New Netbook Offers Detachable Tablet

Engadget is reporting that a new "Touch Book" being previewed at DEMO '09 in California by the company "Always Innovating" promises a new take on mobile computing devices. Touting 10 to 15 hours of battery life, this ARM-powered netbook weighs less than two pounds, but the true magic comes with the detachable screen that can function as a completely stand-alone touchscreen tablet. The machine is currently running a Linux OS with a touchable 3D UI, the entire screen is magnetic for mounting on a metal surface, and the whole package is being projected for less than $300.

Comments

Beagle Board in a box?

[TheRaven64]

Not shipping yet, but it looks like it's heavily based on the BeagleBoard. That would mean it had a 600MHz OMAP3530, which is quite reasonable. It's close to twice the price that's been announced for similar systems built around a 1GHz i.MX515 (both chips have an ARM Cortex A8 CPU core, a DSP and an OpenGL ES 2.0-compatible GPU core). It looks like it will ship after the Pandora, which has a similar form factor and is built around the same chip.

Not particularly newsworthy in itself, but it's nice to see that a lot of ARM-based computers are starting to hit the market.

Re:Projected for less than $300.

[Ethanol-fueled]

That's what I thought. According to this , the display with keyboard sells for $399.

Additionally, the only storage is an 8GB SD card, so adding more extras such as a hard drive will further jack up the cost.

SI units......

[mrphoton]

For anybody who is wondering/(not living in the 1800s) two pounds is equal to 0.90718474 kilograms.

Re:Projected for less than $300.

[RiotingPacifist]

acording to their site
its $299 for the tablet (with 3 to 5 hours bat)
its $399 for the tablet + keyboard (with 10 to 15 houts bat)

if only i could get one this side of the pond.

Wait a second...

[Anachragnome]

A magnetic case?

I don't know about everyone else, but having magnetic objects anywhere near digitally stored data devices was, to the best of my knowledge, a very bad idea.

Did these guys forget about all that, or did they find a solution?

Even if the device itself is immune to the effects of a strong magnetic field, what about the other machines you hook it up to, say, for example, a USB external HDD?

What am I missing here?

Re:Wait a second...

[TheRaven64]

You are missing the fact that this is not 1995 anymore, and people don't carry floppy disks or tapes around in their pockets. The only commonly-used magnetic media are hard disks, which are sufficiently shielded not to be affected by small magnets near them, and this device uses solid state storage so has no problems with magnetic fields.

Re:Wait a second...

[Anonymous Coward]

You realize modern hard drives have a small Neodymium magnet in the case itself, right? It takes a fairly powerful magnet (on the power of a degaussing coil) to wipe a hard drive these days. In other words, you have to try.

Re:Wait a second...

[Anonymous Coward]

I concur with TheRaven64; there is no need to worry about magnets and modern computing equipment being in close proximity. Sticking a neodymium magnet to the side of a hard drive WILL NOT erase the data on it. See http://www.cobolhacker.com/?p=488 ; the writer stuck a pile of high-strength magnets directly on an HD for 16 hours with no data loss.

Now that we have LCD screens, we don't even need to worry about the effect of magnets on monitors:)

Re:Wait a second...

[pato101]

Further, I'm not sure that magnetic fields do cause trouble. If I recall correctly, varying magnetic fields do create voltage on conductors, and in this case, the magnetic field is fixed.
Sure, it would still affect rotating parts (solid state HD should be out of the effect).
However, I guess that when you fix this thing to the fridge, the magnetic field does create a conduction phenomena at the fridge door while the computer is getting closer. During those moments, the magnetic field would produce an inductive effect after all because of the small currents promoted in the fridge door.
nah!

Re:Projected for less than $300.

[smallfries]

Yes. It's called a battery

Much better summary

[bbasgen]

Gizmodo has a much better overview with a video of the device in action, detailed specs, etc. http://i.gizmodo.com/5162584/always-innovating-touch-book-is-a-part+netbook-part+tablet-open-source-frankenstein?skyline=true&s=x

Add "inter" to the beginning...

[IANAAC]

Shall I go out on a limb and coin the term "net tablet" right now?

Add "inter" to net tablet, and you get a Nokia N800/N810.

Re:ARM Netbook

[Locutus]

I've been wondering where the ARM laptops have been since the OLPC came out using the Geode. For this segment, the ARM chips have the advantage in power/performance/price/cooling

From what I've heard, this year we will see many ARM based devices premier. Have you seen any of the youtube videos showing what the low shipping volume $150 BeagleBoard can do? And for the power, it has a decent 3D video subsystem too.

So this thing is WAY cool in my book. Now when can I get a couple?

LoB

I'd just like to see cross-compilation worked out

[wowbagger]

I am all for anything that gets more diversity in the software landscape, and ARM based netbooks will do that. I just hope that drives the various entities - both companies like Canonical and individual Free Software package creators - to fix the damn cross-compilation issue.

I have spend the past couple of WEEKS trying to build a proper set of binutils, GCC (C and C++), and glibc to do cross-compiles to the Beagleboard: It is absolutely INSANE that I should have to build ON THE BEAGLEBOARD when I have a nice multicore machine here on my desktop, just because too many developers don't understand that HOSTCC does NOT always equal CC (that the computer compiling the code is not the same as the computer that will be running the code, to make it a bit clearer to those who have not done cross-compilation).

I've fought with OpenEmbedded, with no success - trying to build anything non-trivial just fails, and I've gotten tired of posting to the OE groups and getting the collective equivalent of an ass-scratching "Duh, I dunno, it works for me." or "Try pulling the latest (broken) code from the version control system, because we cannot be bothered to actually RELEASE anything."

And while the OMAP3 has some neat hardware (OpenGL ES 2.0 accelerator, DSP, etc.) actually GETTING THE CODE FROM TI TO COMPILE is a slog-fest itself.

Seriously: I *hope* things like this will help drive the clean-up of the code, but until Somebody Big (Canonical, Red Hat, IBM) gets on the issue of identifying the projects that don't cross-compile gracefully (I'M LOOKING AT YOU GLIBC) and helping the maintainers fix that, it is going to be difficult for the various software sources to make their apps available under That Which Is Not X86.