Let's say you're a hot new high-tech company with plenty of favorable industry buzz and you're just days away from your IPO. What's the worst thing that could happen? Well, how about one of the industry's biggest and most visible giants abruptly dropping its support for your product with little or no explanation for its actions, thus leading to all kinds of speculation by the press about the effectiveness of your technology? Ooooh, yeah, that's gotta hurt. Congratulations! Now you know how the folks at Transmeta might be feeling right about now.

Transmeta, you've probably heard, has this new chip called "Crusoe," which is a low-power processor that's designed for use in laptop computers. Because of its extremely low power draw, the hype was that Crusoe-powered laptops might be able to eke out ten hours or more of productive work on a single battery charge-- heck, when we recently heard about Sony's new Crusoe-based VAIO laptops, we were hearing that they'd manage seventeen hours of juice between rechargings. Rumor had it that even Apple has been working on a Crusoe-based PowerBook in its secret underground bunkers in order to tap into the chip's battery-saving potential.

Unfortunately, it seems that the hype doesn't much resemble reality. CNET reports that IBM has shelved its plans for a Crusoe-powered ThinkPad 240; no reason was given, although the company claims that it's still evaluating Transmeta "on an ongoing basis." Some analysts figure that IBM bailed because of performance issues. Since the Crusoe isn't an x86-based processor (as near as we can make out), all Windows applications have to run through a "code-morphing software layer" which sounds basically like a performance-chewing Virtual PC-style emulator. But worse yet, ZDNet reports that instead of the eight-hour battery life that IBM hoped to advertise in its Crusoe-based ThinkPad, the current prototypes are only boasting-- get this-- "two and a half to three hours" of juice. This is progress? C'mon, our iBook beats that on a bad day.

So, unless the Crusoe shows some serious improvement in the future, odds are Apple isn't missing much by sticking with the PowerPC. The specter of Exponential comes to mind; remember them? They were the folks working on an alternate PowerPC processor way back when. Apple sunk some money into their efforts, but the first "x704" chips were late, hot, and not nearly as fast as originally hyped. Eventually Apple pulled its support, leading to Exponential's collapse and a lawsuit against our Cupertino protagonists, the outcome of which we still don't know. That's not to say that Transmeta's going to follow suit, but so far this story is shaping up to be vaguely familiar. It's a shame, too-- just as we had high hopes for 500 MHz PowerPCs back in 1996, the idea of a seventeen-hour PowerBook had us drooling on our keyboards.