On 2003-02-21 mattias@beauty.se wrote:

> Matthew Orgass <darkstar@city-net.com> wrote:
> >   Not counting the lack of floating point, it is likely to be about half
> > the speed of the p133, although the difference can depend a great deal on
> > how the program is written.
>
> does this mean i won't be able to play mp3's, even with the mad player
> which uses integer math only? this is really the only cpu intensive task i
> will be running. by the way one of my netbsd boxes is a 16 mhz 68030 mac
> without fpu, so i'm fairly used to not having much speed. :-)

  I don't know about the mp3s, since I've never tried any or looked at how
much work is involved in decoding.  I wonder if NetBSD supports any USB
mp3 decoders, which would be an especially attractive option since the
built in audio sucks on all of the models I've seen (don't know about the
MobilePro).  Or maybe just use a standalone mp3 player; they don't seem to
be that expensive.

> > It sounds like you may really want a small notebook.
>
> you might be right, but apart from the size the battery life and the silent
> operation makes me want to give this a try, not to mention how cool it is
> to follow and perhaps even contribute to the kernel development on a more
> mysterious and "immature" architechture. i'll start scanning ebay right
> away.

  :).  I forgot about the silent operation, even though that is probably
my favorite feature.  Once you get used to it you may not be able to stand
a notebook or desktop system any more :).  (I got isolating headphones to
help with this problem :) ).

Matthew Orgass
darkstar@city-net.com