Toys
Touch Book
October 19 2009 12:30
I ordered one of these guys a few months back:
Always Innovating's TouchBook
This is an ARM CPU (TI OMAP3530: the same Cortex A8 as the BeagleBoard) based netbook/tablet. I'm not expecting this to necessarily become my main portable device, but it looks like it has a lot of promise. They are doing their own Linux image, which is kind of interesting, but advertise other distros and setups such as Android as being already running. Drivers will require futzing for other distros of course. Although, I really can't see Android working on a netbook. The fatal flaw of projects such as Moblin in the past has been in treating these smaller computers as being less than real computers. These are very capable machines being able to run a full desktop enviroment. There's no need to treat them as a traditional PDA with a slimmed down OS. Android might look good on a smartphone, but would be completely wasting the hardware of a real computer. Ya, I'm not a big fan of Android. Always Innovating is doing a tradition desktop alongt with a "3D Menu System" that is based on the touchscreen. Having been working on these types of UIs for a while now I'm very curious to see what they have put together there. But it's all moot, considering the fact that they haven't even shipped mine yet. There are reviews out there by people who have actually received these machines and the reaction seems mixed. I will be making my own conclusion on this one. Hopefully soon.
Always Innovating's TouchBook
This is an ARM CPU (TI OMAP3530: the same Cortex A8 as the BeagleBoard) based netbook/tablet. I'm not expecting this to necessarily become my main portable device, but it looks like it has a lot of promise. They are doing their own Linux image, which is kind of interesting, but advertise other distros and setups such as Android as being already running. Drivers will require futzing for other distros of course. Although, I really can't see Android working on a netbook. The fatal flaw of projects such as Moblin in the past has been in treating these smaller computers as being less than real computers. These are very capable machines being able to run a full desktop enviroment. There's no need to treat them as a traditional PDA with a slimmed down OS. Android might look good on a smartphone, but would be completely wasting the hardware of a real computer. Ya, I'm not a big fan of Android. Always Innovating is doing a tradition desktop alongt with a "3D Menu System" that is based on the touchscreen. Having been working on these types of UIs for a while now I'm very curious to see what they have put together there. But it's all moot, considering the fact that they haven't even shipped mine yet. There are reviews out there by people who have actually received these machines and the reaction seems mixed. I will be making my own conclusion on this one. Hopefully soon.
New Toy
June 10 2009 00:02
So my new toy is a Sony Vaio P. I've had several of the previous little Sony Vaios (505TX!) and had to jump on this one after playing with the keyboard more and realizing I could comfortably touch type on
it. Here is is running Ubuntu 9.04. Basically everything is working, including the Poulsbo chipset driver with a recent kernel and x.org 7.4. The PSB driver is a complete pain in the ass, and even now I don't have it working optimally. The brightness control is working and the general video speed is not bad, but my coworker running Debian on his with the same patches on the same driver is getting much better performance. A mystery to me there. No 3D or video decoding working at this time. I intend to switch over to Debian after all. (The only reason I didn't install in the first place was because the Sky2 ethernet driver used for the built in ethernet is not included with the Debian net install, but I have a supported USB adapter now.) Otherwise, runs great. Definitely a nice little machine.
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