It's yummy. But you can't eat it!


Actually, the much higher price is mostly because of stuff like the removable battery and for using a keymat instead of mini-click-smartphone keys:
It saves A LOT of money in mold production and is also a lot faster.
And they have one unified keyboard area, so basicly only one hole for the entire Keyboard instead of separate holes for each key. Thism akes this case part alot easier to mold. I wonder how these buttons are held in place or which technic they use for their keys. Must be a reason why they don't have lit keys.
 
Nah, in my opinion, I´d keep the thread like that, it is history and while we are not quite addressing the real topic, the gpd win concern has been evoluting and I find amusing to read and check everyone´s opinions.
It is part of the show/history. Merged threads are horrible to go about and I simply skip them all, I don´t know if anyone else ever goes to the trouble reading huge merged threads that make no sense, so I feel the mods may have a lot of work for nothing.

Yep Christoph.Krn, only a new news thread can solve this, but I don´t think it needs to be solved, I like the way it is.
 
I would not mind a lower battery life for more ram. What is required in ram is growing at quite a rate so it would be nice to be a bit more future proof in the memory department. None the less the Pyra looks amazing either way.
 
...
On the other hand, were the topics neatly organized....
I think a fully perfect organized forum is an impossible deed. Disorganizations like this are lovely, it shows people concerns above the forum rules, the majority here discussing are not new users.

edit: Also, about the memory concern, is it upgradable too like the cpu? If not, 4 I think may be the call.
 
You should be careful not to oversimplify when throwing in technology nodes, these values only describe the ability of the lithography technique used and only have an indirect connection to the actual circuit elements that they form - and a rather small influence on the overall power efficiency by themselves. There are tons of other aspects aside from the basic architectural design that influence such things - even the manufacturing process itself has a large impact on the efficiency, because it has a huge influence on the electrical properties of the transistors. We have long reached the point where whole transistors can't shrink any further, nowadays people are looking for ways to pack and construct them better instead.

I think we must simplify so all common people can understand (not all people knows about this questions). And we must simplify so we don't write too much big text.

¿Small influence? Not only this Atom x5 has 4 times smaller transistors, so even it uses <strong>Tri-gate process</strong> -Intel is very good in silicon manufacturing process/techniques- . Obviously I don't expect those refinements in much old TI OMAP5. Of course this SOC can have much more transistors (for example a big cache has a lot of transistors).

For me it is clear: although I don't like x86 architecture this Atom x5 is a much powerful/modern/advanced product than TI OMAP5.

About heat: under the same source code, same SO, same cores, I bet Atom will be more efficient. Under full load it may be other question as Atom can be bigger (smaller and more advanced transistors, but much bigger transistor count for 4 cores and, in comparison, big cache).
Of course tests in real hard are needed to know how they perform in reality.

About "the point where whole transistors can't shrink any further": we are near, but they have at least 2 more size reductions.

PD: When I say I don't like x86, and I like ARM, I say it from a assembly programmer perspective, as I suffered x86 :D (when assembly was still used). It was a really bad design in its origin and even Intel didn't plan to continue with it, bit its other project (an OO processor was a market flop, and IBM saved Intel selecting 8088 for IBM PC).
 
The ram is on the cpu board, so a cpu upgrade can be a ram update at the same time.

I didn´t know about this, so much info going on...is it on the pyra specs page? (no, I click on the pyra tab and no word about that, then on tech specs, no word about that either, not even stuff about the cpu board)
This is just so super superb and awesome and it renders concerns about memory size irrelevant to me at this point.

As with Ed news and videos, I think that part on this site should instantly reflect changes and features.
That would be nice for new users.
 
Just a quick addition to the memory:
Memory needs power. Quite a bit of it.

Each DRAM we have on the Pyra eats 200mW, and we got 4, so that's 800mW just for the memory.
I wouldn't want to double the usage, I hope we can even disable half of the memory to save power, as for me, 1GB should be good enough in most cases.

