What is smartbuk?

That is a netbook, smartphone and, guess (and even, perhaps, no clue, but knows with certainty), the vast majority of readers of "IT SECTOR". I'd venture that a large proportion of readers are the owners of such devices. But the word "smartbuk", which is like a hybrid of those two words not familiar to all, let alone possess such devaysa just a few units. Therefore, in our traditional FAQ section today we talk about smartbukah.

Smartbukom is a device which is easy to guess, it combines the features of the laptop and smartphone. However, this does not mean that smartbuk can be used for telephone calls to GSM or CDMA-networks. Just these devices, as opposed to netbooks, have built-in 3G-ins that allow you to sit on the internet even when away from your Wi-Fi access point. This smartbuki usually several smaller netbooks and, accordingly, have smaller dimensions, less processing power and lower cost. Also smartbuki usually based on the processor architecture ARM - in fact, originally it was in the processor architecture is the fundamental distinction between netbooks and smartbukami. As in his time he said the company Xandros, "smartbuk - is the same netbook, but the architecture of ARM (from Qualcomm and Freescale) with integrated 3G, 10-hour battery life and low cost." In addition to Qualcomm and Freescale, ARM-processors for smartbukov now offer companies such as Broadcom, Samsung, TI, Marvell, VIA, Nvidia.

The term "smartbuk" was introduced by Qualcomm, which provided the first such device in 2008. It is worth noting that, as is the case with netbooks, found a company that demanded prohibit operation of this name as a registered trade mark, but in this case it was not a Psion, a company which is called - Smartbook AG. However, as is the case with netbooks, the situation was resolved.

Due to the fact that smartbuki use architecture ARM, not Intel, one of the key features of this kind of devices is their lack of the Windows operating system as such. Microsoft at one time seemed to be even thought of doing a version of its system for ARM-processors, but then it all somehow died down smoothly. So now buyers are offered only smartbukov various GNU/Linux distributions, and "younger sister" Windows - Windows CE. Also, recently appeared on the market smartbuki operating system Google Android.

So far smartbuki not received such wide distribution and popularity, as netbooks, which most experts regarded as their main competitors. The point, according to those same experts, in the protracted waiting sufficiently powerful processor architectures ARM, which should just about come to the mass market. Thus, as the improvement of ARM processor smartbuki will gradually replace the more expensive and less convenient netbooks, and by 2015 the world there will be more than 160 million such devices. However, today there are too many models smartbukov from different manufacturers, including such well-known companies such as Lenovo, Sharp, ECS.