Charmed Announces Crusoe-based Linux Wearable

isdale writes: "Charmed Technology, founded by MIT Media Lab graduates, announced what it claims is the fastest available wearable computer -- 800Mhz Crusoe TM5800 processor. The CharmedIT comes standard with a 266 Mhz Pentium MMX for about $2k. The Crusoe upgrade costs another $500. The OS is extra ($250 for RedHat or Debian), as is the display, input device, carrying case, battery, charger, usable application ... if that isn't enough options, you can also get a DIY kit."

Comments

This is open hardware!

[jpatokal]

I'm seeing a lot of griping here about how they dare to charge $250 for installing Linux and how the entire system is overpriced -- well hey, build your own then. The hardware design is open source and available right here, and the full list of commercial components used to build the kit is available here.

Also, the $6000 price tag is not particularly unreasonable for a commercial wearable computer, eg. Xybernaut's stuff isn't much cheaper. Last year I had the job of purchasing a wearable for our lab -- we almost went with the earlier model of CharmIT, but in the end decided that we needed a bit more power and expandability, so we rolled our own. Had the Crusoe version existed then, we quite probably would have chosen it.

Cheers,
-j.