ARM Architecture

GNB showcased this netbook reviewed by Sascha for Netbook News at COMPUTEX 2009. The GNB GL 750 is a very small netbook with a 7" (800x480 pixel) non-glossy touchscreen display and weighs a mere 1.5 lbs (680 grams).

The GL 750 netbook is powered by an ARM-based 533MHz Freescale i.MX31 processor, comes with 128 or 256MB RAM, up to 8GB SSD, 3 USB 2.0 ports, Ethernet connector, microphone and headphone jacks, and a 4-in-1 card reader. Sascha estimates a battery life of up to 2.5 hours.

The Mtube II is a combination of netbook and tablet PC running Windows XP in netbook and Google Android in tablet mode. Apart from the unfortunate netbook operating system choice, this is an interesting concept to serve multiple usage scenarios from a hardware point of view.

To switch the laptop into an ARM processor based touch-enabled tablet PC you pull off the screen, preferably using both hands, as JKK reveals its not that easy using just one hand.

Nicolas from Tech Video Blog browses various Web sites on a Snapdragon-based netbook by Compal running Google Android in this video from COMPUTEX 2009. Most of the sites are loaded and rendered pretty quickly in about 2 to 3 seconds over HSDPS.

Low-end ARM-based netbooks or Smartbooks seem to be a hot trend at COMPUTEX 2009. The Wistron N900z is one such device powered by Freescale's i.MX515 multimedia applications processor. The device introduced in Netbook News's video has an 800 MHz processor, 4GB SSD, Ethernet connector, 4-in-1 card reader, 2 USB ports, and a 3G module.

Whether a mobile computer with a 11.6" screen is still a netbook or rather a subnotebook is a question one can argue or just don't care about. Qualcomm calls this device Smartbook to bring in another designation, but what's way more interesting is that it's powered by the ARM-based Snapdragon processor and runs the Android operating system, which is built on top of the Linux kernel.