XO Gen 1.5

[Greg Smith]

Hi Ed, Wad, Chris et al,

Awesome new hardware!

That's one thing I loved about working at HW companies, the longer you 
survive the more hurdles you cross.

IMHO 3D/2D is better than 2D only, if you can get it to work.

I see bigger value in the video acceleration and input. The video 
capture is the most used thing by my kids and probably true for all XOs.

The only down side is that the Record app over compresses and there's no 
option to adjust it. I poked around in the code briefly and there is a 
hard coded "quality" variable in a check-in months old. Aside from that 
app level challenge, the new chipset plus greater storage could allow 
super video capture!

It even has a couple of video outputs which may need solder and a little 
logic not to mention power. "TV" out option would rock. However, none of 
the video looks like RS 170a and I doubt many people have HD in the 
target market. I wonder what connects to "LVDS/TTL"...

The video decompression acceleration will be a huge value. The primary 
test is of course YouTube which I think means Flash flv. I would put 
that on an early test list and I hope there's no driver incompatible BS 
like with Geode. The H. codecs could pay off in better video 
conferencing. A live chat with Niue would have really warmed up my 
winter :-)

The top value and the chance to break new ground is power. Software 
hooks to toggle on/off radio and throttle CPU could be break throughs 
but need lots of work. I hope you can entice GNU and others to work on 
that again.
Some history on it here:
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Feature_roadmap/Improved_battery_life

Nice call on fully backward compatible SW. The installed base is big and 
there's easily 2 - 3 years more SW work to get the most out of them. 
Also glad to see plans for an 8.2 line but get the drivers upstream ASAP 
if not sooner.

I can't wait to see if crashes and OOM kill screw ups disappear with 8.2 
on new HW. I believe Michael and team's position was that the same 
kernel worked better/fine on systems with more RAM. Cost us 2+ weeks 
slip on the 8.2 release to try and fix it, no we can test with double 
the RAM.

Glad to see a UART on there. I just hope its a 16550 or later so I can 
use my high baud modem :-)

Nice work. Good luck in the final integration and test.

Thanks,

Greg S