Re: N900 Hardware
 

It turned into a physics topic :D

What I originally meant is:
Do you think that the current hardware will be strong enough in order to deal with high requirements applications, like running a high requirements desktop environments and demanding softwares as open office, a web browser, etc simultaneously?

The experienced developers and users of n8x0 might know. Please answer.

Re: N900 Hardware
 

If my memory serves me well, one of the reason of the current 600 Mhz cap is to avoid frying the processor. On one slide of the Maemo Summit there was a prevention to developers about that.

Re: N900 Hardware
 

I think it will, as long as they are tailored to the platform. If desktop applications are just dumped on the N900, the differences in interface (screen size, input method, etc) and power use could make a bad experience.

FWIW, from some raw comparisons here and there, the Cortex chip in the N900 should be very roughly equivalent to one of the earlier Intel Atoms. More physical RAM can't be added, and I am not sure if we can manually add more swap passing the 1Gb default, or if the system can address it properly.

Re: N900 Hardware
 

http://wiki.maemo.org/Easy_Debian
"You need to keep your expectations reasonable. Big desktop applications like OpenOffice and Firefox run slowly on the tablet. They are designed for big, power-hungry CPUs."

Even though the N900 is much more powerful than the previous tablets, the point is still valid. And why on earth would you want to run a desktop environment designed for desktop computers on it?

Re: N900 Hardware
 

How does the N900 arm processor fair against the 1GHz Snapdragon™ processor?

Re: N900 Hardware
 

clock for clock they should be very comparable in raw processing as they are both based on the ARM cortex a8 I believe. At least, that's what I gather from this:
http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/14/c...ehind-android/

Re: N900 Hardware
 

mrojas, thank you very much for answering!
Do you find the 768 mb virtual memory useful and influencive?

That's where all the fun begins! ;)
Just joking. I find the desktop environments (LXDE for example) more usable sometimes. Besides it's much more cool! :D

Thank you for your answers, it's realy helping a lot.

Re: N900 Hardware
 

Anybody who is following the current CPU technology should know that the processors keep getting efficient and faster by the day, but the batteries ain't catching up that fast. To have a usable portable system all the factors (CPU, Battery, Heat, Form Factor etc..) should be considered, sure you can put a GHz CPU inside a full solid aluminum chassis and a huge battery but will it be marketable? I believe the N900 is powered well enough for what it is expected to achieve by most of the users.

Re: N900 Hardware
 

Of course. The reason it multi-tasks so well is because it has the swap. Since the swap is flash based, it is quite fast too (but slower than the RAM).

Precisely one of the reasons why the iPhone doesn't multi-task natively is because it would run out of memory soon (as stated by one Apple developer). So I am guessing other mobile operating systems will add swap soon too, following the cue from Maemo, thus allowing better multi-tasking and "out of memory" errors.

Re: N900 Hardware
 

@mrojas, I have experienced a lot of failures based on flash degradation on various smartphones utilizing flash for storage of vital system information (not removable flash). But since Maemo is Linux, I was wondering if such a scenario happens, can we partition a µSD with a swap and configure Maemo to use that partition (will be slower, but could work right?)