ARM-Based Pegatron Netbook Protoype

Pegatron, a spin-off from ASUS, has been showing a Netbook powered an ARM processor around. This particular model uses an ARM Cortex-A8 design found in a host of gadgets, including the Palm Pre (same design, but not the exact same chip). Running at a 1Ghz frequency, it is capable of playing 720p video and run basic 3D applications. While Android isn’t ready for Netbooks yet, this Pegatron runs Ubuntu (Linux) just fine.

According to Pegatron, the battery life ranges from 4.5 to 8 hours on a 2-Cell battery, which might sound like a lot, except that we have no idea about what it was doing. Was the display on? What is doing anything? Because Nvidia claims that its ARM platform can run for *days* while decoding audio, so we’ll need some kind of common benchmark here. With this category of Netbooks, the display will be the primary power drain anyway.

Still, the idea is gathering strength: quite a few people are pushing it, including Qualcomm, NVIDIA and Texas Instrument. Now the question is: can Linux Arm-laptops overcome the rejection that awaited their Intel-based counterparts? Without a significant change in the software+application line up, we doubt it. [Photo from Trustedreviews]