yellowTab announced the “Complete Zeta Solution”: Both in laptop (Centrino) and desktop form (P4 and AthlonXP), yellowTab will sell, to Europe only, complete and compatible hardware systems. All systems come with a 2 year warranty and estimated delivery is 10-14 days. The systems will ship with YellowTAB Zeta 1.0-RC1, and buyers will be able to upgrade to 1.0-Final for free (only shipping will be paid extra). Also, as a launching promotion, and for a limited time only, you can order the Deluxe Edition Special Bundle, where along with Zeta Deluxe Edition 1.0-RC1, you also receive a free Zeta t-shirt. UPDATE: YellowTAB sent us a screenshot of Zeta. Font rendering is much improved since the betas.
yellowTab Now Sells Complete Hardware Systems with Zeta
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Yes!
That’s… well… intersting. I’m not sure if it will be profitable and i’m worried that YT will learn the lessons of the BeBox the hard way.
And also… Europe only?! Hello! You have a lot of BeOS users in the Americas and Japan. I understand it costs alot to ship stuff overseas but still…
As a first step, Europe-only makes business sense. If this pays off, I am sure YellowTAB will consider expanding their hardware market.
For now, you can buy Zeta from all over the world.
It’s hard to compare building BeBoxen to using off the shelf components. They,re really two different beasts.
The systems are built by a German OEM hardware vendor.
I am just saying that I hope YT does’t devote to much of their resources to Zeta PCs and then have to cancle them because they are losing money.
Still, I hope it works. I like the idea of having a Zeta laptop.
The laptop has an option of shipping with a gigabyte of memory, has YT fixed the memory bug or is the graphics card really only mapping 64mb?
So, this means I can now order Zeta, right? And, another question, if I buy the Deluxe Edition special bundle thing, will I get an upgrade to the full Zeta 1.0? And what about .1 upgrades? Like, when Zeta 1.1 comes out, am I going to have to buy the full version all over again, or will there be a free/reduced price upgrade I can install?
…if i hadn’t bought a PowerBook just last week. I was even thinking of going with the lowest of the low as well.
[quote]The laptop has an option of shipping with a gigabyte of memory, has YT fixed the memory bug or is the graphics card really only mapping 64mb?
[/quote]
No, you can only get 768MB Ram as maximum yet. But believe me it is HELL fast. We use it also for our developers and everyone of them can be asked, it is amazing.
[quote]So, this means I can now order Zeta, right?[/quote]
Yes, thats what we offer
[quote]if I buy the Deluxe Edition special bundle thing, will I get an upgrade to the full Zeta 1.0?[/quote]
Yes, you only pay the Shipping and burning the CD which is round $10.
[quote]And what about .1 upgrades? Like, when Zeta 1.1 comes out, am I going to have to buy the full version all over again, or will there be a free/reduced price upgrade I can install?[/quote]
Yes you get Updates for free like R1.01-03, R1.1, R1.2 you have to pay for R1.5 and also for R2 but not for steps between it
Bernd Korz
CVO yellowTAB GmbH
Thats impressive. I’m glad to see a german company in the computer market. Looking forward to the first review and the new features YellowTab added.
Regarding the comment about the BeBox.
I don’t think YellowTab is making the same mistake Beos did.
They are selling complete systems and in the future the standalone OS.
Good work YellowTab.
S.
————————–
http://www.sideliners.ca
Next to all the OS offers, there’s some small print which states “(Not yet available)”.
Now I’m not comparing Zeta to the Amiga in anyway, but I really miss the days when you were paying for a product knowing that you’d receive it.
How many of those people who signed up and paid for Amiga OS4 + T-Shirt a year and a half ago are talking positively about their experience?
There’s a lotta buzz about Zeta, and from what I’ve seen, I think most of it’s grounded in reality, but come on… This “Buy it now and receive it when we finish it” stuff is kind of lame, particularly when companys such as the aforementioned Amiga (er… Eyetech I guess is the latest purveyor of the OS) have already shown that not everyone out there’s on the “up and up” (http://amiga.org/modules/news/article.php?storyid=2718)
Good luck to you Zeta, but until there’s tangible product to be had, you’ll not be seeing my hard earned cash.
You can order Zeta, but only one edition yet. We are working really hard to get it as complete as possible and as fast as possible. But to get also feedback from REAL users we made a special Deluxe Edition wich you can order now. You have no risk and loose no money, because you get R1 almost for free.
Bernd Korz
CVO yellowTAB GmbH
Next to all the OS offers, there’s some small print which states “(Not yet available)”.
