Second Prototype of the $200 Open Source Tablet 259
holy_calamity writes "TechCrunch blogger Mike Arrington decided last year to invent a new class of low-cost internet tablet using open source hardware and software. The second prototype has been unveiled, sporting a 12-inch touchscreen powered by a Via Nano processor, 1 GB of ram and a 4 GB flash drive. It runs a browser and nothing else on top of a custom Linux build. 'Resolution is 1024×768, which means the vast majority of websites are viewed in full width without scrolling. The device also has wifi, an accelerometer (so when you turn the screen on its side you can view more of a web page), a camera and a four cell battery.'"
Its VIA! (Score:2, Informative)
So its going to look great on paper, and will be fine for the first hour, but sooner or later the thing will lock solid because Via have cut some corners in the drivers or not fully implemented a standard.
Previous owner of a kt133 (usb lockups), current owner of a CN400 (video lockups).
Re:BOM? Dev cost? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Its VIA! (Score:3, Informative)
I have no idea if current stuff is as crappy as you say buy yes I had to run my KT400 board at 100 MHz FSB instead of 133 since it locked up all the time if I didn't.
May also have worked like crap in Solaris, or if that was my MSI board (which is K8T800 in any case ..)
All crap =P
Re:Hope the market is ready... (Score:3, Informative)
QNX + opera would have worked nicely in that small of footprint. I had one demoed to the company I was working for in 2 weeks from a mock up of OTS parts I got online. the prototype works solid for 2 years, I used it daily in meetings.
I'm betting your ex company screwed up based on internal mismanagement more than anything else. That's where my project ended. The managers that loved it, refused to make decisions and it died 6 months later when upper management pulled the plug due to lack of progress. Managers are the biggest problem to getting anything done.
and yes I was a manager, I hated my fellow managers because they would dwell on really stupid crap for hours at a time in those meetings.
I hope this company can pull it off, they have to compete with the Nokia N810 and it's already selling and 98% open.
Re:Nothing else? (Score:4, Informative)
Obviously the tablet won't be locked to that distro. If you want a more full-featured distro, you can install one.
Barely boots (Score:3, Informative)
"Barely boots" ... What? What does this mean? Either it boots or it doesn't. It's like being 'a little bit preggers'.
As for the screen size, you don't want a massive screen on a little tablet PC. I have a 12" tablet right now and other than weight, it's about perfect.
$300 is an okay price. HP has a $350 8.9" laptop with 1.6Ghz processor. If they can afford to do that for a 'real' laptop, I think $300 is a bit on the high side for a laptop that can only run a web browser.
Having said that, I paid $1200 for my tablet and felt I got a really good deal at the time. Previous tablets I looked at were in the $2500 range.
Re:Desktop Holder (Score:2, Informative)
It's Duplo.
Re:major suck (Score:2, Informative)
Re:major suck (Score:3, Informative)
No... Nokia contracted with Adobe to produce a proper ARM Linux binary just for the Nxxx web tablets.
Re:ur doing it wrong (Score:1, Informative)
Oh god...what an idiot...
Re:ur doing it wrong (Score:3, Informative)
There are a few differences between the Via board and the BeagleBoard.
First, the BeagleBoard includes RAM and flash on the package-on-package CPU module. You can install an OS in the flash and you've got something that will boot and run. Not sure what the specs on the current revision of the BB are, but the latest OMAP3530s come with 512MB of flash and 256MB of RAM on the chip (well, technically it's three chips, stacked on top of each other). Adding the RAM and the flash to the Nano the prices are similar.
Second is power consumption. Most of the Nano boards I've seen are rated at around 20W for their maximum power consumption and around 6W minimum. The most the BB draws is around 1.8W. At best the BB is an order of magnitude better, at worst it's a factor of three. If you're just playing MP3s you can shut down the CPU and GPU cores on the OMAP completely and use the DSP, which takes around 15mW.
Next, there's the speed. The Nano will be faster. This shouldn't really be a surprise to anyone. The real question is whether the OMAP will be fast enough. The most CPU-intensive thing the average user does is play back video. The OMAP CPU will struggle with this, but the DSP can decode 720p H.264 quite happily (in a power envelope measured in mW) while this will use somewhere from 50-100% of the CPU on the Nano and take the power consumption up to around 10W.
Finally, is the cost. You're consuming a mass-produced consumer board (the Nano) to a reference implementation (the BB). If you are building a system around an OMAP you will build your own board (easy, since almost everything is on chip and you don't need to do much other than connect much other than ports to the chip) and buy the CPUs in bulk. Doing this you will be paying no more than around $75 for the OMAP3530 chip (cost for individual ones from the first supplier I found - prices go down a lot in bulk) and not more than around $20 for the board.
Re:BOM? Dev cost? (Score:1, Informative)