This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Seems they don't understand the seeking points of the Neo and why it's a bigger deal:
Just having a price point that matches is bullshit. That's how we ended up with eMachines, bruh.
You can install Linux on them, so they win in the OS department in my opinion.
Well,I think they have to build powerful ARM CPUs, but then software support will be shit cause Microslop is too incapable. Apple is in a very unique spot handling both hard- and software. Apple Silicon was the smartest move they ever did.
Hey look! We rediscovered netbooks!
Might have to dust off my EeePC.
I still have my original 7" EEE PC somewhere in storage (batteries removed). It was the 900mhz model which I imported from Asia. That little thing was so cool, with a little utility I could undervolt and downclock it to 700mhz. That way the fan would never run and the battery time was very long. I absolutely loved that little machine.
Hah, I did exactly the same. Mine arrived with a broken fan, but it didn't matter because it never kicked in anyway. I used it as a Gameboy emulator for quite a while, it was actually small enough to hold like a handheld with QWAS acting as a Dpad.
Learning how to type with that tiny keyboard was a fun challenge.
Is this the third time they invented netbooks? The second time they called them "Chromebooks" and they sucked with their locked down os.
There’s no windows machine that can “rival” the neo. Take windows off and maybe.
Netbook flashbacks
Ah yes because the bloat from Windows 11 won't make these struggle to do even basic tasks. So much background shit going on from the get-go that you still have to wait seconds for a single click to register or open the start menu.
Say what you want about Apple, there's a good deal to say, but at least their OS isn't a corporate bloatware/spyware/adware/malware infested mess that runs badly for the sake of the bloatware.
At least the OS can be swapped. If the battery life is abysmal compared to the Neo for similar specs then there's no redemption possible.
The only way I'd favor this over a Neo is similar battery life and user-replaceable RAM (ideally LPCAMM2).
Not that I'm defending windows or disagreeing, but there is a difference - windows run almost every PC hardware and still supports decades old legacy apps
windows run almost every PC hardware and still supports decades old legacy apps Windows yes, windows 11 no. With jump to 11, the TPM 2.0 requirement removed a great deal of the usable devices based upon one hardware spec that was only really common as of 5 years ago. In addition, win x16 apps have not been supported since win7 despite them working under wine, or at least more so than nothing. This coupled with the push to web apps on the os has all but killed the legacy apps aspect unless you consider them to be the apps which have had updates in the last 10ish years, which I disagree are legacy.
True, but that's not what causes them to run slow and shitty.
i mean, that’s part of it. but it has gotten worse recently for sure.
Yep, exactly. It certainly affects it to some extent, but it's not the main cause.
Edit: added missing 'to'
Its not legacy that is the problem. They went with web based tech for some parts of their os.
Don't worry, M$ say you can launch the command line in 90ms now!
Can’t wait to read about those 720p screens with 350 nits of brightness
And the OS they chose is Fedora Linux, right? Right?
From a certain point of view, perhaps...
They don't not run Linux, with a little help. And the setup process will probably be as long as booting into Windows for the first time anyway.
But in the meantime you pay somewhere around 60-90$ of that price in a M$ license you're not even going to use...
A $600 laptop with only 8GB of RAM was never an amazing deal by normal laptop standards.
Fucking thank you LOL. It's an otherwise very powerful and high quality laptop that's absolutely kneecapped with 8GB of unupgradeable RAM. Its insufficient for even the most basic of tasks, and has been for years. Give it 16GB and the Air is a dead product.
The next generation is supposed to have 12GB which will be a significant improvement, but most likely at a higher price, given the overwhelming demand.
It's like you've never used an ARM Mac.
8GB M1 MacBook Air (an equivalent spec) can do all kinds of crazy things you wouldn't expect it to.
It's not "absolutely kneecapped" unless you're doing pro stuff. It's fine for home movie HD video editing or audio production that isn't tons of tracks or any kind of basic administrative task you need. Even chrome with 20 tabs, if you must.
I have used them. That's how I know. Despite what Apple will tell you, they're not magic. 8GB is 8GB, regardless of what processor it runs on.
I’m forced to use one for work. It handles Xcode, simulator, Safari, teams, word and crappy corporate security suite simultaneously surprisingly well. Having only a 256GB SSD is far more annoying for development work than 8GB ram.
Would still get a minimum of 32gb for my personal machine, but it’s fine for normal users.
Did Intel somehow manage to close the yawning performance-per-watt gap with Apple Silicon, or is this just this year’s latest potato?
Man, what is even happening at Intel? Apple and AMD have made them look absolutely pathetic, not to mention their own processors grenading for fun.
