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Qualcomm joins Microsoft in smartbook fantasy

Anonymous Coward

My Memory Is Failing Me... 

Didn't Qualcomm used to make lawnmowers?

Name

Snapdragon is great 

The currently available Snapdragon system-on-a-chip uses a custom 1.0-1.3 Ghz ARM processing core (ARMv7 instruction set) with a 600mhz DSP and dedicated video encode/decode logic. the CPU core is a next-generation design that uses the ARMv7 "Cortex" generation instruction set. It it said to be very similar to the standardized Cortex-A8 core, but a bit faster

Overall, the processor is similar to the highest-end Texas Instruments OMAP3 series.

The future Snapdragon that is sampling in H2/2009 is a dual-core MP CPU running both cores at 1.5Ghz. T.I.'s OMAP4 is also a dual-core Cortex-A9 architecture, though the fastest in the series runs at 1.0Ghz.

Andus McCoatover

Not Java, Pleeeth! 

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"Write Once, Run Anywhere, Fuc*king Slowly".

(What's the difference 'twixt Java's Beans and QBasic's Tokens?)

Torben Mogensen

Foleo 

Foleo failed for three reasons:

- It was over-priced

- It was under-powered.

- It was marketed as a mobile phone companion, not as a stand-alone device.

The so-called "smartbooks" are (if the hype can be believed) neither over-priced nor under-powered, and they are not intended to rely on connection to a phone.

Anonymous Coward

Dead end? 

Historical dead end like the Psion 5, but with OMAP3/4 or Snapdragon and a transreflective or PixelQi colour screen? I'd buy one...so long as I can load custom firmware.

Oliver Gold

@Snapdragon is great 

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so cut'n'paste of Qualcomm's sales blurb achieves what exactly?