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Portable Linux Box
libertynews writes: "Last night at the Kitsap Peninsula Linux User Group meeting we had one of our members bring in a new Linux product that he's been working on for the last year. It is a hardbound-book sized Linux PC. Complete with sound, video, touchpad, SVHS output, docking bay for floppy and cdrom, 2 USB ports. It's called the Nano PC by a local Washington State company called Linux-Works. It was running with a 533MHz Celeron and 128Mb of ram and Caldera's Linux distribution (dual booting with win98).
And its only $799!" This thing has wearable potential no doubt.
Very cool looking, and under a pound. Wow. Good to finally see these things (almost) in the wild.
PCMCIA would allow for a modem, ethernet card, or even better an Iomega PocketZip. Granted you can get USB version of any of these periperals, but USB modems and etherenet cards are notoriously slow and buggy. PCMCIA cards are easier to transport.
The SONY Glasstron glasses (the cheap TV version without the VGA) have an SVHS in, which is sweet, 'cause it just happens this little bugger has a matching SVHS out... The power draw is a bear though.
Their power supply output is 15v DC @ 3A (45W).
Now, Sealed Lead Acid batteries (the best power per volume i have been able to find for my wearable) run about 13 Watt Hours per Pound. Now i figure the average draw of the machine is probably slightly less than half the supply rating, (although we still want to source the peak current when needed i'm more concerned with average when figureing out how long the batteries will last), so to be save we call it 20 W. So we need just under 2Lb of battery per hour of battery life. That's something to think about. Right now if i carry all 8 pounds of my wearable battery bank, i get 12 hours out of it (WITH DISPLAY!), wheras here we're talking 4 hours, not even counting that we'll need another 18w according to SONY's specs, so call that 2 hours with display carrying 8 pounds of battery. That sucks.
Now for plan B. We go for high capacity Li-ion batteries, more expensive, larger, but bettwer power-weight. Okay, now we get 34h/battery, and i can't find the weight spec, but i think they are a little more than a pound, but they cost $114/each so 8 pounds gets us 4 hours or so with these, but that's probably over $1500 in batteries. No good =:-( Doh!
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Play Six Pack Man. I
Since it's so small, it looks awfully useful. However, if only it had a 10/100 ethernet port, I'll bet that these would make great servers. Sure, they don't have any redundancy at all, but if you can probably shove a dozen or so (or I guess about 20 even) into 2U of rack space, it'd probably catch someone's attention.
Even better - if you need to work with it, just remove it from the rack, and there's its display, right in front of you.
Am I missing something here? Looks like they offer up to Celeron 766, 6GB hard drive and up to 256MB memory. Hell - doesn't sound too far off from a low-end server, except for all the redundant parts.
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
The thing pulls ~45W, going by the power specifications (probably padded) of 15V, 3A. Sure, you could rig this up as a wearable, but you'd have to truck around a backpack full of batteries to get any use out of it at all. I guess it's kinda cool that they made a computer that's small like this, but with that kind of power consumption, it's really not all that useful.
All information in this post is true in some sense, false in some sense, and meaningless in some sense.
Good point, but it begs the question, "Who is this product for?"
The trend of late has been for corps to buy/lease laptops for many of their employees for a number of reasons.
1. They can take the machines home with them and do work.
Most individuals never even power their company's laptop on at home unless they need to. And I think you'll find with the possible exception of some techies very few people actually plug their laptop into a seperate keyboard, monitor, and mouse at home. Mouse and keyboard maybe, but monitor, I don't think so.
2. They can take their machine on the road/plane with them and do work.
I definitely don't think this machine can fit the bill for trying to get a proposal or piece of code done on a plane.
3. The laptop gives their employees the ability to move around more, bring them to meetings, collaboration sessions, etc.
I don't know about the rest of the world, but at my company this happens a lot and again this machine just doesn't fit there either.
As for the home market, I don't see this replacing any laptops. Not very many people buy laptops for personal use only and those that do typically put the premium paid in its true portability.
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
You can put any OS on it, Caldera, Win 98/2000, a dual boot (Caldera and Windoze) or you can get it without a preinstalled OS. So what's the big deal?
You can't handle the truth.
I've got to believe that the designer of this sexy little toy intended it to be the "big ugly putty box" killer. That's what the nano-PC should be marketed as: the future of the desktop computer.
And about friggin' time too. Computer cases in general are my pet peeve. Why is it that I can buy a piece of home audio equipment for $200 with the most kickassedly(tm) designed case you've ever seen, but when I spend $2000 on a computer I get some putty-colored moster made out the cheapest, crappiest, ugliest plastic the manufacturer could find? OOH IT HAS A BLINKING GREEN LIGHT I'M SO IMPRESSED. Meanwhile, my crappy $300 car stereo can do this waay-fscked-up laser show that makes it just about impossible for me to see oncoming traffic at night. What is wrong with this picture?!?
Why do you think Apple has been so successful with the iMac? They managed to come up with a case design only slighty less vomit-inducing than your average PC case, and the entire computing world lost its collective mind like a pre-teen staring at a copy of "Plumpers Magazine" for the first time.
I think it goes without saying that the nano-PC is only about 1,000,000 times cooler sitting on your desk than an iMac. Actually, even one of those stupid miniature fridges from thinkgeek is cooler sitting on your desk than an iMac, but that is not my point.
For once you've caught the big desktop manufacturers with their pants down. Your Prime Directive is clear: destroy them all while there is still time.
And while you're at it, would it KILL you guys to put a real video card in the thing?!?
DaC
This has been posted before. This company is just rebranding an Espresso PC. They didn't even change the case or anything...just made up a new name.
1) want to set up a linux game server for an impromptu Network game? :)
:), but I put together a quiet low profile firewall (granted not this low) for $350.
True, this would even make LAN parties a little easier.
2) want a quiet low profile firewall in your server closet (what? you mean everyone doesn't have a server closet?)
I've got a server corner of the room, which means I'm jealous
3) I know someone who works in security. He lugs around two laptops, so he can test things out. Having one of these with an ethernet interface would be lovely. Just set it up to boot a terminal off of the serial interface. Assign it an IP address, and then telnet into it, and Viola. A much smaller solution to needing to lug around two laptops.
This is a great idea!, but what a niche.
I think the biggest problem I see is that it just doesn't have broad enough appeal.
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
It doesn't use a battery. This looks like the same product they used to make called the Expresso, I think. It is not a portable, you still need to plug it into the wall.