It shouldn't work that way... DRAMs consume the most power when accessed heavily, not when they're idle. When idle they only have to be refreshed occasionally to keep charge and these days that refresh can happen internally on the DRAM chip. Doubling the capacity doesn't come anywhere close to doubling the power consumption unless you also double the width so the extra DRAMs are all being operated at the same time.

Plus being able to use LPDDR3 helps with power consumption so it's not going to be as bad as with DDR3L.
 
I would not mind a lower battery life for more ram. What is required in ram is growing at quite a rate so it would be nice to be a bit more future proof in the memory department. None the less the Pyra looks amazing either way.
Only because of growing overheads in Windows and Android afaik. It's not really the case with a proper Linux.
The OpenPandora has 256MB (!) and runs fine, giving it ten times as much should cover most use cases.
My main Linux Mint desktop system has 4GB (slow) RAM.

If 4GB wouldn't really impact the energy consumption, I'd say go for it, if it did I'd say rather not since we all want a long battery life.
Since it's on the swappable board anyway it could be enhanced in the long run anyway if needed though.
 
The more RAM will be needed when it comes to browsing (especially YouTube), using Pyra as a desktop with external monitor keyboard and mouse in example.

With the current SoC - OMAP5, I think 2GB will be the sweet spot.
If there is any future x86 or more modern ARM daughter board, for sure they will have an option for 4 or even 8GB of more energy efficient memory.
 
The biggest memory bloat is in browsers
I would argue that it's not so much bloat in browsers as it is increases in how the web is used. Used to be you'd get a static page with some images; now your page has animated menus and fancy hyperlinks, and half the page is tracking information. All of that needs to be stored and processed: the browsers aren't becoming more bloated, it's the "software" that the browsers are loading.
 
I would argue that it's not so much bloat in browsers as it is increases in how the web is used. Used to be you'd get a static page with some images; now your page has animated menus and fancy hyperlinks, and half the page is tracking information. All of that needs to be stored and processed: the browsers aren't becoming more bloated, it's the "software" that the browsers are loading.
The modern web is pretty disgusting tbh...
I'm still scratching my head in the resurgence of animated GIFs...
 
I would argue that it's not so much bloat in browsers as it is increases in how the web is used. Used to be you'd get a static page with some images; now your page has animated menus and fancy hyperlinks, and half the page is tracking information. All of that needs to be stored and processed: the browsers aren't becoming more bloated, it's the "software" that the browsers are loading.
100% agree. it seams like the last 5 years websites has just gotten bloated as hell and yet I feel like they aren't doing anything new really.
 
I would argue that it's not so much bloat in browsers as it is increases in how the web is used. Used to be you'd get a static page with some images; now your page has animated menus and fancy hyperlinks, and half the page is tracking information. All of that needs to be stored and processed: the browsers aren't becoming more bloated, it's the "software" that the browsers are loading.

Don't forget all the Add- and Track-blocking software you need to install as an add-on.
 
Use noscript and it adds to your add blocking capability while eliminating many trackers (provided you block their scripts and cookies) while reducing RAM costs dramatically and making more efficient use of your bandwidth. It's got a bit of a learning curve to get used to I guess, but it easily saves more RAM than it uses on many modern sites.

FWIW, I've only noticed one website (El Reg) where ads properly degrade to low palette GIFs if you block the advertiser's scripts. It's a shame more advertisers don't do that (for the advertisers), as I don't really mind that sort of advert. I don't object to advertising, which is why I haven't istalled Adblock, I just object to advertisers taking excessive CPU cycles I'm paying for to sell me stuff. And it turns out it also tends to block a lot of the advertising malware which is apparently out there at the moment on the big sites.
 
I use uBlock origin, ghostery, Cooie Controller, Better Privacy, HTTPS everywhere, Disconnect, Lightbeam and some Facebook Blocker.
That should do the job. I don't care about RAM usage on my Laptop.

No script messes up too much for my taste.

BTW, uBlock origin has a great advantage over Adblock Plus: Cosmetic Filter.
If there is an annoying overlay or "beware, it's at your own Risk" warning sinply right-click on it and delete it.
It's the best blocking feature I've seen so far as you can block any web element you want.
 
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