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and utter crap. ARM class CPU is locked to windows CE. the specs if I recall are a 350mhz cpu, 128 mb of ram, 4-8 Gb storage, USB 1.1, and a useless 800x480 display. Utterly worthless. I tried researching instructions for installing linux, not easy. All for trash grade hardware. If you did want a slick arm based netbook try: https://www.genesi-usa.com/

I saw this same (or very similar) model on sale at the local CVS.

I'm pretty sure this is the Sylvania netbook that appeared in 2010 for $99 at CVS. Reviewers were not kind about it, but the novelty of buying a $99 computer at a drug store was sort of fun. It's no surprise that 21 months later it's dropped under $50.

These little craptops have always intrigued me, and it's just a matter of time before someone puts out one in the under-$100 range that's not entirely terrible. There's this guy that is available new from lots of ebay sites (I chose this one at random and am not endorsing it). It runs Android 2.2 and sports 256 mb of RAM. I haven't seen any kind words about it and from the specs it's likely still terrible, but you're starting to approach something respectable. It's not that far from being a 7" version of the Efika MX SmartBook, which isn't a world beater by any stretch, but which is light and fanless and runs Linux and sort of harks back to what was fun about early netbook.

These http://www.genesi-usa.com/products/smartbook don't look half bad. There are many many more on the market, but they are overshadowed by trendier tablets. Maybe windows 8 arm port will cause this to change.

If you can run a corporate win 8 desktop on arm, why would you want a powerhogging Intel?

Yeah... they're starting to creep into the market already. Closest I can find that meets what I'm looking for is this: http://www.genesi-usa.com/products/smartbook

But the screen is too small, which means that the keyboard is too small. I can't type on a netbook with any efficiency, because of the way they scrunch the keys together. If that was available with a 13" screen instead of a 10" screen, and all other specs identical, I'd buy it in a heartbeat.

How is his expensive thing better than my cheap thing?

Try the Efika Smartbook from Genesi-USA or Genesi-Europe http://www.genesi-usa.com/products/smartbook

Really good build quality with thickness rivaling the macbook air. Real life battery life is over 7 hours (though mfr rates it only at 4 hours - but i have used it extensively for over 7 hours. YMMV)

Customized ARM Ubuntu with flawless sleep & wake-up with wifi/3g reconnect within 2-3 seconds. Has inbuilt 3G sim slot also.

Its only $200 and really nice product. I place it next to the MacBook Air in usability and convenience. Off course, I am a little enamored with Arm devices these days and if you want x86 then maybe a Macbook or Samsung 9 or one of the ultrabooks (asus/lenovo) could be preferable

I had bought one a few months back and liked it so much i have ordered 2 more for my family members. FYI, i don't have any link with Genesi etc

http://www.genesi-usa.com/products/efika
http://trimslice.com/

http://www.genesi-usa.com/products/efika
Smarttop $129 thin client
Smartbook $199 laptop

They run Ubuntu and are based on the Freescale iMX51.
They are far more powerful than a Raspberry PI.

Freescale i.MX515 (ARM Cortex-A8 800MHz)
3D Graphics Processing Unit
WXGA display support (HDMI)
Multi-format HD video decoder and D1 video encoder (currently not supported by the included software)
512MB RAM
8GB Internal SSD
10/100Mbit/s Ethernet
802.11 b/g/n WiFi
SDHC card reader
2 x USB 2.0 ports
Audio jack for headset
Built-in speaker

10.1" TFT-LCD, 16:9 with LED backlight, 1024 x 600 resolution
Freescale i.MX515 (ARM Cortex-A8 800MHz)
3D Graphics Processing Unit
Multi-format High-Definition hardware video decoder
16GB Nand Flash
External MMC / SD card slot (up to SD v2.0 and MMC v4.2)
Internal MicroSD slot
802.11 b/g/n WiFi (with on/off switch)
Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
2 x USB 2.0 ports
Phone jack for headset
Built-in 1.3MP video camera
Built-in microphone
Built-in stereo speaker

I've got two already. They came from here.

There is a $125 freescale i.MX51 based nettop and a $200 smartbook out there today look up the Efika MX. The company is very involved with the open source community and for the price and openness you really can't beat it. https://www.genesi-usa.com/products

Too bad nobody's making ultra-cheap machines yet.
Why aren't there 50$ SOC systems on the market ? Not tablets , desktops will do, or thin clients.
First post ?

