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Hm.. $50 netbook (per slashdot via "justdeals" on ebay)

Just so you're aware, that's a 300mhz Arm 3, which is to say the raspberry Pi is more capable. They're a cute toy if you know what they are going in, but they aren't necessarily useful with the OS it comes with.
 
Good to know, 300Mhz Arm is slower than have the PDAs that are in the trash at your local recyclers. Regarding the tablet comments (and yeah them might be fightin words j/k) to me to take over or shut out the need for a computer it would need to perform and do what the computer can do. i.e. software. Just like my personal distaste actually for the "netbook" or ultra slim systems that are slim because they took out all drives and now you sit there with 3 external devices and cables hanging off the system and taking up more desk space than a desktop and CRT.

However, add TV out and some video streaming ability and it would be a vast improvement. Similarly to Wii-U coming out soon have a remote video receiver or something and you could use it as an interactive remote control type of interface for your tv or perhaps game system. But ultimately I like the solid feel of a keyboard vs smudging up and missing the virtual keyboard that seems slow to type on and slow to respond.

I'm not the majority though and I think the market and kids who blow their newly earned or parents newly earned money drive the mass production. If the kids are happy with $600 phones that don't work after 2 years and have no keyboard then that's what the makers will follow. I like the semi-computer like phones (HTC) with the slide out keyboard personally (assuming the keys aren't blackberry/palm sized). However as much as I like that series and I do continue to find them here and there they definitely seem to crap out after 3 years and no longer function right (screen doesn't respond, keys don't respond, phone shortcuts for whatever reason don't seem to work anymore, etc). Not a perfect market at all.
 
Maybe you should look at the Motorola Photon. As a phone, it's not much different from what HTC has to offer, it's the accessories that make the difference. The Lapdock 100 makes it into a netbook, the HD station turns it into a sort of desktop. (it's a box with HDMI and 3 USB ports. You can use it with a HDTV or adapt it to a monitor. The USB ports will take keyboards, mice, and FAT32 drives.) The phone has a full featured version of Firefox in webtop mode (lapdock or HD station) and Hulu works at 288p with a 3G signal. (The commercials are 1080p, so they stutter) And Sprint considers the lapdock and HD station to be accessories, so you still get unlimited internet use even when it's plugged into the TV, instead of the 5GB limit you would get being tethered or as a wireless hotspot. It's not going to run Quake (I tried) but Angry Birds on a 40" TV is kinda cool. :)
 
I never realized this had a 300 MHz ARM, I just got my brother a PDA for $6 at a thrift store with a 300 MHz Intel XScale PXA255.

Just the irony behind a 2003 PDA and this newish device having similar processors.
 
That thing doesn't really count as a netbook, it's powered by an ARM processor. I think to most people, "netbook" implies one of the cheap ~$200 ones that have an x86 chip (usually the Intel Atom)... I don't see x86 netbooks going anywhere for a while, they are very handy machines that are very affordable.

To me, there was only one netBook: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_netBook
 
I never realized this had a 300 MHz ARM, I just got my brother a PDA for $6 at a thrift store with a 300 MHz Intel XScale PXA255.

Just the irony behind a 2003 PDA and this newish device having similar processors.

Yeah, Intel produced ARM chips for a while, the XScale was a good one (lots of performance / Hz, for example), and used in my Palm Tungsten T3 PDA - at 400MHz I believe. Then Intel sold off XScale to their XScale partner Marvell, well actually only the PXA part of it - but I don't know that Intel makes any use of their other XScale models anymore. It's kind of ironic that the number of ARM CPUs sold per year is nearly 3 times as high as the number of Intel CPUs.. at least a couple of years ago or so the annual ARM CPU sale was more than 3 billion.

-Tor
 
I've got a Dell Axim pocket PC with a 625 MHz Intel XScale. It's actually a pretty capable little computer. It's got WinMo 2003, and I can play 320x240 (and probably larger) MPEG-4 videos full speed as well as emulate NES games on it.
 
Yes, the PalmOS 5-running T3 can run all the videos I've thrown at it (with on-the-fly scaling!) at 320x480. That particular piece of software (TCPMP) is actually native ARM code (the important parts anyway), but almost every other PalmOS 5 application is MC68K code running through the MC68K->ARM on the fly compiler, and it's fast enough that only a few special applications had to be written in native ARM code.

-Tor
 
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