new laptops

[cast-fish]

Hello

love what they are doing with chips now.

http://armdevices.net/category/chip-provider/via/

That laptop above is 14 times cheaper than a MACBOOK AIR...but in some senses even cooler. THe battery last ages and the design is so nice. (99 USA dollars for that laptop).

They are pretty fast laptops runing android 4.2.2. jellybean. They have all the bells and whistles and can also run a full complete free LINUX operating system like Ubuntu which is nice.

They can also run "Chrome OS" by google.

Vince.

[curaga]

Agreed, a MBA clone with those specs for ~100$ is a great deal. May just have to consider buying one

Now if it only came with 2gb RAM and a usable keyboard, I dislike the US layout.

[cast-fish]

ye Curaga

these are a great deal for variuos reasons.

The 1gb of ram is enough you know.  When you have a multi core cpu driving away in the
background with android.  The mali gpu is infact DUAL CORE according to the wondermedia
wiki page.

There are many reasons these laptops are good......price ofcourse...

it's ****18 ****** times cheaper than what we pay for a MacBook Air in the UK


also there will be an Ubuntu linux for it at some point...i imagine.  Windows Embedded 7 works on it and Chromium and CHrome OS...

but this chip is not bad. THe Mali gpu should be able to drive that screen no problem...since it's more powerful than the GPU inside ipad 2's and they have retina screens which is higher DPI..
(although granted...they are NOT 13.3 inches......although i have heard some rumours about new
ipads with retina having graphics problems playing some 3D games.....)

but yes......another point with these laptops is battery life is not bad at all....no moving parts...no heat....and such like HDMI out also. Bluetoothe also

But the major new thing is that STOCK android has become "multi windowed' now so you can run
several APPS on the desktop at the same time (inside personal resizable windows of their own)
SO the android desktop experience is very much like windows and OSX now.
Android is also a multi tasking OS....where-as iOS is not.

This means android can drive several apps at the same time....by multi tasking...(iOS cant really do this at all)

Android itself is also multi core....and uses multi core chips nicely.

So yes, you can get a reasonable desktop computing experience from this device in next to no time.

THe free APP for doing "multi windowed android" is called "PORTAL" in the store. You combine it with 2 other free apps called  "xhalofloatingWINDOW|" and the "xposedFRAMEWORK"........all of this takes about 2 minutes to set up and is free.

People don't realize what android is capable of now. IT's a direct replacement for the other big
players and it's so CHEAP

here is the laptop with free shipping i think

[ Deleted Commercial Link ]

remember also...there are oceans of tools to ramp up performance of android hardware.  I mean
the to say.  Also tonnes of other tools.  IT's really an excellent computing experience.

the irony is that this is quite a capable little computing device.....90 percent of Mac owners
would get 90 percent of their work done on this.....so very few MAC owners actually ever needed
a mac at all.


i mean here is just ONE example.....this laptop combined with the 4 dollar app called AUDIO EVOLUTION and the 4 dollar app for Professional USB connection to Professional USB sound cards.

this SET UP alone makes this laptop intoca seriuos music studio..... something that other people are paying 2000 dollars for on Mac....and more.

Vince.

(i mean there are hindreds of examples like above)

[curaga]

The 1gb of ram is enough you know.  When you have a multi core cpu driving away in the
background with android. 

Android? I would of course ditch Android as the first step and install a real Linux. 2GB of RAM is supported according to the chip specs, so it would just need to be installed by the OEM.

[cast-fish]

ye true...it has space for more ram.

there is already Linux distros for some of the wondermedia SoC's....the wm8050 and some others
but i didn't find a distro for the wm8880

there is a bit of a dark area about this chip....according to the wikipedia page of wondermedia its got, among other things, a dual core mali 400 gpu.........but i have seen android tablets with this chip run benchmarking tools from the google play store and they report back a single core mali 400?........wierd...(Mali 400 MP2) means dual core....(MP4) means quad....(nothing there means SINGLE)


Vince.

[cast-fish]

i checked sbout this chip and the GPU

unless VIA make huge misstakes in their conference presentations to thousands of people
in the industry...then this chip does indeed contain a dual core mali 400 gpu

it's a nice chip really...they run at 1.5 ghz cpu cores....which is a lot faster than other brands
of chip

V

[cast-fish]

Hello

sorry sometimes my post is long.

