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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
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.
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.
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.