Look at the special offer, it seems that it is available. I would consider looking at it if it was cheaper. I guess I have to wait for the final release of the home edition.
Thanks Bernd. One more question. If I order the Deluxe Edition special bundle, how soon can I expect to get it? I live in California, by the way.
yessssssss!!!!!
at least they are trying hard. i can not wait to buy it.
great job!
– 2501
Take a look at the options of the each of the boxes. They tell you what up to date hardware you can use(as far as BeOS is concern) with Zeta. The labtop interests me the most, Centrino Technology(w/ wireless), ATI Radeon mobility 9000, USB 2.0, Firewire, and SD-Card reader. You can go to Dell, Gateway or HP and configure a labtop like what YellowTab is selling and just install Zeta. If you are really feel daring, create 3 partions with one having Zeta, one with Windows, and with your favorite Linux Distro.
For those who haven’t seen a good video demo of Zeta go to;
http://ddanneels.free.fr/Zeta-CeBIT2003.avi
from what i havee seen on the YT graphics chipset compatibility list, there’s no support for GF4 (or higher) cards. is this going to be fixed for the final release?
Bernd,
I CAN’T order. It logins and then redirects me back to the login page, saying that cookies must be enabled. However, they ARE enabled.
Help!
GF4: Yes we hope we can provide you soon with a driver. We are also want using Rudolphs great Driver and concentrate on other work
Shipping around the World: At least we try to have resellers everywhere in the World. We send then boxes to them and they ship them further. For the countries we have no one it canot blame on you as customer.
What browser are you using?
Use another browser for now.
If I order the Deluxe Edition special bundle from the yellowTab site, when can I expect to get it? I’m in California.
This looks really great. between these guys and the Pegasos/MorphOS people it looks like really cool alternatives a up and coming. Keep up the good work!
I will check that and answer you asap
Bernd
Just wanted to know whether Zeta will work on a Shuttle XPC- Nforce2, AMD 2500XP, 64MB ATi Raedon + 1GB of RAM ? I’m aware of the 1GB RAM limit and I can just reduce the RAM if I have to.
Also have you tested it with VMware or Virtual PC ?
You can use maximum 768MB RAM if you want to be sure.
About the nforce i know from two of our members that they have that chipset and they said it works BUT i have NOT tested it yet myself. I will do that asap.
VMWare it works but only in Vesamode. Ask mmu_man he know 100% whats to do that it works.
This has probably been discussed over and over again, but I just have to ask:
The screenshot provided shows the “old” BeOS GUI (nothing wrong with that by the way, it is probably one of the best out there), but I just want to know: Will there be a redesign of the GUI in the near future?
Thanks in advance
I assume you mean the tabs. The GUI elements themselves look similar to the ones in Dano/EXP and PhOS, to my eyes. Zeta can change the window borders/tabs at the users command. I think.
We have the R5 design and a lot of nice other Decors you an very easy switch in the Deskbar
I just ordered the special Zeta offer. I can’t wait to try it
.
What browser are you using?
Mozilla on RH Linux 7.3…
Also does the same with Galeon 1.2.0 web browser ( Gnome ).
Just forgot to ask… When will you start shipping Zeta R1? I live in the Netherlands, so I guess shipment won’t take long
.
Excuse me, I mean RC1;).
How?
With what browser/OS?
Help!
I tested the login myself with Galeon and Mozilla on Redhat and did not have any problems. You might be behind some proxy which filters the cookies or something like that.
Great to see Zeta ship again. The idea of a pre-configured machine is great for YT. After all, you can’t loose. They’re just selling standard PCs that are tested and installed with Zeta. If you don’t like it…Just install Linux, OS2, *BSD, QNX, or SkyOS!
When will R1 be released? Right now it seems that everything is shipping with RC1.
How many guaranteed orders would be needed for YellowTab to port Zeta to Mac/Pegasos/Teron/RS6000?
I’d pay £100 for Zeta on the Pegasos.
Yeah, a port of Zeta to the Pegasos would be really nice. I’d pay a bit extra for that aswell.
Great work YT.
Way to go bernd and other zeta-ppl.
What I don’t understand for the full 100% is, you said you get 1.0 for 10 euro’s, if you order the RC1, will that be an update CD or an full version.
I would pay more than 100 to have beos in my powerbook… I miss it!! And my PC is +10000KM from my new house
Pablo
nforce2 is kind of supported there are video / audio / lan (only the 3com one) drivers on bebits other then that i don’t know.
You may also have problem with big hard drives, they’ll could just work in pio (slow, slow, slow).
Besides that i can’t belive it’s comming out
, better start saving my €.
