$99 copyleft ultra-portable laptop is Arduino for linux developers | Hacker News Reader

$99 copyleft ultra-portable laptop is Arduino for linux developers

linux.com

84 pointsnaradaellis36 comments

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For $50, you could instead get the Zipit Z2.

http://www.zipitwireless.com/default.aspx?skinid=1

It includes wireless b/g, has more internal flash, and installing Linux is well supported by the company:

http://linux.zipitwireless.com/

Seems to have a reasonably active community around it.

I think the reason, for what it is worth, was more to have a totally open system, where everything down to schematics is available for you to see / use / fiddle with, than to have the cheapest small computer on earth.

Your link says it has 8MB of memory, while the NanoNote has 2GB. The MB may be a typo, but I found the same spec on a review site. Whether they got it from the same page you linked, I can't tell you.

32MB DRAM and 8MB flash.

Ah, you're right -- I meant storage space.

I'm torn. I've been waiting for a $100 "netbook" for a long time, but I wasn't expecting them to be quite so small. I seriously doubt that I could touch-type on that keyboard.

EDIT: Yes, I know that it's not meant for "normal use", but that keyboard has to be for something...

You could try this: http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.39670

It's nowhere near as open, and nowhere near as cute, but it does have a larger screen & keyboard, and 128Mb of RAM. A debian port appears to exist.

(I reviewed a very similar tablet device - same chipset - on my blog, here: http://projectgus.com/2010/06/eken-m001-android-tablet-revie... )

Getting off into a bit of a tangent here, but you may have an idea. I'm looking for the cheapest possible tablet with 1 or more USB host ports and WiFi. It doesn't have to be pretty, large, or have decent software, just needs to be open enough that I can roll a little Linux distro for it to ship some custom software on it. I've got a SmartQ v7 on the way (for unrelated purposes mainly), but they're upwards of $200, so they aren't a perfect fit. If you have any ideas, I'd greatly appreciate it.

The reviewed tablet may be good enough for you - it runs Android, so you can ship a custom app on it (unsure why you need a custom Linux distro).

Apart from that, try alibaba. http://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?SearchText=linux+tablet is a good start.

http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/278705581/Cheapest_Linux_M... looked pretty decent. They say the min order is 100, but a lot of vendors are flexible on that.

Often you can find some on ebay, too.

Edit: This is $88 and is currently running WinCE on ARM. If you are lucky, the vendor might know if Linux will run: http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-7-Mini-Netbook-Laptop-Notebook-WIFI-...

http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/296708176/3G_tablet_pc_Wit...

This seems like the King sub $100 unit. Someone please buy then and test it out!!!

Edit: Found another awesome sub $100 unit.

http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/313429636/Come_here_the_An...

sheeva plug!

That's a disappointing review, but it makes a lot of sense. I've been looking at that tablet since it came out. There's a video review of it as well, which was mildly favorable.

It is probably worth pointing out that the DealExtreme laptop & tablet both use an ARM cpu, which may not be open like the MIPS one, but probably is better supported (eg, Android runs on it)

Android runs on it, but (as noted in the review) Eken (and the other OEMs) haven't released any sources, so as yet there's real way to build other kernels that will boot, or support the built-in peripherals in the SoC.

I saw the video review you're talking about, I think. Maybe my expectations were just too high, or alternatively too low cos I really did buy it expecting to just pull out the main board and use that...

No network cards included. Remember that.

The biggest deficiency for its use as a netbook, however, is the lack of net.

It doesn't have any means for network connection. The only hope for network connection is mini USB, but I'm afraid it will be not easy and not practical. That's why it's more of a concept to build on than a ready netbook.

This project is very cool. But I wish that the person who wrote this article would have done a bit more research before writing this article

"Copyleft hardware is not nearly as widespread as copyleft software; the Qi Hardware cites just four other projects that follow the same approach: the Elphel digital camera, Pandora game console, the Milkymist One visual-effects video synthesizer, and the Arduino microcontroller. The Arduino's success in particular is an example of what the team behind the Ben hopes to see develop around its NanoNote project."

Make has a yearly open source hardware list that has -dozens- of true open source hardware projects.

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/12/open_source_hardwar...

There's a lot of us! Really! :)

"Copyleft hardware is not nearly as widespread as copyleft software"

The core premiss is still true. And it's a huge factor difference. Even if you can cite counter examples, or things they missed the amount of software development happening on Github/Google Code/Sourceforge eclipses open hardware hacking.

It's awesome that early adopters like you are there, but remember that open programable hardware is still uncommon.

The Pandora they list isn't actually open hardware. In fact they're actually a bit worried (probably not realistically) that a Chineses knock-off factory will steal their market with a clone.

You're misquoting my quote ;) The sentence fragment I'm addressing is "...the Qi Hardware cites just four other projects that follow the same approach: the Elphel digital camera, Pandora game console, the Milkymist One visual-effects video synthesizer, and the Arduino microcontroller."

To clarify: there are more than 4 (or 3) other projects. I wish the author had looked a bit harder instead of using only the Qi website!

Sorry, didn't mean to be a jerk.

It is cool that there are more than just those four projects.

This NanoNote is good as a concept of open source hardware.

However, as a product it falls in the middle between a decent mobile phone(which have better screens) and a netbook, this middle seems like a very tiny niche, which I am yet to find anyone interested in.

Granted, it is not meant to be an end-user product, but it has to appeal to enough people to make the whole project a success. In fact, the creators wish for people to tinker with it and produce something useful. Ok, porting Debian to this has been done, but what then?

Still, even if this project is a failure(too early to tell), some good may come from it, if the open source designs are used to create something bigger/better.

I think the $99 price is a big threshold. It's the point where you can start thinking of general-purpose computing as something that gets sold in a convenience store, just like storage media, MP3 players, and digital cameras. As a product, I don't think this one hits the spot, though.

The specs are hardly impressive, but they're also probably overpowered for most conceivable tasks; it doesn't have the controls to do gaming well, the screen real-estate is too tiny for most other graphic-intensive stuff, it doesn't have the connectivity to be a server, and it's probably too cramped for long-term typing.

This thing really is _too_ small.

A 320x240 screen? This would be great for playing old DOS games. You'd need to use something like Qemu to get them to play on the MIPS processor at a decent speed, though. You might be able to get DOSBox to run at a semi-reasonable speed, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Isn't the Pandora overall more interesting? The screen is so much bigger...

The Pandora is awesome .. I have two! The controls are superlative - like nothing I've seen on any other hardware, anywhere, and the community is just kickass!

Plus, you can put a compiler on it and use the thing to develop software for itself. No cross-compiling required, its just a complete, awesome games/hacking system.

Is it even out yet? If so, how much is it?

Yes, its out .. I was one of the very first pre-order customers, however, so I guess I got mine delivered to me kind of early .. had it for a week, and love it immensely, its such an awesome little platform.

I don't know how much it is in the US or wherever you are - best thing is to go to openpandora.org yourself and find out! :)

Aaaaaaah I'm horribly jealous I want one, no several ones! :) How did you get any? They really don't seem to be available at all right now. Please let us know :)

I pre-ordered, pre-paid, and waited very, very patiently .. ;)

Thanks for the heads up on Pandora. That is an amazing device. How much is/will it be selling for?

Edit: Found pricing... $330 (without VAT) which sounds good for what you get

For some reason I see the image of the laptop on a person's hand, and imagine somebody saying to him:

"What a weird looking phone!"

I won't get one of these. An EeePC-like laptop, perhaps, but the NanoNote is so small it's ridiculous. What can one possibly do with it?

(Caveat: I'd like the EeePC to do programming, in Vim, and so I may not in the target audience for the NanoNote ... though I still can't figure out what computing tasks it'll be good for)

This is a MIPS-based system. I rather hack something that is ARM-based.

Needs a better display to be very interesting. I can't believe that 640x480 LCDs are that much more expensive than 320x240 ones.

The Chumby lineup (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chumby) is also worth looking at, if you're in this particular market.

Chumby out-class all of these for me because of the open-hardware schematics.

They should have just stuck with making a keyboardless tablet like the iPad.

Don't know what I'd do with it, don't know what it can do, but I want it. Maybe it can be a remote

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