From: Ad 

Rich wrote:
>    I don't decry the phone.  I very much like my smartphone.  It's not a
> PC replacement and not even close.  That's not to say a future one
> couldn't be closer.  What is reported below is not the phone replacing
> the PC as much as being a portable media player.  The actual article
> describes other specialty applications not the general purpose
> functionality of a PC.
>


Riiigght so you do nuclear simulations?

Most smartphones are or are approaching where my old PC/my son's win2K pc
is (PIII 500 + 256 mb of ram) at least in processor terms.

& soon they'll be quite a lot faster e.g.

http://www.arm.com/products/CPUs/ARM_Cortex-A8.html

"The ARM CortexTM-A8 processor is the first applications processor
based on the ARMv7 architecture and is the highest performance, most
power-efficient processor ever developed by ARM. With the ability to scale
in speed from 600MHz to greater than 1GHz, the Cortex-A8 processor can meet
the requirements for power-optimized mobile devices needing operation in
less than 300mW; and performance-optimized consumer applications requiring
2000 Dhrystone MIPS. The Cortex-A8 processor is ARM’s first superscalar
processor featuring technology for enhanced code density and performance, 
NEON™ technology for multimedia and signal processing, and JazelleR RCT
(Runtime Compilation Target) technology for efficient support of
ahead-of-time and just-in-time compilation of Java and other bytecode
languages. "


Most Smartphones come with bluetooth & bluetooth mice & keyboards
are growing in range while falling in price. Personally I want a foldable
keyboard with a trackpad.

Most are coming with a proper USB implemention such that all sorts of
devices could be plugged in.

Most are coming with pretty impressive storage capacities (or can be
expanded via increasingly capacious & cheap cards).


Most are headed towards a proper OS as the device constraints come off due
to tech advance (e.g. the Iphone OS will be based on OSX i.e. BSD unix)
& Motorola et al are headed to linux.

The one thing which is missing is the problem of the display & by the
sound of it it's something MS is looking like addressing which is good.

Adam


> Rich
>
>
>     "Ad"      > wrote in message
>     news:464bf527$1{at}w3.nls.net...
>     http://www.physorg.com/news98525702.html
>
>     Ah dear me...after all this time of Rich S decrying the phone.....his
>     masters may be "thinking different".
>
>     "While the PDA has existed as a sort of mini-PC for years, Microsoft
>     said it would encourage phone manufacturers to formalize the transition
>     of the phone to a mobile PC through a research initiative called
>     "Fone+"."
>
>
>     " Microsoft Research chief Craig Mundie said that Microsoft has a
>     research project called "Fone+" that would allow the
phone to work with
>     a TV as a secondary display, and one that could allow video stored on
>     the device to be played back on the television.
>
>     For Microsoft, the challenge is extending the PC platform into new
>     applications and form factors. For many years, the WinHEC confeerence
>     here has served as the underlying foundation for hardware initiatives
>     for the Tablet PC and the more recent UMPC, both of which have
>     struggled. Microsoft's penetration into the smartphone market, however,
>     has been more successful.
>
>     "There's no reason that if this thing were hooked up to a large display
>     that we couldn't watch video in this environment," Mundie said. "
>
>     Gosh you mean display is the problem...?
>
>     Go on mah son sort out smart phone displays for the rest of us.....
>
>
>     Adam

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