Michael Arrington wanted a dead simple Web Tablet that would let you surf the Internet, bypassing the Operating System interface.
Here’s the basic idea: The machine is as thin as possible, runs low end hardware and has a single button for powering it on and off, headphone jacks, a built in camera for video, low end speakers, and a microphone. It will have Wifi, maybe one USB port, a built in battery, half a Gigabyte of RAM, a 4-Gigabyte solid state hard drive. Data input is primarily through an iPhone-like touch screen keyboard. It runs on linux and Firefox. It would be great to have it be built entirely on open source hardware, but including Skype for VOIP and video calls may be a nice touch, too.It has to be as cheap as possible. Arrington actually wanted a $200 Web Tablet, although production cost is practically covered by that amount, additional fees included resulted to a $300 commercially available product proposal.
The progress:
$300 for a Web Tablet? That's what my Olympus SW1030 cost me last year. But I wouldn't get it if it'd turn into a brick once I go offline.
Wow, nice. $300 is consider affordable price. The web tablet looks very cool.
ReplyDeleteYou can share your posts at: ArticlePinger.com too. :)
Given that it runs Linux and Firefox and not just a web browser, I guess there are a number of things that can be done, online or offline. If not, what's the 4-GB solid state drive for?
ReplyDeleteI'm just not sure if this will be such a good buy, especially when not all people are satisfied by netbooks.
I just read this post ( http://www.globalnerdy.com/2009/06/23/like-i-said-netbooks-suck/ ) and I'm having second thoughts on getting a netbook for myself...
want that! haha
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