Pre-orders open for Loongson laptop

I’ve been following the progress of Lemote, the corporate branch of the Loongson chip developers, for the last year or so. For the longest time, I had my eye on a proposed Loongson laptop on their product page.

While it’s not the same laptop, the company is taking pre-orders for an incredible little machine. It’s tiny and then some, with an 8″ LCD screen and maximum of 800×480 resolution. But all that adds up to portability.

If the company can collect 1,000 pre-orders during its current drive around China, production will begin, and the first 1,000 people to pre-order can get a 10 percent discount.

The specs are as follows:

CPU: Loongson 2E at 600-800MHz
RAM: 512MB DDR
Screen: 8″ LCD at 800×480 resolution
Keyboard: 86-key compacted keyboard measuring 29.7×27mm
Power Source: 220VAC converter to output 19VDC at 2.5A
Sound: AC’97 internal audio, includes mic and headphone jacks
Disk Space: 80GB 2.5″ hard disk
Network: 10/100M (wireless?)
Output: VGA out
Ports: PCMIA, Secure Digital (SD), 3 USB2.0
Battery: 3-cell, supplies 2400mAH at 3.7V for 2 hours
Weight: less than 1.5 kilograms
Dimensions: 215×165x36mm

Laptop price is anticipated to be 3,000 to 4,000 yuan.

The Loongson series of processors is based on the MIPS III RISC instruction set. There was some controversy over them using the MIPS instruction set, but money from a joint venture provided Lemote the cash to license it.

The system is capable of running Debian Linux, and the Debian president was here earlier this year to formally announce support. If I get my hands on one, I will start maintaining emulator packages compiled and optimized for MIPS III architecture.