After years of secrecy and  some rumoured rocky beginnings, Transmeta revealed Crusoe, a mobile processor built for the LongRun.

Already slated for use in upcoming WebPads and Mobile Linux hand-held devices, energy-efficient Crusoe will revolutionise computing, appropriate for the start of new millennium.

An $88-million investment from America Online, Gateway, Compaq, Sony, and several major Taiwanese electronics manufacturers is set to transform Transmeta into a prime-time processor player.

We are still waiting for both useful benchmarks and actual products using Transmeta chips, however.

Claiming to have started sampling Transmeta's new Crusoe at 0.15-microns, TSMC is boasting about beating both Intel and AMD to the next level of smaller, faster, battery-sipping processor performance.

Preferring Crusoe's high performance/power-consumption ratio and Linux's free operating system, Gateway has partnered with AOL to start a new line of net appliances based on the Torvalds twins. You might even see these AOL-everywhere Web pads and net toasters by Christmas.

Transmeta's Crusoe-5400 line is set to show its PC legitimacy during PC Expo at the end of June with an appearance in actual notebook prototypes. To set the stage, Transmeta has also published some preliminary comparative benchmarks based on their in-house crafted WCR/WCE (Workload Completion Rate/Efficiency) metrics. We have distilled Crusoe's performance results into our own CPU score.

With support from IBM, Hitachi, and NEC, Transmeta shows off some prototypes of upcoming notebook products using their LongRun Crusoe. Laptops running 8 hours on a battery at up to 700MHz should be nothing to sneeze at, but Compaq and Dell have decided to take a pass for now.

In any case, Crusoe-powered ultralights should make great geek Christmas presents--if they actually arrive for sale by then.

Despite their demo last week at PC Expo, IBM is still cagey about whether they will actually market a Crusoe-based ThinkPad in the fall.

They are afraid nobody will want an 8-hour notebook?

Boosting the cache, slimming the power requirements, Transmeta officially introduces its new TM5600 notebook processor. Still at just 700MHz, though.

Expected to swap patents including AMD's Lightning Data Transport (LDT) technology, Intel's two biggest processor rivals look set to combine some of their forces against the giant. Details of the partnership are sketchy, but expected soon.

Although not expected in North America until October 25, Transmeta's Crusoe is now appearing inside new Sony VAIO C1 Picturebooks in Japan.

With an estimated battery life of up to 5.5hrs, it doesn't quite meet Transmeta's "all-day-on" hoopla. Still, it beats the 2hr limit of the previous model, using an Intel Pentium-II 400MHz chip.

With an opening IPO of $270-million, Transmeta finally starts to make good on the $150-million the company has reportedly lost since 1995.

However, not everyone is enamoured. Both IBM and Compaq have pulled their Transmeta-inside plans for now.

Sony and NEC recalled a limited batch of Crusoe-based notebooks and picturebooks, after a problem was discovered while re-installing Windows into the hardware.

Funny, we thought all computers had that problem with Windows...