Actually they are getting closer: see Genesi

I actually find the desktop a bit expensive, but the netbook-class product is quite nice. It is indeed more expensive yes, but the display justifies the difference (plus the keyboard).

I think you might want to check this out: http://www.genesi-usa.com/products/efika Comes in at $129. Not exactly 50$, but I guess that's due relatively small production volumes.

With relation to the i.MX515 based net/smartbooks there's one available from Genesi http://www.genesi-usa.com/products and it's according to the company blog it's up for a price drop next week along with the smarttop. They're a developer friendly bunch who've been a big help to the debian ARM project and many other devs. They're working on an i.MX535 based netbook with a Pixel Qi screen but it's unclear how long we'll have to wait for that product.

http://www.genesi-usa.com/products/smartbook

In fact, unless there is some kind of ARM port of Windows, I doubt that you could get that model with Windows installed.

What about the Efika?

http://www.genesi-usa.com/products/efika

Based on the i.mx515. Not sure about availability or pricing.

There's actually been quite a few enthusiast-oriented ARM development boards as of late. In addition to the BeagleBoard and Gumstix...

Marvell OpenRD Client: http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-openrdcdetails.aspx (much more desktop-oriented, albeit barely able to keep up with Beagle and Gumstix in integer, and lagging WAY behind in floating point (no FPU.))
Genesi EFIKA MX Open Client: http://www.genesi-usa.com/products/efika

Of course, there's always the Acorn Archimedes 305, which is a complete ARM-based desktop, and is very much aimed at consumers, not just enthusiasts. 8 MHz ARM2 (there were some ARM1s that made it into the public, but they were aimed at developers, not consumers,) 512 kiB RAM, one 800 kiB floppy drive, no hard drive. And for 1987, it was ridiculously fast - IIRC, the only thing that wasn't a *nix workstation that could come within striking distance was a 25 MHz 386, and those cost quite a few times more money for an equivalent spec (and, there was a version of the A440 (same thing with a hard drive interface and 4 MiB RAM) called the R140, which was actually a *nix workstation running a 4.3BSD variant.) ;)

EFIKA-MX Dev is currently out at $249 http://www.genesi-usa.com/products/efika

Apple had a monopoly on powerPC computers.

Not true. The Sam440, Pegasos, and all of the current generation of games consoles would disagree with you here. Non-Apple.

They used it to keep other OS's off PowerPc

Not true. Yellow Dog Linux will happily run on PowerPC Macs, and there are other PPC operating systems available such as AmigaOS, or even Windows NT!

Google has a monopoly on Search

Debatable. They may have a majority, but there are plenty of other search engines out there, such as Yahoo, or even a certain one from Microsoft that's been getting a lot of press lately...

I was going to recommend the efika, but it looks the PPC version was discontinued, replaced by ARM.

Since when was running a 1 Watt CPU without a heatsink regarded as a challenge?

http://www.genesi-usa.com/efika.php - plug plug

That system runs at 1W@400MHz, although has no video-accelerating northbridge to add to the heat, it can play that MPEG4 video just fine (I am playing something similar now). We've designed it so the 2.5" hard disk actually sits about 5mm from the top of the CPU - if anything we're making cooling harder, and there is NO heatsink. The CPU does NOT power manage into SpeedStep style states - it just runs at 400MHz or "standby" (where it cannot run code until an external interrupt).

It runs fine. Mine's been on 24/7 for nearly a year, barring moving it around and connecting it up to things like new hard disks, changing power strips or measuring the power it uses. It never overheats.

What's the challenge meant to be? Just how crappy Via's chip needs to be that it CAN'T run at 500MHz on a 90nm process, and do without a heatsink of some kind?

If you want a truly low-power board, check out the EFIKA with Freescale MPC5200B processor. It has lower specs that the board in TFA, but consumes less than 10 watts with hard drive, and has RS-232 serial port, USB and NIC. Systems with Freescale MPC5121 and MPC5123 dual-core CPUs are also in the make (see news section). :)

I'm running an EFIKA 5200B board with ATI 9250 graphics card, hard drive and CD burner with Debian Linux. Installation was via USB stick and serial port. :)