Back in May of this year, I posted that I was excited about Via's new Isaiah processor. When I posted, I stated that I was mainly excited to see if the new processor would actually live up to the small hype that Via had presented, or if history would repeat itself and the new processor would be like its predecessors and fall into the shadows.
Well guess what. It seems as if history has repeated itself. Via officially announced the processor as the Via Nano in late May, stating that the processor would be ready for purchase within a couple of months.
It's now almost December, and I still can't find any netbooks powered by the new chip, or any small motherboards with the chip installed. What's even worse is that the few news articles I have read show the Nano displaying disappointing results. (Sure the Nano beats the Intel Atom in some benchmarks, but it was supposed to be so much better than that and didn't Via make a video of the Nano running that Crysis game?).
I thought that by now HP would be using the new chip in the HP 2133 successor, but it appears they switched to Intel's Atom chips. nVidia has also announced that they have stopped working with Via on a mobile chipset for the processor; really was this a big surprise?
Seriously, I find Via very entertaining. Every couple of years they promise a new CPU with 'surprising performance, only to have the chip delayed, and when it does get released it simply sucks. What's even more entertaining is the fact that Via actually gets other companies such as HP and nVidia to believe their hype and get the companies to give Via a chance.
I don't think its going to happen again. I would say that I wish AMD or Intel would just buy out Via and their Centaur CPU design team, but its really not worth it.
