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HagakiPC - "Postcard" PC
captainJam writes "The HagakiPC, Hagaki meaning postcard in Japanese, is a tiny PC with dimensions of 135 x 109 x 18mm and weighing in at 340g making it by far the lightest and 2nd slimmest handtop. Only 128MB RAM and a 640x480 VGA screen, plus there's no hard drive -- it's meant to run OS's from CF cards (great for D.S.L. and the like). Still only a prototype, so not much info is available, but what we do know (and a few photos) are here." Update: 09/01 12:14 GMT by T : Link to D.S.L. upgraded to a form that doesn't make some browsers choke.
How much is the shipping? :)
"http://www.damnsmalllinux/" Greatly written link.
ROMANES EUNT DOMUS
This CPU is capable of TV out, video in and has Macrovision copy protection built in.
Built-in Macrovision? Sign me up!
One of the greatest hurdles in getting these very small and very powerful computers to be very useful is how to handle input - its hard to build in a fully-sized or totally usable keyboard into something like this. I'm not finding any straightforward explanation of how you get input into this computer on the website at first glance; I also don't see a stylus in any of the pictures, which makes me think touch screen (which can be implemented well... just not ideal).
I know some people are going to claim I'm wrong, but I think a 266MHz processor and 128MB of RAM are pushing it a bit to run modern applications (and more likely, operating systems!), especially compared to the competition (such as the OQO at 1GHz)
I mean, where is this product's niche? It's not really powerful enough to run XP (or KDE), but then again the battery life isn't good enough to compare it to something like a Toshiba E800 PDA, which can be excused for not running XP or Linux because it's not designed for that kind of use.
Will people end up running something like Qtopia on it instead? How does the 266MHz compare in terms of raw power with the new XScales, which run at up to 624MHz?
specifications (in japanese):
http://www.hagakipc.jp/ba_spec.htm
http://www.hagakipc.jp/ front page.
Notice the hit counter, this was probably "news" long before slashdot "found" the link.
It also supports CF microdrives, which should give you up to 4gb of storage.
From a corporate standpoint, the development costs of making this sort of product are very high. The sales from these are fairly low as the only people who buy them tend to be impulse buyers, most of whom are scared away by the high price needed to make a profit.
Between CF cards and actual pen-and-paper notebooks, this type of machine is entirely unneeded.
Nothing to see here, please move along.
_____
Thank you.
Damn small linux (D.S.L) points to http://www.damnsmalllinux/ which makes some browsers, think it should slap a .com (or whatever) onto that and end up on a advertisement page. Now http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ is the correct link. Just FYI.
I guess this is another wannabe portable device to find market niche, the only advantage it has over a PDA is its 640x480 screen, otherwise all specs are actually worse than a PDA. PDAs are cheap now, and will this "new" gadget be cheaper?
I still strong suggest the use of Virtual Keyboard, as input method seems to be a hurdle for small/light portable devices at the moment.
Uselessful technology (Air-Charged
This seems to be just another blurring of the lines between PDAs and tablets and PCs and MP3 players and cell phones and...
I mean, yeah. It's gee-whiz nifty technology and gadget lovers (self included!) will go for it. But does it do something a PDA won't? Or one of these new "Portable Media Centers?" Or is it just supposed to be a really tiny laptop, sans hard drive? The whole tech industry seems to be blindly cranking out portable technology with various levels of integration and capacity in hopes of hitting on the right combination of size, power, and capability.
Which is cool for gadget-lovers, but seems like a real poor (and real expensive) substitute for market research.
No hoax. Free computers.
Last year, someone brought a prototype into the office where I work. It was postcard sized, but the screen covered the entire face. The screen also hinged out to reveal a keyboard.
It had a hard disk and a Transmeta processor (about 1GHz, I think). It was fast enough to run WinXP.
The whole device was a prototype, but it seems to me that it blew away the PC described in the article. They were taking it to a show (Comdex?).
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
...wondering at what point you start to hit diminishing returns for miniaturization? C'mon, how small do we need? Anything smaller than a laptop gets you into major trouble with input devices (as another poster already mentioned). I have enough trouble with existing Palmtops. There's gotta be a point at which modern technology can be miniaturized further, but benefits no one in doing so.
Call me a luddite, but this level of shrinkage strikes me as being more of an PITA than lugging around a larger unit. What someone needs to develop is a method of interfacing with a device this tiny that doesn't require tiny keys or voice input. I have absolutly no idea what kind of interface could fill that role, even theoretically (never mind realistically).
Anyone have any ideas?
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
It's got Macrovision built in! I told myself long ago I would not buy another computer until I could finally get one with video copy protection on board. That RULES.
I'll give you that it can run damn small linux, but damn small windows? Most people are not going to want to run a win-ce system on something that claims to be a pc... in this case it's just an oddly shaped, poorly designed, less powerful Pocket PC with a lot of RAM.
Hey look no pointless curley braces or semicolons... just like Python
Did anyone else notice that they recommend small footprint versions of Linux but show XP in the screenshots? HA! Good luck fitting Windows on a CF card and keeping the total cost down. Sure if the thing is $500, you still have to buy a microdrive of some sort then to have a normal-footprint OS.
The selling point seems to be the x86 compatability, but linux already works on many embedded processors, and the thing is to slow to run windows.
Its previous hardware product from Jan 2003 was a fan.
The TV in/out is certainly unique to that HagakiPC, but I'm not sure what they have in mind for that.
Can't they take the display technology from the Palm's (even Palm V), add just enough CPU and memory to make a decent performing Xterm, add Wifi and that's it. Backlight optional as long as the reflectivity is very high (like Palm V).
Perhaps pouring methanol into it would help it last 10 hours or more (but the Palm V already lasts 30 hours).
Then you could just connect up to the near compute server, with specs of your choice and just surf, read, hack, whatever, from the comfort of your sofa, your lounge chair outside, etc. Most current laptops are just too unwieldy to replace a magazine.
I love it, except the macrovision copy protection. Who would want to copy a DVD using something with a 266mhz cpu? even if they get some USB DVD drive, where would it get copied? Some 512 meg flash card?
I think this would be a fine replacement for a laptop for those who want to check email or surf the web where there is a wireless service. I would also think at 640*480, it would make for a so-so word processor, not bad for taking to the library. And the fact that its less than one pound would be a huge selling point for me.
Come to think of it, how is this different than a PDA?
Right now, I use a 22 year old Tandy M100 laptop for taking all manner of notes in school, as well as for programmable math. I haven't really considered a modern laptop because they're too large (M100 is same size as a sheet of paper) if you don't pay an indecent sum for a mini-mini, and because it's not ridiculously expensive to get batteries for (4 X AA == 20 hours operation).
Now, I would like to take the low power consumption of the M100 (1 watt in it's case) and it's full-size, GOOD keyboard and combine it with a more modern but still reflective LCD display. Rather than have a keyboard with 3-5 inches of space on top and bottom of it, build the laptop into the area covered by the KBD (12 by 5 inches or so). Now use a pair or 4- or 5- inch LCDs side-by-side as a display. Install a CF drive for mass storage and BAM, you got a winner.
On the software side, do something new with an operating system. Create a multi-tasking Kernel like that found in Contiki (GUI os for Commodore 64), along with a very basic windowing system. Keep 1) A word processor, 2) A simple spreadsheet, 3) A calendar, 4) A high-precision calculator, and 5) basic web browser/e-mail client in ROM on the system. Also, something that's good for "quick'n'dirty" programming, like the BASIC of the M100, and also similarly user-friendly.
Yes, quite a wishlist... probably never gonna happen. But I can dream, right?