Digital Home Thoughts: ARM Poised To Join Netbook Craze

"Freescale said Monday it would offer an ARM-based chip that could lead to a $200 Linux-based netbook, offering about twice the amount of usage on a single battery charge as Intel’s Atom processor allows. Freescale’s efforts are nothing new (only AMD has so far stayed above the netbook fray), but it did get me thinking about how Intel’s endless pushing of netbooks has, ironically, helped destroy the hegemony of x86 machines for personal computing."

Up until now, netbooks are powered by the x86 legacy. Gigaom notes that Freescale is looking to change that. I've seen hints of some manufacturers in China producing ARM based netbooks as well, this news might help push major manufacturers to join in. The lower power nature of ARM based CPUs is certainly welcome, I've yet to see any ARM based computing device provide a comparable browsing experience. This includes the iPhone, Nokia N810 and WinMo devices. The extra power that an x86 CPU uses, in the overall power consumption of a netbook, is more than offset by the speed at which it renders webpages. Still, I welcome the competition as I'm sure that ARM devices, netbooks or otherwise, will eventually catch up in speed to x86 netbooks.