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Compaq Itsy Usability movies

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the toys-to-lust-after dept.

Jón Ragnarsson writes "Compaq Western Research Lab has put some movies of the Itsy running Doom, Java, X and other stuff... The ARM CPU still amazes me after all those years... " My love affair with the itsy goes way back to stories that we posted years ago. I even saw one at the 98 LinuxExpo. This is the box that we always wish would be mass produced, but just doesn't seem to ever get any closer. Its still cool tho.

3 of 42 comments (clear)

  1. mass production by Kyobu · · Score: 4

    Does anyone have an explanation for why Itsies can't be mass-produced? Because they're so cool. Is it because price is prohibitive? Or materials? Anyone know?

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    1. Re:mass production by Mondragon · · Score: 4

      Go to Compaq's web site, download the plans, and build one yourself.. :-)

      Honestly, though, there aren't any seriously expensive or hard to find components in that device. You might have been able to convince me a few months ago that ARM chips were in short supply, but with the number of companies shipping products based on it going up, I think we would have heard of any production problems.

      Realistically, it may just be that Compaq doesn't see a market for it. However, it may not cost them too much more to actually produce and ship it. Obviously, if they don't plan on shipping it, they've already acknowledged that they're going to take a loss on the research and development, so recovering that cost should be a non-issue at this point. The real cost actually comes from advertising/marketing (if they want to seriously push the product) and with production time. These wouldn't be that hard to pump off the line, but that means that they have a production line that isn't producing something else, which perhaps was a more profitable product. There's plenty more random reasons as well (like the PDA market is really heating up and getting seriously competitve at this point, and you can't make a lot of money just on the few gear-heads who buy your product because its' guts are cool). A lot of things have to happen before you can release a product to market.

      But, putting all that aside, I've heard that they will be shipping a product around Christmas.

  2. Douglas Adams was wrong.. :( by F2F · · Score: 4

    So, finally the Old Prophecy has come true (and it did way ahead of its time for this planet): an Interface has come, that allows you to command your radio with only but a simple gesture...

    This is Good, for it will be the doom of the evil mouse and keyboard... Rejoice!

    It's a pity though that we'll have to sit *very* still in order to view the whole pr0n collection we just downloaded uninterrupted by random scrolling...

    Wander where Compaq R&D get their ideas from? :)

    Flame On :)