I wonder what font renderer Zeta is using? Is it FontFusion? If so, I’d have to say that even the new screenshots don’t look like very good output by FontFusion standards.
Ah, that’s one of the things I miss about BeOS. It wasn’t hostile to technical users. The system itself achieved a parity between GUI and CLI that even OS X can’t touch. It was easy to use because it was simple, not because there were all sorts of artificial barriers between you and the system. And the BeNewsletters and API docs gave tons of insight into the inner-workings of the OS. I think the OpenBeOS guys are doing a great job keeping the Newsletters alive, I wish Zeta would do something similar.
Thanks for the tip!
However, it seems I was using an older Mozilla ( .99 ), so I upgraded to 1.5 RC1 and voila! I am ordering yt Zeta!!!!
Thanks!
Hello Bernd!
I have to work in my job three months for free to get a copy of Zeta. Live in Brazil it’s hard… I’ve no money to test Zeta, but good luck. BeOS really rocks!
Michael Vinicius de Oliveira
~ BlueEyedOS.com Webmaster ~
It is indeed FontFusion, I’d suspect it might need some fine tuning to get it to look optimal, but seeing as I have no idea what is/isn’t tweakable with respect to internal rendering settings, I’m not completely certain on that point.
Font APIs don’t usually have a lot of knobs to tweek, and should produce good output at their standard settings. Perhaps its just not a very well-hinted set of fonts?
No, there are constraints with the Interface Kit and App_server that don’t really allow any font rendering of showing its true potential…
“Font APIs don’t usually have a lot of knobs to tweek, and should produce good output at their standard settings. Perhaps its just not a very well-hinted set of fonts?”
Maybe they look a bit dodgy due to the loss of JPEG compression?
>Maybe they look a bit dodgy due to the loss of JPEG compression?
No.
Arial, Verdana etc fonts look even worse than this fine-tuned-by-hand-from-Be font…
“No.
Arial, Verdana etc fonts look even worse than this fine-tuned-by-hand-from-Be font…”
Hmmmmmmmm….. I assume this will improve by R1?
> I assume this will improve by R1?
Maybe not. From what I hear, the font rendering and all the related code in BeOS/Zeta is black magick… Nobody really understood well how it worked, not even back in the day… 😉
Curious — how to you make font-rendering complicated? You tell the rendering library (which is a black box) to render a glyph for each letter in the string. You go along the string, composit each letter, adjusting the spacing according to the kerning table. That’s all you really need to get pretty good rendering. Now, text layout and font metrics are hard, but they shouldn’t affect quality. Maybe FontFusion’s API isn’t as easy as FreeType’s?
There is the issue of mixing that together with various color/transparency blending modes, etc. while drawing, which complicates matters considerably.
Wow, Im glad that this is really happening. This is truly an OS that I can use out of the box without saying “It’ll be ready for the desktop any day now”. I can’t wait to try it out on my old laptop (15 second boot!!).
I have been dying to switch away from windows for a long time, but OSX is too costly in money and Linux is too costly in time. I grudgingly go back to windows every time.
Great thread, by the way. It is great fun to see an actual developer here on the board to answer questions. Great way to get people excited!
I don’t believe that those are just I-Kit and API constraints.
Just buggy hinting. Switch, for example, antialiasing off and look at ‘o’ from arial. In windoze and freetype it is normal symmetrical square with rounded corners.
In BeOS – ugly assymetrical shape with deformed right-top corner (or such). I think that that cheap version of BitStream engine was tuned to use only in antialiased mode, where those “wrong” corners must be blurred out.
But it has bugs even in simplest elements, like in N in some NATIVE Bitstream fonts, where this element gets double width (like being bold) when vertical elements have normal size.
Are you talking about the old bitstream renderer (in BeOS R5) or the new FontFusion renderer in Zeta? I highly doubt there would be a crippled FontFusion used in Zeta. It wouldn’t make any sense — its not like it costs less or anything, and would be bad for Bitstream’s image.
But i tried new engine (i’m sure Zeta one is same as in Dano) – and wasn’t impressed, inspite attempts to tweak all settings.
I got feeling, that new engine has almost same core for “traditiona”l TTF, while all new features were intended for fffonts. Unfortunately i couldn’t find free ff-font for testing.
Bernd
I’ve been looking forward to this.
So with R5+bebits switching to Zeta what are the big improvements to expect?
Does USB2 work for large HDs Ie >130GB etc, Flash drives. Can I install on external USB or FW & boot from it if my mobo supports it, most new mobos support USB2 booting but never seen it yet.
I am sure this will prompt a whole lot of new developer activity on BeBits to add on Zeta.
