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

ARM Netbook

[hax0r_this]

Am I the only one more interested in the ARM part than the screen part?

Re:ARM Netbook

[earls]

I thought the LEGS were pretty cool myself.

Re:ARM Netbook

[fm6]

Lots of ARM netbooks out there. It's an obvious market (because of ARM's low power requirements), and a big reason so many netbooks run Linux rather than Windows. Though I suspect serious ARM zealots wish they ran RISC OS!

I'm more intrigued by the use of Linux in a touch screen device. I have a tablet that runs Windows Vista solely because it's the only x86 OS with serious handwriting recognition. I thoroughly despise Vista (nobody despises Vista as much as somebody who's stuck with it) and I'd look very hard at any alternative that seriously exploits the tablet model.

Re:ARM Netbook

[hax0r_this]

Did you read your own link? Every one of those results is about some product that hasn't been released yet. There are no mainstream ARM netbooks available today.

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

Re:ARM Netbook

[loftyhauser]

And where is the Apple Tablet PC on which I can use Inkwell?

Re:ARM Netbook

[fm6]

Right you are. I've been hearing about ARM netbooks so much, I just assumed that they were already in the wild. I guess this is like those blockbuster movie ads on TV that play over and over until you're sick of them, and then, just when you think you've been seeing them forever, they start saying "Opens in two weeks!"

Re:ARM Netbook

[fm6]

OK. You need to pull your head out of the Microsoft hole at least once every 10 years to see what's really going on out there.

And you need to stop assuming that everybody else lives under a rock, like you. I use multiple OSs. I don't currently use MacOS day-to-day, I do track developments for that platform. Rather more, I'm guessing than you track non-Mac platforms.

OS X runs on x86.

Small detail: Apple does not make a tablet. There are third-party hackup of Apple laptops, and theoretically I could ignore the legalities and install MacOS on my Motion tablet (now there's a non-trivial project!). But these are both evil kludges that are not supported by Apple. No thanks. Vista may be crap, but at least it's officially supported for my platform, it runs my apps without my jumping through hoops (well, most of the time), and it's actually designed for the hardware I'm using.

Apple's Inkwell handwriting technology has been around and beloved since the days of Newton (i.e. Apple).

OK, it's news to me that Inkwell had been ported to the Mac. Not that I'm excited. I used it in its original Newton incarnation. Supposedly they've since fixed its notoriously poor recognition code, but it had so many other issues (punctuation is not part of a word's spelling!) that I'm damned wary of it. And Apple's not bothering to create hardware that uses it doesn't make me any less wary.

Perhaps Vista's recognition is a little better at the moment... but who cares, OS X pummels Vista in to a quivering mass of junk that it is...

In other words, you don't know or care whether Inkwell is a serious alternative to what I'm using. You just want to remind us all that the Mac Fanboy is the only life form with a glimmer of intelligence.

Re:ARM Netbook

[ksd1337]

And you need to stop assuming that everybody else lives under a rock, like you.

This is Slashdot. He doesn't live under a rock, he lives in his mom's basement.

Re:ARM Netbook

[Barryke]

What is that handwriting you talk about?

Projected for less than $300.

[Steauengeglase]

So it should be something like $450 to $600?

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.

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.

Re:Projected for less than $300.

[smallfries]

Yes. It's called a battery

Re:Projected for less than $300.

[goombah99]

Gravity Shifting. There's a gravity manipulation nodule in the screen that changes the direction of gravity. /no really

Yes but it only works in python

import gravity

so you have to hold the machine upright until it boot. And if you put it to sleep it falls over.

Re:Projected for less than $300.

[Abreu]

[sigh] There's another battery in the screen

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.

Removable Keyboard, not Screen?

[mhall119]

From the looks of it, I think it's more accurate to say this comes with a removable keyboard, rather than a removable screen.

All the ports are on the screen half, and it's twice as thick as the keyboard half.

Re:Removable Keyboard, not Screen?

[TheRaven64]

They put a second battery in the keyboard. It claims to get around 3 times the battery life with the keyboard attached, so I'd imagine the battery in the screen part is smaller.

Getting closer...

[RapmasterT]

I for one have been waiting...and waiting for this rather obvious extension of the data device metaphor. Basically, an Ipod touch that has about 4-5x the screen size would be exactly what I (and by extension everyone else) want. Shall I go out on a limb and coin the term "net tablet" right now?

Magnetic, eh?

[InvisibleClergy]

I accidentally your entire hard drive, is this bad?

Re:Why are clamshell handhelds now "netbooks"?

[mrchaotica]

Psion, apparently (seeing as how it's suing everyone else using the word).

EMR platform?

[Ironica]

Now I really want to find EMR solutions that will run on Linux. This would be a *perfect* piece of hardware for a clinic setting... if the whole EMR industry wasn't so infatuated with MS. (The reps from NextGen seem to think that MySQL is a dodgy, fly-by-night operation next to their MSSQL server.)

Re:Hey, if you can hijack Netbook as a name...

[TheRaven64]

Oh, apparently they are suing over it. I missed that somehow.

What keeps it from tipping over?

[goombah99]

What is in the keyboard? extra port connectors? a dvd players? Obviously it's not the batteries or anything actually required to run.

but it has to be heavy enough not to tip over. Since the batteries are in the screen, the base must be filled with lead?

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:Appearence!

[capnkr]

Actually, it looks almost just like what the Elonex One was originally supposed to be: a Linux-based netbook/tablet with a removable keyboard. Yet going to the current Elonex site, it appears they abandoned that unique form factor for something more traditional.

It's interesting, then, that the company in this story calls themselves "Always Innovating"... ;)

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

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.

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.

In fact forget the keyboard.

[pavon]

I haven't been interested in any of the existing netbooks, because I can't stand typing on the small keyboards. But I would be interested in an inexpensive tablet, if the linux build they provided was customized to work well as a tablet. I hope they have a configuration option that includes a normal dock in place of the keyboard.

non-Intel

[simplerThanPossible]

ARM's OMAP 3 is the news: it's a non-Intel netbook.

Maybe not today, but this is the way the Intel monopoly ends: a smaller, simpler, cheaper, more power-efficient chip that is customized for what is needed today, not weighed down by decades of legacy decisions.

A barrier is applications for the platform: I'm sure Windows doesn't run on it; and they'll be few binary linux applications. But I think the web is now mature enough, so web apps + multimedia.

Then again, Intel is an incredible competitor. Nothing stops them from disrupting themselves. They surely have internal non-legacy projects just like this. Several. (Andy Grove's blurb is on the cover of "The Innovator's Dilemma").

Re:Uh oh...

[Psion]

Damned straight! Cause you know I'd want one!

Wait ... oh that Psion.

Re:Appearence! Innovation in the workplace:

[davidsyes]

I wonder if THEY go topless in the office...

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.

Re:SI units......

[Blakey Rat]

You also spelled "memorize" wrong. ;)