ARM’s director of mobile solutions Rob Coombs recently said: “In the future, we’re going to be in Netbooks”… “Expect announcements in the next few months”. That’s a somewhat surprising move, as ARM is strong in small devices, thanks to its performance-per-watt ratio. In netbooks, more power is needed and it has to be seen how good ARM is going to be against Intel’s Atom. Intel has recently stepped up the rhetoric against ARM.
It is likely that an ARM netbook would run on Linux, as Windows XP and Vista do not support ARM processors right now. However, Windows CE and Mobile Mac OS do support ARM. Let’s wait and see, but right now we place our bets on a small nettop that runs Linux.
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