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VIA Unveils $79 Rock and $99 Paper ARM PCs

Posted by timothy on from the what-no-scissors? dept.

Don't yet have one of those million Raspberry Pis, but you're in the market for a tiny, cheap ARM computer? An anonymous reader writes with this snippet from geek.com: "VIA has decided it's time to update the APC (ARM PC) board with new components and the choice of two configurations. The new systems are called APC Rock and APC Paper. The hardware spec for both boards is exactly the same except for the fact the Rock ships with a VGA port whereas the Paper doesn't. The Rock also costs $20 less at $79, whereas the Paper is $99. The reason for the price difference is the fact that the Paper ships with a rather novel case whereas the Rock is a bare board. The Paper's case is made from recycled cardboard attached to an aluminum chassis to help with strength, meaning it will keep the dust off the components and make it easier to carry while keeping weight to a minimum."

11 of 158 comments (clear)

  1. What about by Dishwasha · · Score: 5, Funny

    scissors?

    1. Re:What about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      The APC Scissors will have superior specs and and be priced above the APC Paper's cost of $99, although it will also be inferior to and priced below Rock's cost of $79.

    2. Re:What about by Billy+the+Mountain · · Score: 4, Funny

      ...yeah an' an' don't forget about Spock and lizard!

      --
      That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
    3. Re:What about by KiloByte · · Score: 5, Informative

      RasPi has very close specs, this one adds just a tiny 4GB flash card, which is obviously not worth the $44 price difference.

      You'd want this one instead: more than 10x the performance, 2GB memory, $89 w/o disk.

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    4. Re:What about by Em+Adespoton · · Score: 4, Funny

      The APC Scissors will have superior specs and and be priced above the APC Paper's cost of $99, although it will also be inferior to and priced below Rock's cost of $79.

      How is this possible? The answer is that they'll push it out at $119 dollars and then have to cut the price to $49 due to the Rock crushing it in sales.

      I think that about wraps it up.

    5. Re:What about by Cryacin · · Score: 5, Funny

      Double whoosh

      --
      Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
    6. Re:What about by camperdave · · Score: 4, Funny

      I don't care about the price, as long as it is cutting edge.

      --
      When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
  2. Have they fixed the memory controller yet? by tlambert · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Have they fixed the memory controller yet?

    The biggest performance bottleneck for graphics on ARM systems has not been the GPU; I've used Mali-400 systems (like this one is supposed to be), and I've used the nVidia system. Graphics performance sucked on both.

    Part of this has to do with the fact that the graphics architecture in standard Linux penalizes you for not GPL'ing your drivers, but the Android graphics stack gets around this by duplicating some kernel interfaces with slightly non-GPL'ed versions - yet the performance is still terrible.

    The blame rests squarely on the memory copy speeds, which comes down to the memory controller. Apple has completely addressed this in their ARM chips (but are not sharing), and Samsung has partially addressed this in their ARM chips (and are also not sharing). Has VIA addressed the memory controller bandwidth issues in the WonderMedia, or does "WonderMedia" actually mean "I wonder when they will get media support in their ARM chips"?

  3. Re:Remember Netbooks? by am+2k · · Score: 4, Funny

    Wow, I haven't read so much focused hate in a single post in a while on Slashdot. Did a netbook run over your kitten or something?

  4. Re:Why is this good? by dido · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Interfaces. Flexibility. You can plug it into a 1080p TV and get video output that way. If you need more storage, a multi-terabyte USB hard drive is easy to plug in. Software is also your responsibility, and that means you can make it run just about anything with more or less effort depending on that. You'd be lucky if the $40 Android tablet even has an HDMI port, much less a USB port, and good luck getting it to run anything but the version of Android it came with. I managed to build a working HTPC with a Raspberry Pi within a few hours of it getting to me in the mail, and the only reason why I haven't yet turned it into a file server/torrent box as well is that I'm reorganising the several external drives I have, so I can repurpose one of them.

    --
    Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
  5. What about RFI? by steveha · · Score: 4, Interesting

    These boards don't seem to be worried about emitting radio frequency interference (RFI). That "paper" system case is slick but I don't think it effectively shields RFI.

    Is RFI somehow not a problem with these? Is it because they are very low-power, or is it because they are somehow not regulated by the FCC for RFI, or what?

    Would operating one of these make the amateur radio enthusiasts down the block from you curse you?

    --
    lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely