Recently few interesting devices appeared on a market. And they have high geek factor D:
SheevaPlug
SheevaPlug from Marvell contains MV88F6281 cpu running at 1.2GHz with 512MB of DDR2/800 memory. Other nice things are:
- 1GbE network controller
- 512MB of NAND for storage
- USB 2.0 controller (up to 480Mbps speed)
- RS232 serial port
- ARM JTAG
- SDIO slot
- U-boot as bootloader
Everything in small package and for only 99 USD. I think that this will be nice addon to my collection of ARM devices (it is also one of fastest available ones).
Touch Book
Few days ago Koen Kooi wrote on his blog about Touch Book. It is ARM (TI OMAP3) based combination of tablet and netbook. Composed from two detachable parts it can be tablet (one part) or netbook (two parts connected).
There are few things in it’s design which make it special:
- 8.9” 1024x600 touchscreen
- up to 15h on battery (in netbook mode)
- two internal USB connectors to hide dongles inside
- six USB connectors in total
- just 0.9kg
- no fans, no moving parts
- opensource design
- runs Ångström based distribution
Total price is 399 USD for netbook or 299 USB for tablet. Too bad that they offer selling to US only — but this can be handled by US friends D:
To get one or to not get one is tricky question. Current design lacks any video output so using it instead of laptop will be hard (no way to show presentation slides) but size, weight and battery time are interesting. I will definitely track their progress.
BeagleBoard C2
At the end of March new version (C2) of BeagleBoard has to be released. It has 256MB ram compared to 128MB of currently sold B7 version and also working EHCI USB port (B7 offers only one OTG port). I planned to buy this version but now I am not sure about it — Touch Book looks too interesting D: