99 USD micro notebook gets Debian support | Hacker News Reader

99 USD micro notebook gets Debian support

sharism.cc

56 pointswolfspraul19 comments

This is wonderful, and I want to want this, but this seems like a fine RMS torture device. A 320 pixel screen, divided by 80, is... 4 pixels per character. Time to bring out the old HP-49G mini font. And I find myself thinking, "Oh, I can plug in an external keyboard." But that wouldn't be copyleft hardware. But I want to want this, and I want to get this. Imagine that! My own little copyleft computer, that lives in my pocket and only talks to me, and doesn't talk to any of the bad computers.

Imagine the shock, when you're listening to music on your headphones, and your friend asks, "What are you listening to?" And you pull this thing out of your pocket.

By the way, it's slightly hard to find, so here's a closeup of the keyboard: http://sharism.cc/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/kbd1.png

The Ingenic 4720 is a nifty little device to run Linux on, but good luck getting any decent video out of this thing. I'm working on a 4740 @ 330MHz and the performance is...um...non-optimal.

They leave the place for alternative layout (i.e. Russian) on the tiny keys, nice!

Other than that, can anyone explain why RMS favors MIPS-based Loongson CPU and these guys - MIPS based Ingenic XBurst ? How are these CPUs any more open than any other (i.e Intel, or any ARM core)

As far as I know, RMS doesn't care, it's just that by commercial accident, systems that are particularly open in other ways have tended to be MIPS based.

My understanding is that he objects to the non-free status of the firmware present on other devices.

Also I call bullshit on Ingenic XBurst. Ingenic won't release any public documentation on what these extra opcodes are or what they do.

Is there a shift-key anywhere there? Seems it'd be hard to do any writing / case-sensitive filesystem work without one. And if it's the up-arrow, what's the down-arrow for? Subscripts?

shift arrow is on bottom left. I got one when I found out it could easily run guile etc. so that I have a tiny scheme interpreter to play around with at coffee shops etc. Once you get used to typing with your thumbs it is really not that bad. the biggest down side is no built in wireless. there is micro sd though so in theory if someone starts making micro sd wireless cards again you could use that. As it stands you have to connect it to your computer via usb ethernet and forward internet that way.

Here's a review of the nanonote:

http://www.linux.com/news/embedded-mobile/netbooks/296251:a-...

I almost bought one, but they don't ship to Ireland, so I tried the EU distributers page. To purchare it, I need to create an account - nothing special there - but.. why do they need my gender and date of birth to buy stuff from them?? So.. nope, not buying it now.

Where does it say what countries they ship to? I couldn't see any such information on the site.

If you try to checkout, it will only display shipping options if they ship to the country in your address (I tested it, with Ireland it disn't display options, but had a link to the page; with the US it let you choose from two fedex options and gave price of shipping).

If you go to the distributer page, it links three distributers: EU, china and asia.

On a side note, I emailed the EU distributer and the guy was pretty helpful and friendly and said he'll consider removing gender and date of birth as compulsaroy options. If he does, I'll probably buy one.

Ah, thanks. I wonder why they list Ireland in the country selection if they won't ship there.

They list every country in the country selection for the addresses.. future expansion I guess...??

I expect this thing has incredible battery life, but it doesn't seem to be on the website.

Maybe not; the battery itself should be tiny.

I think they just never got around to measuring battery life.

Alas, you're right. I get 2.5-3.5 hours from my eee PC's 4400mAh battery; they have a 850mAh. Even though they have a much smaller screen and slower CPU, which will draw less power, a x5 smaller battery is definitely tiny.

Still, to get it down to 126 grams is amazing (incl. battery) http://sharism.cc/specs/ My eee weighs x8 (1000 grams).

I have one, they're a good toy.

I haven't managed to do anything useful yet, although as I bought it mainly to have a small device that runs "vi" I'm happy.

A slightly modified version of the hardware could make a great graphing calculator...

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