ZeBoxen? Zut alors…congrats to Zeta for shipping their product…
Is the Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 supported under Zeta now? If so 100 euro on the way.
Anyone know if dual displays (either via two video cards, or one dual output card) are supported in Zeta?
I know there’s a driver out for some ATI cards (sadly, I’m told that it doesn’t support my 9600), but are there any other options for dual display with Zeta?
Since using two monitors in Windows & Linux, I find it somewhat limiting to use a one monitor system (much to my boss’s chagrine since he’s sick of hearing me tell him I need another monitor!). Anyone?
See this: http://www.bebits.com/app/2938
However…One thing that needs to be stressed is the importance of software availability equaling that, in terms of quality, of other commercial operating systems.
IMHO, if Zeta can get wine running, without the need of X11/X11drv. Zeta could then team up with Codeweavers, get them to produce a Codeweavers Crossover Office then bundle it with Zeta, meaning, adopters of the operating system will be able to run Office 2000/97/XP, Photoshop and a few other sundry applications.
But that’s the one I was referring to that doesn’t support the 9600 card
Thanks for the heads up though!
I’m a bit confused with many mod BeOS such as FreeBeOS, BeOS Max, and BeOS Pro original. So what is yellowTAB zeta anyway? Is it BeOS pro newer version? or is it just personal version?
It is a _new_ version, based on the unreleased BeOS 6.
The rest, like BeOS MAX and DEveloper Editions are just tweaked BeOS 5 PE.
Zeta is the real BeOS 6, plus enhancements.
As for OpenBeOS, is an effort to redo BeOS from scratch, so at the moment is not even alpha state, it is still under development.
This is really good news! I’ve been waiting for this!
There is a trivial little amusing semantic goof on the ordering
page. It says Zeta has an “excessive” amount of bundled
software, impying that there is *too much* software 🙂
It really is good news.
What about WinModems support?
Does Zeta support Agere SV92P chipset?
Does Zeta support Nomad MP3 players?
I doubt I can use it for what I want though, which is to do midi sequencing and multitrack recording with my Delta 1010 card.
I’ll order a copy anyway, though; I suppose if I want it to do those things they need to make some money first. I really liked BeOS, and was sorry when my final CD came.
I am an idealist, but I really hope this time it can be the “media os” I had hoped for the first time around.
“Update to GoBeProductive 3 for EUR 49, if/when available”
Does this mean that you’ve gotten in touch with GoBe and they are open to creating a GP3 for Zeta? At what point will they make this decision?
“Zeta compatible DVD-writer” so Zeta has a DVD buring program included?
Any contact with other former BeOS software makers as to if/when they’d consider programming for Zeta?
Support for the newer Radeons and GeForce cards will happen soon, the drivers are both in progress and in good hands.
-Scottmc
and looks like Java 1.4 is coming soon too, using Sun’s code:
http://www.beunited.org/
-Scottmc
http://www.bedrivers.com
Great News Bernd, and the rest!
I still need GeForce4 MX support though. And I want to see a full list of included applications, names and version numbers, for each of the products before I order.
I’ve got some cash with YT’s name on it when the above requirements are met and the Home Edition is ready to ship. Very exciting news for BeOS fans, congradulations!
-Bob
In the spelling of Zeta in the Greek alphabets on the screenshot, it is spelled zeta-epsilon-tau-alpha, the correct spelling is ???? / ?????. Hmmm….. (That’s a eta, instead of the epsilon)
I forgot that OSNews doesn’t support Unicode, the second one is zeta-eta-tau-alpha, as opposed to zeta-epsilon-tau-alpha.
May I suggest having 1024×768 screenshots galore for each Zeta edition offered, showing the most valued apps in dashing action; come on, three Desktop screenshots?
Having gone Pro, with these exciting first Zeta online retails, it wouldn’t hurt going also Pro in Web design. Hint—> http://fedora.redhat.com
Less austere details is a a must. There is not a single entry regarding ADSL in the Zeta’s FAQ. A newer network stack is great and all but… “Hulloooo.” I guess everything is still being build.
‘Nuff ranting. Best of lucks,
“CAAAASSIOPEEEAAAA!!!” (now back to classical)
Congrats to the Zeta team… good luck!
(How about porting OpenOffice to YellowTab? I know GobeProductive is usable and kool…but OO.org would be ideal, as documents would be 100% interchangable with other OSs.)
This is the correct greek spelling: ζητα while what they write there is this: ζετα
The first one is reading “zeeta” while yellotab’s spelling reads “zetta” (the “e” as in “left”).
