"Several laptop-producing companies have constructed demonstration units using the
Transmeta Crusoe processor for computer shows and proclaim that they could have
something ready before Christmas. One of these companies, IBM, stated that they were
specifically looking for customer input (or at least a statement of desire) before they put
such a product to market. I have searched for "Crusoe" on IBM's website without finding
a location for such an input, so I am sending feedback to
http://www.ibm.com/contact/query with the following information. If you are interested
in such a product, I urge you to do the same."
"I'm very interested in seeing (and hopefully purchasing) a Crusoe powered ThinkPad
because, from what I read, I don't think Intel's chips will be able to scale their power
down as effectively in the near future. Much of my laptop's use involves a lot of typing
into an editor, which should consume almost no processor power. Even if speech
recognition becomes more common, I still spend a fair amount of time reading and
thinking in front of the screen. The minimum operating power figures for the Crusoe
indicate it should do very well in these idle modes as well as having a very efficient
sleep mode. I often can't get my current laptop to sleep for even a day without running
out of batteries, which is ridiculous. I don't want to have to reboot just to save power. I
hope that Crusoe can enable a laptop to sleep for months even on 4 AA batteries. Many
people have pointed out that other components become more important once the
processor becomes around 1 watt (let's say the Intel chips do well at this level). This
leads to the first feature I want out of a new ThinkPad (or competitor's) design."
