Adobe and Ubuntu play nice with Intel's Menlow, but no sign of Microsoft

Angus Kidman
Wednesday, 19 September 2007 23:42

Your IT - Home IT

Conspicuous by their absence in this software love-in was Microsoft. Chandrasekher made brief reference to the possibility of running Vista on an MID, but no Microsoft staffers made an appearance to further explore the possibility.


Remembering the problems many people have experienced running Vista even on a regular PC, perhaps that's not so surprising. However, given that Intel's own research showed that Internet Explorer was the least troublesome browser for running most content, it's still a notable omission.

Although their interdependence remains strong, Microsoft and Intel have shown evidence of friction in recent years. Notably, when Intel launched its Viiv platform, it made minimal reference to the software giant, even though Windows Media Centre was a core element of the platform.

Chandrasekher also outlined some basic details of Moorestown, the successor platform to Menlow, and showed off a prototype Moorestown device.

Moorestown will again reduce size and power consumption by around half, Chandrasekher said, while the goal was to reduce power use when idle by a factor of ten. "That's a big deal in terms of getting battery life improvements."

He declined to offer any technical specifics or firm release timeframes, but did suggest that multi-core technologies, already widely used in Intel's mainstream platforms, would eventually make an appearance. "It's mostly all screen, you can read it very nicely, it's very slim, very thin."

"The Internet is not going to get less complex," he said. "It's only going to get more complex, more dynamic. It will be performance intense and will demand more performance. It's a matter of balancing power, cost and performance. When all of those hit the sweet zone, of course we'll offer multi-core."

Chandrasekher was coy about how any MIDs might compete with Apple's iPhone, which also offers Internet browsing in a single device, albeit at rather low speeds. Alluding to Apple's adoption of Intel architecture for desktop Macs, Chandrasekher suggested a similar partnership in the future wasn't out of the question. "Sometime in the future our paths may meet. I can't say any more."

Disclosure: Angus Kidman attended IDF as a guest of Intel.