Next week the new Samsung chromebook comes out. It is an 8 core cpu with a special graphics
gpu which is likely as fast as a mali quad gpu also. 

Lovely ultrabook with a price at just 250 to 299 us $.   It is customized whereby all 8 cores can
be selected to work at the same time on any type of computing tasks. (or you can select the mode of 4 hard workers for heavy tasks...while 4 lightweight workers over-ride the heavy's for certain lighter weight tasks) constantly switching back and forth.  (Heavy quad....Light quad) per performance needed

That is the understanding.

Initially the chip had only been quad A or quad B. It was not capable of Octa core processing all at the same time. But some update to the technology has allowed for true octa cpu processing.

Vince.

[funtikar]

The 1gb of ram is enough you know.  When you have a multi core cpu driving away in the
background with android. 

Android? I would of course ditch Android as the first step and install a real Linux. 2GB of RAM is supported according to the chip specs, so it would just need to be installed by the OEM.

this, I used to be very much like cast-fish until I actually used android as a desktop pc. Sure all the alt-tabbing,copy-pasting,multitasking are there but its really poorly integrated for a mouse and keyboard setup, its hit or miss most of the time. I love android on touchscreen obviously.

[cast-fish]

i never head that. Just the oppossite really..... 90 percent of Android Desktop users report its
a better experience than a Msoft machine at fractions of the cost. That's even without those people running Android in "multi windowed" support too. Also the hitching into large HD screens is a cool android feature (not all Msoft ultrabooks can do this)

The thing to also note is that Linux can be installed onto just about any android device in 2 clicks
using the "CHROOT" method and free store tools like  "Complete linux installer" just as long as your
android kernel supports "Looped devices". 

So it's very easy to get cheap powerful Android devices running a Linux right alongside the currently running Android....which is, infact, very useful.

Those laptops are 18 times cheaper than a Mac book Air in the UK.  (i try to remember that)


V

[funtikar]

I'm using a 9inch rebranded MID WM8880 tablet as my current desktop, the speed is decent once you oc it to above 1ghz, but in terms of performance it still lags in stuff like browsing but only if open many tabs ,not surprising since this thing only has 512mb ram, 1gb ram would have made a big difference. I was able to get swap, but there was either no effect or its too slow, in antutu benchmark, the storage i/o scores mostly half compared to other mainstream tablet brand, it doesn't  support fstrim too. Its NAND storage is basically a big bottleneck. 

[cast-fish]

nice

yes i have seen those wm8880 tablets. They did only come with 512 yes....

i wonder how you oc'd it?.....is that easy?

the cpu is a cortex a9 dual core and is supposed to go up tp 1.5 per core right?

Vin

[funtikar]

it's very easy given the fact that its pre-rooted. I downloaded "No frills cpu control" and ramped it up to 1.4ghz.
correct! a9 dual core up to 1.5ghz

[cast-fish]

that's great for you


yes...sorry i could not reply for so long...never saw your reply.

Yes i noticed those tablets only had 512 ram...but they were just 34.99 pounds in the uk. A great deal
compared to an ipad. (They have sinve been overtaken and quad stuff is now that price also)

i am watching the ebay a lot and seeing throw away laptops now...people can't even give
these quality machines away.....(Since tablets took over).....you can now buy brilliant bargains on ebay
with laptops....brilliant bargains.  Most laptops contain pentium 4 (2 ghz) or above chips and all the bells
and whistles for as little as 20 dollars....yes it's a 12 year old item..... but it has been sat in an office all that while
and is in perfect condition

The laptops come under searches like "laptop for parts...not working".....so what's wrong then?...well
it does not have a hard drive cover?....or the power brick is missing.....
(new universal bricks are about 6 dollars....)....so yes it's all very well to look at lovely shiny new 8 core
Chrome books from samsung 289 dollars but do you really need anything near that for your computing
pleasure?.....(the answer is often ...no)

watch your pocket and get a bargain...Fujitsu seamens machines are very nice...

yes

V

[cast-fish]

not sure if your allowed to put a link

There is a nice "Giayee" ARM pc coming out....the P105 model


a nice box there...soon to be released .........Quad cpu and Quad  gpu  at good price  $49

Vin