At long last
One of the most clichéd metaphors ever used by the IC industry was: 'If the car industry was like the chip industry, then a car today would do 100,000mpg, go at 1,000mph and cost $10'. Or something like that.
Only trouble was this
If it had, a laptop would run for a month on a battery charge, work at 1THz and cost $5.
Instead laptops tend to cost upwards of $250, are slow as hell and have battery life, sometimes, of under three hours.
So it's great to see stuff like CherryPal and Menq.
The $99CheeryPal has 256MB of RAM, 2GB of flash memory, a 7-inch display, a 400Mhz ARM processor, and is designed to run Windows CE and Linux.
Menq's laptop, called EasyPC, uses an ARM-based processor manufactured by Samsung, sells for $80, has a 7" display, WiFi, Ethernet LAN, supports Skype, plays YouTube, has a couple of USB ports, an SD card slot capable of adding 32GB of flash storage, 128MB of RAM, 2GB SSD storage, and a 2,000mAh battery and it runs Windows CE and Android.
CherryPal, Menq and the like are the future, for me.
For those with strong arms, deep pockets and GHz-related egos - stick to those Dells.
One those is probably more than enough for the bloggerati.
A fast PC running windows and stuffed full of design tools is a necessary workstation however.
Hans
I like these new machines. Speed is not a problem for me. My laptop is 4 years old and I can still type my letters and browse the internet (I always hated Javascript though, and my laptop's age has not endeared it to me).
Instead of buying a big powerful machine, I buy 4 small ones, and if one breaks, I replace it easily. One for browsing, one for writing, one for ...