4 ms·

Nvidia prefers Windows CE over Android for netbooks

9 points by shoomery 17y ago

sadiq 17y ago
Wow, Nvidia's guy is really full of crap. "The world soundly rejected the first netbooks that came out with Linux," he said. "Printers didn't work, and devices didn't get recognized. The whole thing was a mess." So their master plan is to ship Windows CE? An OS with even fewer drivers? I'm also not sure where he got the "soundly rejected" from. The first generation Linux-based Asus Eee were sold out for months here in the UK. I'm also not entirely convinced on Android on a netbook. I own a G1 and absolutely adore it but while it's a great fit for the size of the screen and capabilities of the phone, i'm not sure i'd want the same thing on a 10" screen.
ajross 17y ago
It's all just FUD, sadly. They need the MS cooperation to get the sale, and MS wants something back. So the business guys cooperate on a technical-sounding press release. Boring. I counted only two technical points in the article. The first is that Android's icons are too big (?!). The second is that "all video and graphics rendering in Android is done today by the operating system's Java code", which just plain incorrect. Edit: I should probably elaborate. Android on the G1, at least, does video decoding using the Qualcomm DSP cores on the chip. 3D work has access to an ATI-based OpenGL ES 1.1 part, with relatively good texturing performance. The media frameworks are in C++, and available to native code. Only the UI library and top-level application framework is Java/Dalvik.
- wmf 17y ago
  "all video and graphics rendering in Android is done today by the operating system's Java code", which just plain incorrect. NVidia is saying that on Tegra the rendering is done in software because NVidia hasn't written a Linux 3D driver. Clearly that isn't Android's fault. I wonder how many months or years it will take to get the driver written.
  - ajross 17y ago
    The port of their windows Geforce driver to linux was reported to have taken a few months. As I understand it, they're still maintained from the same tree and share essentially all code but the minimum necessary glue (much to the annoyance of the linux kernel folks, it should be added). Tegra is, no doubt, based on the same hardware components they're shipping in their other products; and its driver is surely similarly portable. This isn't a technical point, it's just FUD.
chaostheory 17y ago
not sure how smart it is to favor a proprietary OS, that increases costs for device manufacturers, when the world economy is in a downturn
- rbanffy 17y ago
  It's a good idea if it makes your competition follow what you say while you do something else.
  - chaostheory 17y ago
    I don't see Intel biting; they're too in love with Linux
    - rbanffy 17y ago
      No shareholder can fault the guy for not trying...
    - rbanffy 17y ago
      When companies act insane like this it's usually to ward off threats. I wonder if it's that they supply their chips to Microsoft for their newer Zune thingies of because they want to sweeten any deal with Intel regarding their patent disputes. I also wonder if it is not the same mechanism we saw in action with Asus a couple days ago.
chanux 17y ago
First they ignore you...
ilyak 17y ago
Windows CE on a netbook downsides: - No software that can work more than on 800x480, also every program thinks it's on a tiny touch-screen, full-sized, with two control buttons. - No drivers. Maybe USB storage would work. No serial cables, no webcams, forget all of that. Irony: I doubt there's a Host ActiveSync, so no Windows CE smartphones syncing. - Operating system sucks, therefore everybody beefs it up with proprietary "shells". - The only descent browser, costs 30$. upsides: - It's Windows, so tehre should be PROFIT!
wmf 17y ago
I don't understand the Android netbook meme at all. Moblin seems to make much more sense since it was actually designed for netbooks.
- rbanffy 17y ago
  Well... I love Ubuntu on my Aspire One. That said, it's a dual-threading 32 bit CPU with 1.5 gigabytes of RAM and a slow, but spacious, 160 GB hard disk. This was good for a beefy server a couple years ago.
rbanffy 17y ago
I can understand Nvidia's position. It was either endorsing CE or losing support in future versions of Windows...

9 points by shoomery 17y ago

sadiq 17y ago

Wow, Nvidia's guy is really full of crap. "The world soundly rejected the first netbooks that came out with Linux," he said. "Printers didn't work, and devices didn't get recognized. The whole thing was a mess." So their master plan is to ship Windows CE? An OS with even fewer drivers? I'm also not sure where he got the "soundly rejected" from. The first generation Linux-based Asus Eee were sold out for months here in the UK. I'm also not entirely convinced on Android on a netbook. I own a G1 and absolutely adore it but while it's a great fit for the size of the screen and capabilities of the phone, i'm not sure i'd want the same thing on a 10" screen.

ajross 17y ago

It's all just FUD, sadly. They need the MS cooperation to get the sale, and MS wants something back. So the business guys cooperate on a technical-sounding press release. Boring. I counted only two technical points in the article. The first is that Android's icons are too big (?!). The second is that "all video and graphics rendering in Android is done today by the operating system's Java code", which just plain incorrect. Edit: I should probably elaborate. Android on the G1, at least, does video decoding using the Qualcomm DSP cores on the chip. 3D work has access to an ATI-based OpenGL ES 1.1 part, with relatively good texturing performance. The media frameworks are in C++, and available to native code. Only the UI library and top-level application framework is Java/Dalvik.

wmf 17y ago
"all video and graphics rendering in Android is done today by the operating system's Java code", which just plain incorrect. NVidia is saying that on Tegra the rendering is done in software because NVidia hasn't written a Linux 3D driver. Clearly that isn't Android's fault. I wonder how many months or years it will take to get the driver written.
- ajross 17y ago
  The port of their windows Geforce driver to linux was reported to have taken a few months. As I understand it, they're still maintained from the same tree and share essentially all code but the minimum necessary glue (much to the annoyance of the linux kernel folks, it should be added). Tegra is, no doubt, based on the same hardware components they're shipping in their other products; and its driver is surely similarly portable. This isn't a technical point, it's just FUD.

chaostheory 17y ago

not sure how smart it is to favor a proprietary OS, that increases costs for device manufacturers, when the world economy is in a downturn

rbanffy 17y ago
It's a good idea if it makes your competition follow what you say while you do something else.
- chaostheory 17y ago
  I don't see Intel biting; they're too in love with Linux
  - rbanffy 17y ago
    No shareholder can fault the guy for not trying...
  - rbanffy 17y ago
    When companies act insane like this it's usually to ward off threats. I wonder if it's that they supply their chips to Microsoft for their newer Zune thingies of because they want to sweeten any deal with Intel regarding their patent disputes. I also wonder if it is not the same mechanism we saw in action with Asus a couple days ago.

chanux 17y ago

First they ignore you...

ilyak 17y ago

Windows CE on a netbook downsides: - No software that can work more than on 800x480, also every program thinks it's on a tiny touch-screen, full-sized, with two control buttons. - No drivers. Maybe USB storage would work. No serial cables, no webcams, forget all of that. Irony: I doubt there's a Host ActiveSync, so no Windows CE smartphones syncing. - Operating system sucks, therefore everybody beefs it up with proprietary "shells". - The only descent browser, costs 30$. upsides: - It's Windows, so tehre should be PROFIT!

wmf 17y ago

I don't understand the Android netbook meme at all. Moblin seems to make much more sense since it was actually designed for netbooks.

rbanffy 17y ago
Well... I love Ubuntu on my Aspire One. That said, it's a dual-threading 32 bit CPU with 1.5 gigabytes of RAM and a slow, but spacious, 160 GB hard disk. This was good for a beefy server a couple years ago.

rbanffy 17y ago

I can understand Nvidia's position. It was either endorsing CE or losing support in future versions of Windows...