Slashdot Mirror
Linux Finds Its Way to More Handheld Devices
LXrider writes "The coolest new handheld to pick Linux as its OS is the Pepper Pad. This device was one of the most exciting products to be found at this year's otherwise lackluster C3 Expo in NYC. The Pepper Pad runs MontaVista Linux on a Intel XScale PXA270 (624 MHz) processor and it used for viewing multimedia, surfing the net, and controlling your home's electronics."
Any chance this would run other distributions like Debian, or maybe even a *BSD like NetBSD (I do know that OpenBSD runs on the PalmOne Treo 600)? I looked at the product section of MontaVista Software and it seems to be a commercial distribution with no "community edition." The only thing close to free as in beer is the free preview kit I wonder if it would be possible to apply their source packages to come up with a free (as in beer as well as speech) distribution, like CentOS did with RedHat Enterprise Linux. Does this already exist? I realize distribution maintainers need to eat, but I think the pricing model of Xandros would be better, if not a distribution like Debian or Slackware. OTOH, I see some Debian packages for cell phones here., and there is a page for *BSD on mobile devices (cell phones, PDA, laptops) here.
Powered by caffeine and sugar; BSD
This is a really neat product, especially the instant-on, waterproof characteristics, and the 20GB HD. But at $700, I couldn't help wonder where the market niche was supposed to be? It's significantly more than a PDA, yet it doesn't look to price-compete against low-end notebooks (perhaps it does?). It's definitely way cheaper than tablets, but then again tablets have a lot more input features. So I'm not sure where it's supposed to compete in the market. Am I supposed to buy it instead of my PDA? Or my notebook?
Things NOT to look for in your staff
On a device like a handheld or even with a media PC or something? The underlying OS should be transparant to the user.
Or does the keyboard seem nonsensically small?
I don't get the point of taking the time to integrate a keyboard into a device like that and splitting it into a thumb-typer arrangement with itty-bitty buttons (the thumb is not the most agile or delicate of bodyparts).
Have you seen some of the features? A substandard MP3 playing jukebox, the obligatory notepad etc. Can you install linux app packages? Is there access to a shell? It doesn't seem so.
You'd have to gut it to install a linux OS that would be recognizable or put up with their own OS which doesn't exactly excite.
Not to sound like a Zaurus fanboy, but I love the form factor of it. The Pepper Pad seems a tad too big to be able to throw in your jacket pocket and go.
...so Slashdot is printing thinly-veiled press releases.
Isn't there a "Wor of teh World Sucks" movie review in the queue?
I looked at the Pepper Pad. Ho-hum. It's got a 20-gig harddrive, it has yesterday's WiFi (b not g) and USB (1.0 not 2.0), a Blackberry keyboard, and it runs some oddball version of Linux.
For a $200 more, you can get a G4 iBook.
My father is a blogger.
I believe it was a joke, because that's the question appended to nearly every /. article mentioning Linux, Mac, FOSS, etc.
Although p1120 is two years old technology, it is much better:
1) slightly lighter (2.2 pounds).
2) bigger screen (8.9 inch compared to 8.4).
3) higher resolution (1024x600 compared to 800x600)-Much better for watching 16:9 movies.
4) regular clamshell laptop design with a regular keyboard.
5) slightly better cpu, i386 architecture (transmeta crusoe 800 MHZ).
6) regular 2.5 inch hard disk. It comes with a 30 GB drive which can be replaced with a 100GB drive. Drive upgrade is very easy, only two screws.
7)Better upgradability, it has a regular cardbus slot+a mini PCI slot. Ih comes with a mini card which is a wireless b/modem combo -it can be easily replaced with a g wireless card.
8) Standard i386 architecture makes it possible to run multiple operating systems. On my current system I run
1)Suse Linux 9.3-slower than Suse 9.0, faster than Solaris 10.
2)Suse Linux 9.0-this is the fastest OS for the laptop.
3)BeOS 5.03- faster than Suse 9.3 Solaris and Windows.
4) Solaris 10 (only at 800x600 resolution)- a bit slow. To install solaris I had to put the dive on another machine; once installed solaris runs fine on p1120.
5) Win 2k (it came with winxp home)
All on a 100 gb drive.
Disadvantage : more expensive, $1199 from Fujitsu USA. Last week it was on sale at NEWEGG for $1050. The difference in features is worth the money.
