Innovation in netbooks
Wednesday, March 4th, 2009 | english, gadgets, howto
After the release of Asus Eee PC and the discovery of the market that was eager to buy cheap and “wearable” computers every laptop manufacturer has jumped into the hype and released their own versions of netbooks, with different success.
But somehow it was a cloning phase. Vendors were just cloning what Asus did, with more or less changes, but without innovating. Now, it seems that the path has opened again, from the open source and open hardware front, and it has been released AlwaysInnovating’s touchbook. It is a netbook with a detachable keyboard (it is even sold separated) and built upon an ARM processor from Texas Instruments, and a 8GB microSD card. Thus they claim the battery last from 10 to 15h with the keyboard, and 3 to 5h in touchscreen mode.
As is said above, the whole machine is open source based. Software is based upon OpenEmbedded, and hardware schematics of the board are released under GPL on Beagleboard project. They say that you can also install Ubuntu, Android or even Windows CE on it.
Update: Just discovered that AlwaysInnovating is a Grégoire Gentil startup. Grégory is a Civil Engineer from École des ponts et Chaussées. We know how to build things 
3 Comments to Innovation in netbooks
And like all Imagination Technologies GPUs, this one’s PowerVR GSX hasn’t got free software drivers. Am I wrong?
tshirtmanMarch 4, 2009
Thanks a lot, I’m really interrested by this device, so cool! I hope it will (quickly) get to Europe!
I am not sure about this extreme. I have not had the chance to have such device at hand. It would be a pity that after having a general commitment with open software and open hardware, they had implemented a GPU without free drivers.
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March 4, 2009