It’s not like limiting this only to a bunch of random countries. In the union, there is one currency (largely), unified trade laws, etc… Maybe they wouldn’t even start right off to the US if it was the country next door… there are many things to sort out if you are new to business.
Thats funny with the greek letters, I tried it here once and it didn’t work, but it did work in the phorum.
So rajan r is saying that, (in capitals)
ZETA = incorrect
and
ZHTA = correct
saying “zetta” (ZETA) is like you would here from your science teacher, and “zeeta” (ZHTA) is the way your Greek teacher would say it.
Is there any support for ACPI ?
The 1 Gig ram limit?
GF4 / Radeon support?
Has anything actually changed since Dano?
Is Zeta legal? Have Palm confirmed somewhere that yT has legal access to sourcecode?
Multi user support?
Just support them if you like BeOS. Buying Zeta means inversting in YellowTab, investing in yT means new employees, new employees means new technology. They seem to have done some great work, like porting KHTML and providing USB 2.0 support. With more manpower YT can possibly revive BeOS.
Please don’t start trolling. Some people invested their savings in yT, because they love BeOS. This is only the beginning, give them a chance.
Wow, I watched the CeBit video someone mentioned, and I am am absolutely impressed!! WOW!
That wasn´t a trick, running Mac OS on a PC? Did I notice correctly: you were running Mac OS X on Zeta?
If so, man, how do you do THAT? That alone is enough a reason for me to buy Zeta… 🙂
Rugbuz: I’m sorry but this was only Mac OS 8 with some skin.
Precisely my point! Zeta is actually pronounced something like Zita. Sure, the epsilon may look like a E, but it doesn’t pronounce like one.
John Blink, η looks like a H indeed. BTW, my science teacher calls zeta as zeeta. The only problems with her pronounciation of greek alphabets is beta (pronounced veta, IIRC) and Mu as mule.
Congratulations yellowTab……IMO this is the best and most important OS news in a long time !!
Hello, I’m really interested on buying it cause I used to be (and still now) a BeOS fan. But there’s a question I want to do: I have read that it will ship only in DVD media. Is that correct?, ’cause I don’t have a DVD player, just a CD-ROM.
Congratulations to yellowTab
Have a look at http://www.yellowtab.com/board/viewtopic.php?t=887 for the answer
.
I tried to send an email to Yellow Tab via their web page form but it would not accept it even though the required fields were completed. I tried to send to [email protected] but that was rejected as well. Anyone know a method of sending email to them?
Ok, I think I just found a valid email address. Cancel the request.
The yellowTab team deserves some congraduations on keeping the faith in their project, and I’d dual-boot between Windows and Zeta in an instant if they could fix the 1gb ram issue, and could allow the use of 2 video cards in the same box. I’ve got a Radeon 8500LE with single monitor output for a primary card, and a 7500 pci for a 2nd monitor. If I didn’t dual boot, I’d just run the 7500 and yank half my ram. But there’s software I need for school that only runs in Windows. And I play games, at least currently (school may change that) so I’m kind of stuck. I *will* be purchasing Zeta R1 and will figure out some kind of solution, but, until then I’ll be waiting over here, quietly.
Today’s OS’s need capabilities such as SMP
BeOS always had great SMP and multithreading support, it is a microkernel OS and it has a database-like filesystem, which most filesystems cannot match (especially at making queries, etc.).
I see too many free alternatives to even consider this operating system deployment in any productive environment.
BeOS/Zeta will become more free every day, because an increasing number of components can be replaced by OpenBeOS components.
Gnome and KDE are both rapidly reaching a decent state of usability,
Are they fast? Are they uncomplex? On *nix, I always use WindowMaker for simplicity. But for me Gnome and KDE are much to complex and slow.
why would you want this over all the other os’s about ??
i mean linux is moving at good speed then you all the bsd’s ?
etc..
i asked a similar question before and i was told that it was because it works on legacy hardware blah blah,
but the machine they are selling arent legacy so why not get these machine and run linux or other OS ? is there something im missing about BEOS ??
Snake
i wanna see a review and more screnshots 🙂
Too bad I don’t have the money right now… Oh wait, my birthday is comming up
I know what I’m gonna wish for 
.
Interpretation “yadayadayada….Linux….yadayadayada….Linux.”
If the Linux advocates want “choice” then they’re going to have to accept that people aren’t always going to “choose” Linux.
***
Good luck to the Zeta folks, it’s a bold step.
why would you want this over all the other os’s about ??
i mean linux is moving at good speed then you all the bsd’s ?
Because BeOS is better than all the alternatives in many aspects. If you want to build your own opinion, why don’t you try it?
http://bebits.com/app/2680
is the Mozilla browser a native port ?