Ziga USA Media Tablet Runs Win CE And Win2K

[Jonathon Watkins]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/portable-media/zigausa-media-tablet-026016.php' target='_blank'>http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/port...blet-026016.php</a><br /><br /></div>"<i>The Ziga USA Media Tablet sure is an odd product. It's built around an 8.4-inch 800 by 600 pixel LCD and runs Windows CE, but it also has a built-in DVD drive and MPEG 2 hardware decoding on board. So it's a slate-style DVD player, but also a Pocket PC. Oh, and get this—you can choose to add a hard drive and install Windows 2000. Strange, huh?</i>"<br /><br /> <img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/zigausa_media_tab.jpg" /> <br /><br />Gizmodo mention that this does seem to be in production yet, though it may be a potentially interesting jack-of-all-trades. Why settle for one set of OS functions when you can have them all? It certainly has an impressive set of features, including resolution support for resolutions of 1920 x1440 at 18-bit colour depth. You can find more details on the SiS552 at the <a href="http://www.amcuk.com/pc1045.html"> product page </a> and more info about the Ziga media tablet at the <a href="http://www.zigausa.com/product_MTABLET.htm">Ziga website.</a> Do any of you have any more information about the Ziga USA Media Tablet, or thoughts about this type of dual OS development?

[PJE]

The main issue is that it's a 200MHz Pentium MMX, which means no standard PocketPC software will run on it.

I would love a Samsung S160 type device which could run existing PocketPC software, and also had a better browser (such as Opera).

[felixdd]

What would be killer is that it will first instant-on into Windows CE...and then you can choose to continue to boot into Win 2K if you need the "big guns"

[jpaq]

Could be a good product.
A key would be to provide a way to sync PPC data with Outlook within the same machine. There would have to be a way to do this without having both PPC and Win2k up at the same time, unless that is what they intend to do....

[whydidnt]

Good idea, but I'm not sure it's implemented properly. The CPU isn't really good for either OS. If someone could figure out how to make this work right, say in the form factor of the OQO, they would have a winner.

I don't really understand how the Transmeta CPU works, but my understanding is that it's programable, does that mean it could be given two sets of intstructions - the x86 for WinXP and ARM for WinCE? If so, then that could be the solution to the different CPU needs.

Either way, it's great to see a company thinking about trying to make something like this work. We'll just have to see if they can actually turn it into a real, useful product.

[Fishie]

Urm, these are for vertical markets.
Advertisement panels in subways, smart panels in voting machines or banking and whatever.
This isnt a consumer product, not by a long shot

[Jonathon Watkins]

This isnt a consumer product, not by a long shot

Could have fooled me! :wink:

From the Ziga webpage:

....built-in DVD player with remote control

[xbalance]

It looked interesting until I saw that the estimated battery life was 2 hours. I would like to have a product that runs the latest Pocket PC OS, has a DVD player, SD slot, built in WiFi and a monitor at least 7 inches. I don't need a keyboard and with the DVD player I don't need a hard drive. The battery needs to last at least 6 hours.

No sign of that happening.

[Sven Johannsen]

I don't really understand how the Transmeta CPU works, but my understanding is that it's programable, does that mean it could be given two sets of intstructions - the x86 for WinXP and ARM for WinCE? If so, then that could be the solution to the different CPU needs.


No need to worry about the ARM WinCE runs fine on an X86. In fact PPC programs interprete and run fine on the emulator supplied with the Visual Studio and the SDK for PPC. The gotch there is that it needs to be compiled for the X86 rather than the ARM platform. Currently there is no emulator for an X86 platform to run ARM code, like there is for the PPC to run Nintendo, or Macs to run Windows, and such.

Before someone asks me, I'm not sure if the MS development environment lets you create X86 exe's from your PPC developement source. Be kind if neat to have some of the PPC programs run as little 240x320 applet windows, but compiled as x86 programs, not an ARM emulator.

[Perry Reed]

What would be killer is that it will first instant-on into Windows CE...and then you can choose to continue to boot into Win 2K if you need the "big guns"

I was just thinking the same thing. Put both devices into the same chassis and let you have one or both running simultaneously (with a hardware button or something to switch the screen between one and the other). Have an internal connection between the two to keep them in sync.

That way you'd have the instant on and portable features of Pocket PC, and the power of XP.

[Flynn Arrowstarr]

I know eMbedded Visual C++ and eMbedded Visual Basic support compiling for x86 architectures. The .NET Compact Framework can also target x86 processors. The ability to target the x86 platform is so you can test your projects out on the emulators (which run an x86 build of WinCE on emulated hardware). This is especially the case with the older emulators such as the original Pocket PC, H/PC Pro and PSPC systems.

Flynn

[Flynn Arrowstarr]

Even better would be the ability to have a window open on the Win2k desktop that had a 320x240 (for example) view of the CE system that you can copy/paste information back and forth...

Flynn