Source: Tom's Guide | Keywords: Commodore, Netbook, UMMD, 8010/F | Themes: Laptops and Notebooks, IFA consumer electronics show
Commodore International, the company that brought us the Commodore 64 has announced that it too will be jumping on the netbook bandwagon along with the rest of the world.
As it stands, pretty much every notebook and computer manufacturer in the business has come out with a "me too" version of the Eee PC so usually, it’s not really all that surprising to see yet another addition to the rush of netbooks and low-cost desktops we’ve already seen out there.
However, when the announcement comes from a manufacturer that pretty much no one under the age of 20 is going to remember, it causes a bit of a stir. At this year’s IFA in Berlin, Commodore, manufacturer of the Commodore 64 and the Amiga announced the launch of the Commodore UMMD 8010/F.
The UMMD 8010/F looks, as far as spec are concerned a lot like the rest of the netbooks already available. You’ve got a pretty standard 10 inch display, 1.3 megapixel camera, 80GB HD, 1GB of RAM, WiFi, optional Bluetooth. In fact, bar the fact that Commodore has decided (for some reason) to go with the 1.6Ghz C7–M CPU instead of falling in step with everyone else and opting for Intel’s Atom processor.
These fairly ubiquitous specifications are topped with a price tag that seems a little over the top for our tastes. Most netbooks these days are at most, around $500 and those that do cost that much have slightly bigger displays, extra RAM and a bigger harddrive. $600 is a little bit much for the Commodore UMMD, although we’re betting there’ll be a decent amount of people making impulse purchases out of nostalgia.
Oh, and did we mention that Commodore seems to still employ the same design team as they did in the 80s? Ah, beige, a timeless classic.
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With a $600 pricetag, I'd get rid of the Commodore name and slap AMIGA on it instead. Heck it's beige too.
Wow, took 20 years, but the world finally has an Amiga laptop. Jay Miner would be proud.
Now all we need is some Guru Meditation...
The more interesting question is: what has they been up to these 20 years? Sending the engineer to school to learn how to design a nettop?
"The more interesting question is: what has they been up to these 20 years?" - Pei-Chen
"what has they been up to..." a most interesting question indeed.
Sadly, not am Amiga... While the OS isn't completely dead, I understand that Commodore doesn't control it or the name anymore. And while it's supposedly been updated, I can't imagine it can truly compete in today's market.
Somehow I don't expect this to recapture Commodore's glory days of innovation, accessibility, educational value, and low cost. The closest we have to that today is the XO Laptop.
But you gotta keep progressing...
- VIC-20
- C64
- Amiga 500
- Windows 3.11
- Windows 95/98/98SE/ME
- Windows 2000
- Windows XP
- Mac OS X 10.5 (couldn't resist...)
It's not really the company that brought us the C64 & Amiga. The brand name has been bought & sold a few times over the years. It's nothing but a name now.
What nismor31 said. The Commodore of twenty years ago no longer exists. It's just a name now.
OK... I have to admit it has a cool factor... but what would really sell it for me is if they get rid of that boring black "C=" logo and bring back the multicolored one... and lastly... if it's running windows... or even linux... strip out the games that come with the OS and replace them with some of the classic C=64 games... aw yeah!.. I guess a name change would be nice too!.. WTF does Commodore UMMD 8010/F mean anyway? I think Mobile C=64 sounds better... something anyway... but either way it is nice to see it around again... and for those wondering what C= has been doing... they appear to building Intel based gaming rigs ranging anywhere from $1200 to $5000... do a search... later...