[NTLUG:Discuss] For those that were at the Mobilin presentation....

[Chris Cox]

Read VERY carefully what Intel is saying here:

http://www.zdnetasia.com/insight/communications/0,39044835,62058293,00.htm?scid=rss_z_eti

As you can see Intel is trying VERY, VERY hard to
make sure that a netbook is NOT confused with a notebook.
(that is, make sure that a netbook is constrained)

Anyway... just remember where you heard it first!!

Summary:

1. Use Moblin on netbooks because is has our fancy
APPLICATION. (in case you don't know, an application
can run on any Linux distro)

In Intel's words:
"There are a lot of things that we've done with Moblin that are fairly
cutting edge, such as social-networking integration.
 We created the infrastructure that lets you very easily integrate
streams from all the social networks with simple [application
programming interfaces] and then be able to allow the user, in an
integrated way, to update their status and so on. Moblin also boots in
five seconds."

2. Do not run a generic Linux distro on the netbook,
those are for notebooks.  The Moblin platform
focuses the netbook strictly on what matters to
the end user.

In Intel's words: 
"It's different from a PC in one key aspect at least: a netbook is
primarily a consumption device. It's great for browsing, playing your
media, viewing documents and so on. People tend not to use a netbook to
create content."

3. Windows 7 is an excellent choice for a netbook
because it's a full OS and M$ paid us a lot of money
to say that!

In Intel's words:
"Windows 7 is a great platform for netbooks and we worked very closely
with Microsoft on optimizing the Windows 7 OS to our platforms."

For the pro-Intel folks out there... PLEASE try Moblin.  If you
think it's the greatest thing for netbooks.. fine.  My own
testing shows that a Linux distro based netbook competes very
well with Pentium-M class machinery of only 4 years ago.  IMHO,
the idea of making the netbook into more or less a contrained
appliance is just Intel's way of trying to preserve the higher
margin notebook/laptop product lines.

I found Intel's Moblin to be ok (not great, BUT just OK) for
some social networking (you HAVE to have accounts on the social
networks THEY support, e.g. twitter), and web browsing stuff.

IMHO, Intel definitely has an agenda on how we should view the
netbook.

Regards,
Chris