In a pocketable tablet I want Linux, good application set, reasonable performance and long battery life. N810 best meets those needs. At this stage the ARM which was designed for small battery devices has an edge over x86 for an N810 like device. In truth as long as my user goals are met the CPU is of little concern to me.

For all people who are unsure: Yes, I know about Atom, Geode and friends. They're extremely energy efficient *when compared to desktop processors*. But we aren't talking about those The applications you mention, where these processors are invading ARM and MIPS territory is not as much NIT style devices, but rather devices that either have mains power OR are not supposed to be turned on all the time. Either that, or the company developing it is hoping to shorten the development cycle by using x86 if they have a serious investment in non-portable x86 code.

Example. Take your Atom based eeepc, start a mail reader that checks for mail periodically and an instant messenger. Keep it running (screen turned off). Do the same on your N810. Guess which will last longer. A *lot* longer

An average Atom has a max power consumption around 2W max, with a declared average around ~250mW. A Cortex (and most ARMs) on the other hand does 750mW max and 25-50mW typical. And then comes the kicker. The ARM does this for the whole SoC (processor, memory, peripherals, etc), while the Atom needs *extra* power for the chipset/memory/controller/southbridge, so in the end even with the best power saving you get almost an order of magnitude worse battery performance, especially when you're idling.

to expand a little on that a whole n800 uses about 2-3 watts running all-out. that of course includes screen and wifi. intel still has another generation or two before we can start to talk about arm and x86 really competing in the phone/pda/tablet space.

also i do have a certain fondness for arm and the integration and lack of cruft that arm-bassed systems feature.

-john