2 weeks ago
Way back last year sometime ASUS chairman Jonney Shih was a little hesistant about ARM powered smartbooks. Fast forward towards the end of last year and the man expressed they wouldn’t be releasing any smartbooks in the near future. Forward again to early this year and we hear yet again that ASUS is still undecided on whether or not to actually release a smartbook. The OS has been the main reason as always. No Windows XP/7 OSes on smartbooks.
They’ve got smartbooks with their labs with Google Android and Chrome OS but they are still unsure of which OS to go for. Android is more for phones with small screens, but should be ready earlier while Google Chrome OS is designed for bigger displays but won’t be ready to the end of this year.
If those are the only two OS choices they are considering, well, I can’t blame them. The desktop version of Android is far from finished and Google Chrome OS won’t even be out till the end of this year. Both OSes deviate from the normal OS functionality. They should just go with Ubuntu or modify an existing Linux OS like Lenovo has done with the SkyLight OS for their smartbook and hybrid slate / notebook coming later this year.
Source: ZDNet
Thing is there is no buzz in the media or consumer circles for linux distros like Ubuntu/skylight etc.
Google has an important feather in its cap with media awareness of its platforms even if they aren’t mature yet.
Outside of Apples Arm version of OSX, Google’s Android is the only real chance Arm has of getting a toehold in the general computing market again. Unless Google is hiding something with ChromeOS I dont think it will be sufficient enough (internet tablets maybe) for smartbooks.
There is a potential dark horse and that is Palms WebOS which is more polished than Android but again designed for phones still its rather unlikely unless things really take a turn for the worse at Palm they would sanction it being sold on smartbooks.