With Lenovo introduction of Skylight comes a new chapter in the portable computing. First of all – some technical facts.
Most important detail to mention – there’s no ubiquitous Intel Atom in here. The device is powered by 1 GHz ARM CPU and runs a proprietary Linux based OS. Considering that performance is supposedly lower than that of a mainstream Atom powered netbook, the battery life, on the other hand, is going to be close to 10 hours, which is a huge bonus for a mobile device.
Ninis Samuel, consumer marketing director at Lenovo told Reuters that “There is no exposure of Linux to the customers. What we wanted to make is an interface that’s completely custom and easy to use.”
I find that even though I personally don’t agree with the implied thought that Linux’s GUIs are not user-friendly, I can’t disagree on the exposure part. What we see here is that diversity of Linux in general, specifically in the windows managers department, lack of concise documentation and absence of information on Windows alternatives all contribute to this. Furthermore, the fact that Microsoft is working closely with computer manufacturers doesn’t help either.
One thing for certain, though – as we see more variety in hardware implementations, one of the MS’s weaknesses becomes quite clear – its dependency on Intel CPUs.
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