They had been operating on the same premise for a long time. Use dirty tactics along side with superior tech to heavily punish the competition. Then coast along for as long as possible, maximizing profits and doing little else. Rinse and repeat.
However this hinges on them getting the superior tech at the right moment, just as the competition is surging again after years of Intel coasting. This backfired in the past when Prescott had a new 90nm process that had way more leakage than expected. This raised the amount of energy the chip required to operate, which in turn raised the heat. This limited the clockspeed, which made them slow and energy hungry. Desktops were slow and noisy and laptops were impossible due to the power requirements. And the Netburst architecture they had needed high clockspeeds which also wasn't possible. It failed hard and allowed AMD to surge with their Athlon64 chips absolutely destroying anything Intel had at that time. Intel needed to go back to their P6 design (pre-netburst), which had been kept alive in the company for their Pentium M series.
It backfired again recently when Intel failed to make the expected jumps in process node. The chip design was perfectly fine, but pretty ordinary as compared to AMDs lineup. Especially on the high end AMD had more performance on the table. As the new process node failed and AMD had TSMC make their high end chips, AMD took the lead once again. This failure was compounded by a large scale production error where oxidation of one of the internal cpu layers wasn't caught by QA. This made a small (but significant) percentage of chips fail after a few years. Intel figured out a workaround where changing some of the power regulation allowed for the oxidation to not occur or get worse. But chips that already failed or were about to, still failed. This led to consumers being annoyed and weary of buying Intel again and enterprise customers forcing Intel to replace a lot of chips at no costs.
Another big part is the whole GPU thing, where Intel has had integrated GPUs for a long time, but no dedicated product. The performance, compatibility and features were poor, basically enough to connect a monitor for office work but not much more. They even released a couple of products with AMD integrated GPUs, combined with Intel cpus because their on-board graphics were so poor. They tried to fix this multiple times, but failed each time. Recently with their Arcmage and later Battlemage products they are finally in a position to sell products. But the performance is still poor and compatibility is hampering them quite a bit. Even when selling them at a loss, it's hard to be competitive. And then when the AI boom hit, they were left out in the cold. Nvidia won that race, selling so many chips for AI. AMD did significantly worse, but still good as compared to Intel. Intel has been selling some AI products, but it's nothing compared to the others.
Then there's the whole ARM thing. People have been saying for years one could build pretty good chips with them. In the past companies like Qualcomm and Mediatek said as much, but weren't taken seriously. Then Samsung made their own and also said as much. Again they weren't taken seriously, they are good chips for phones and perhaps tablets, but for serious computing you need more power. Sure the performance per watt is good, but no way that scales right. But someone at Apple was listening after getting frustrated with Intel. They had moved from IBM to Intel in the past without much trouble. So they invested, designed some chips and blew people away with their results. Enough for Microsoft for example to also try again with Arm chips, having failed miserably with the software in the past. This might hurt Intel a lot in the future, as they were often the preferred supplier when it came to running Windows.
So yeah a lot of things going on, there's also some shady financial stuff involved and more tech stuff. It's an interesting, complicated and unfolding story. Like so many things today, we have no idea how the future will be in regards to Intel.
Their recent release has them pretty competitive with AMD and Apple to an extent again. It's not an absolute disaster that was pre 16th gen (if that's what they're called) .
Honor, ASUS, and HP are the first to ship laptops powered by Intel Wildcat Lake CPUs
Considering this is an article about shipping notebooks, the lack of product photos is astonishing.
Costing about the same? $700? That is still more than I'd want to pay for those. Am I just cheap? Is that what laptops cost now?
.... Read the news occasionally
I guess I need to. My last laptop came with Vista.
It needs double the ram to run the terrible OS it comes with.
Apple with some exceptions has the drivers and hardware sorted out pretty solidly, and they seem to have better memory management than windows; factor in the target market and the BOM cost and Apple is simply going to win this segment if they choose to continue to participate.
Computing like it's 2015 again, nice. But at least it's like some random apple product
I said it at the time, Apple is making bank on the Neo, the BOM must be ~$250 at worst.
I mean they built it around chips that otherwise would have been trash so....
(chips with a defect but still quite usable just not up to snuff for what was attempting to be made)
I know the market is fucked due to many reason but can’t wait for these to come out to do a solid low power proxmox mini pc running my homelab for my house. That arc on U7 or U9 series 3 will be long term overkill for emulators and jellyfin. Might get a second one for steam, done with the whole eGPU, I’m fine with decent 1080p, just want to play.
