Thread: Okay, Are there really any iPad alternatives?
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Old 05-02-2010, 04:05 PM   #80
kacir
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Join Date: May 2006
Device: PocketBook 360, before it was Sony Reader, cassiopeia A-20
Quote:
Originally Posted by scottjl View Post
Hmm.. I don't get the benefit of running a "full" operating system (which is misleading as the iPad OS is not "half" an operating system) and then stripping out most of it in order to get decent performance.
The point is, YOU get to decide which half of the OS you are not going to use.
Operating systems today come with lots and lots of unnecessary things enabled by default, in case the user needs to use them. For ordinary use you can strip off 80% of default stuff and get mean, lean, very reliable system.

My first e-book reader was an old, really, really obsolete notebook. It had display with 640x480 pixels, each of which supported whooping 265 shades of grey. 2MB of RAM. Way below 100MHz procesor speed. Originally it didn't even have harddisk (the original harddisk was burned out, just like battery. This was probably reason, together with really old age ;-), why such wonderful computer ended up in a trash, where I could salvage it). I prepared a bootable floppy with DOS system, simple text viewing app and one book (or a part of a book).
Later I managed to get a second-hand 800MB disk for it and I decided to install Linux on it.
I had to strip off something like 90% of the standard operating system (Linux) to be able to run it, yet, nobody told me what I am allowed to do with MY computer. Originally it it was running DOS, but I wanted a system that would support more than 8.3 characters in filenames. The beauty of the Basic Linux distribution based on a very old version of Slackware - the last one to provide 2.0 Linux kernel - was that you could tweak and optimize just about anything. And it never, *ever* crashed. Worked like a charm for years. The only thing I didn't like was the backlit display.

This is why I find it strange when people complain that modern computers are not fast enough, or that there is not enough memory or storage speed on a Book reading device. Once uppon a time 66MHz 486 with 2 megs of RAM was good enough for a serious server supporting a dozen users working simultaneously on a company financial system.

Now, get off my lawn, dammit ...
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