simo on 4/10/03 2:20AM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

I was certain Psion went, as you desicribe it perfectly "went tits up". Hmm, mabye some has just bought the name and technology? Fedorenko on 4/10/03 4:32AM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

Strange that the M4 has a higher performance processor than the M5. They don't mention if the P4 processor in the M4 is an "M" (mobile) or not. Do Microdigital sell these laptops for cheaper than the cost of a no-name laptop plus VirtualRPC-SE? Netbook Pro - what? No EPOC? Calling Windows CE.NET "industry standard" is just plain wrong. However, RISC OS on that portable would be nice. -- Simon Wilson, Boulder, Colorado ksattic on 4/10/03 7:26AM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

I'm not into this emulating RISC OS stuff. Surely the cool thing about RISC OS - particularly with the recent hardware abstraction - is that it can run on tiny, tiny processors using little power. RISC OS on the new Netbook. RISC OS on something even smaller. That's what we want. Excitement. Anyway, let's face it, EPOC has been development starved of late. that's maybe why Psion has gone for bankable sh*t. Why didn't they go for some Linux solution or, er, RISC OS? JessFranco on 4/10/03 8:28AM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

The key point about emulating RISC OS is that it allows RISC OS to "happen" on devices that wouldn't be practical to develop "pure-RISC OS". Given that RISC OS laptops (and other formats) haven't become reality, emulation gives users an option that they wouldn't otherwise have. Addtionally, remember that schools/businesses often provide machines or grants-towards-machines which aren't RISC OS based. Thanks to emulation, such machines can be made RISC OS compatible! arawnsley on 4/10/03 10:09AM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

To quote the vast bitmap that is the Clevo press clipping, "The D470W not only adopts a desktop processor". So, even without VRPC, you get sod all battery life. Actually using it on your lap is going to cook your cojones in short order. MD are going for the short term cash, from the look of it. With the launch of VRPC as a separate product, why anyone would want to buy (or sell) Alpha is beyond me. However, I don't sell cheapo clones at all anyway. mikeg on 4/10/03 10:31AM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

Psion didn't go out of business, they just stopped making consumer palmtops like the Series 5 (knowing that Palm were inexplicably doing far better than them in the consumer market) and instead concentrated on the NetBook which was designed for businesses and seems to have done pretty well. They might have something to do with the new generation of mobile phones too, but I can't remember what exactly, if anything. hutchies on 4/10/03 5:16PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

Psion, together with Nokia and Ericsson, formed a new company, called Symbian, to develop the EPOC OS. This is now called Symbian OS and is used in most new mobile phones. -- Julian G. F. Zimmerle JGZimmerle on 5/10/03 2:05PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

JessFranco: "Surely the cool thing about RISC OS is that it can run on tiny, tiny processors using little power." Personally I'd rather see it running on dual G5 processors and kicking serious arse on end user power. Having RISC OS on a watch might be cute but also utterly useless. -- Spriteman. Spriteman on 5/10/03 4:44PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

Since the new Netbook features an Xscale can't we ask Castle to produce a portable Iyonix based on the machine? I thought the point of the HAL was to make this sort of project possible - and if not RISC OS why not Linux? cynic on 10/10/03 7:06PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ]

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