Other alternatives: Sharp mm20 ($1200-1300), it is even lighter, 1.9 pounds. It has a regular 10.4 screen but has a 1.8 inch drive (20 GB) There are 1.8 inch drives up to 60GB (9.5 mm) but mm20 can only take a 7 mm drive. Right now it can be upgraded only to 30GB. It has a better CPU, efficeon 1GHZ, and 512 MB RAM. Compared to p1120 it has a big disadvantage, it is very fragile. Fujitsu p1120 is sturdy, you can drop it in a bag or purse without any problems.
I think a product needs to be more redundant by depending less on various IO strapped hardware. The GPS needs to be separated from the unit. I've come across too many products that are upgraded or repaired by technical specialists, when all that needs done is a better design to a modular approach of administering the features; if all features, or options if you will, were like plugging in a MMC form-factor circuit rather than embedded into the phone. Sure, the phone can get bigger, but this is a day where most techology is surface mounted and if it was compatible with competing vendors you can unplug all the options and into another product on a competing service. Of'course, I could vaguely be defining DVD discs that can be played in any DVD player, and an example would be how Microsoft has designed the DVD disc format and XBox DVD player mechanism to prevent someone from using their titular property in another base unit unhindered (such as a Windows XP Xbox emulator)
I am the nightmare of nightmares.
Both size and weight are too big for a handheld. It is closer to a subnotebook (Sharp Mebius Muramasa, mm20, Toshiba Libretto, Fujitsu p1120), but lacks the standard features of a subnotebook (i386 compatibility, pc card slots, regular keyboard). Most subnotebooks are smaller and lighter and have many additional features. I think nobody will buy it.
Fer christ's sake, I'm a linux fanboy, but if we were to give an article to every new product that had embedded windows in it ... or even embedded linux in it, we wouldn't have room for the Dupes! This isn't interesting. not even mildly. It's an example of a doomed product that uses linux. With misleading editorializing: "More handheld devices" implies a crop of new linux handhelds (which this is a bit bigger then anyways), but we get ... 1. That may or may not be linux compatible (probably can't sync with linux), and which requires WMV 9 to watch the preview of.
This is NOT meant to be flame bait!
But this product, plain and simple, is UGLY UGLY UGLY.
It's my biggest problem with the Linux community. You need to take some lessons from Steve Jobs and the Apple community. Virtually everything I've seen in the Linux world is UGLY UGLY UGLY. OK for tech geeks, but not for nobody else.
If you really want to be mainstream, you need to change your ugly ways.
So everybody will probably think I'm just trying to get a rise out of you. Which will simply prove my point. If you don't see how ugly all of this stuff is, you don't understand why Linux -- an excellent concept -- hasn't taken off.
"Can you imagine what would happen to a business which turned away 10 percent of their customer at the door? Sorry you can't coem in here, we don't like the color of your shoes."
Well, since we're going to the extreme of using woefully inadequate metaphors: What they did is more like putting up a billboard on the highway where pedestrians in a certain part of town can't see it. You can still call them or see other ads floating around, but let's pitchfork them over that one less-than-informative billboard. There's karma at stake!!!
"Derp de derp."
6. Firewire may not be the best high-speed bus to add. We'll see. Firewire may not be the say all end all of high speed busses however it has one huge plus, most digital camcorders support it. Firewire would give this unit some use inside video production and would be DAMN useful.
I run an AMD 64 you insensitive clod...
I used to work at a company that ported WinCE and Linux to StrongARM devices. Our last project was a webpad. We went out of business shortly after that.
If I had any advice to offer it would be this. Drop your price. By a lot. It's been said in this thread before a few times but your price point is all wrong. For that cash you could get a laptop. That's what sunk us. People think that a few hundred bucks is a PDA, and anything over about $500 is a laptop. So if you fall in the laptop range, you have to provide laptop functionality.
Would you buy a laptop that ran at 624Mhz with no math coprocessor or video acceleration for $850?
Another point is the hardware. Don't know much about PXA270, but the PXA255 wasn't up to video. Getting video to run on it was my job, and best I could manage was 2 or 3 frames per second. We advertised that it could run video...and in a way it could. But it totally sucked and that put customers off. If it doesn't perform well you're better off simply not promoting it as a video player.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Basically a "Star Trek Tricorder" with a decent sized screen.
And, of course, using documented interfaces so it can be customized to whatever we want it to do.
Buying these precanned systems is often just about as useful as buying cured concrete - its already set in the way someone else molded it... not what I wanted it to be.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]