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Comment by peterwwillis | Hacker News Reader

With a few minor changes this would be an awesome wearable computer. Android touchscreen phones are just too impractical to me. (For those who would rage and say how great touchscreen phones are, go pick up a 15EUR candybar phone and text someone with T9, then text someone with a touchscreen-only android phone)

Ditch the Ethernet, add Wifi, GPS and a mic jack (and maybe a riser for a GSM/GPRS board?) and I would throw away my Android phone. A little eye-mounted analog HUD and an earpiece with attached mic would be all I need, and speech to text could do simple commands and transcription for me with maybe a micro-querty keyboard I could unclip and type on when necessary. Call me crazy but I think it would be cheaper than a phone and extremely practical for hands-off interaction. Plus, plug it into a monitor and keyboard and use it as a PC.

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'Ditch the Ethernet, add Wifi, GPS and a mic jack'

And the price would no longer be even close to $25

Yup. A four-port USB option would be nice, though, to make it just a touch easier (and cheaper) for those who want to pile on the features.

With only two, after you've added a keyboard and mouse, you're already out of expansion options for the desktop pc use-case. (Of course you can add easily a hub, but I just have a feeling that you really shouldn't have to.)

pick up a Logitech Wireless Solar Keyboard and a compatible mouse (like the M305) and they can both use the same USB receiver. plus, it's a solar powered wireless keyboard!

* you'll need to bind the mouse and keyboard to the same receiver on a windows machine before you connect it to your linux box until linux unifying support is available.

There are obviously trivial workarounds to the problem. I was simply making the point that it didn't have to be a problem in the first place.

TI, CSR, Broadcom, etc have tiny chips which provide multiple rf technologies (wifi, gps, bluetooth, fm radio) in one. I don't know prices, but if the total for a prototype was pushed up to $75 it would still be much cheaper than other alternatives and still within range to replace my phone.

Increasing the cost seems detrimental to their primary goal:

"We plan to develop, manufacture and distribute an ultra-low-cost computer, for use in teaching computer programming to children. We expect this computer to have many other applications both in the developed and the developing world.

Our first product is about the size of a credit card, and is designed to plug into a TV or be combined with a touch screen for a low cost tablet. The expected price is $25 for a fully-configured system."

Check out the BeagleBoard or Bug Labs, they do basically those things and cost >$100 each.

In my mind Raspberry Pi is a base device, leaving room for people to expand upon with USB, GPIO, etc. Once you start adding on, your $25 dollar generic device will be neither $25 nor generic.

For something fancier you want a Panda Board, Beagle Board, or Gumstix which are priced from $120 - $250.

Hardly any of what you said was actually relevant in the Android vs. this thing debate. I used to own an Android with a micro-qwerty keyboard, I could connect a variety of such keyboards to my current touchscreen-only phone, it has wifi, GPS and a mic jack (which the device in question does not) it already supports any earpiece/mic going and has fairly decent speech to text. So why is the device that already has 90% of what you want impractical, and this device which has 10% of what you want is not?

Also, most people can achieve a higher WPM on Swype than T9. I know it's a little more frustrating and trickier to text blind, but it's also way faster.

Touchscreen vs. T9: are you kidding? I take the soft touchscreen keyboard any time. I am at the very least twice faster with it.

Old Android versions on old phone hardware used to have a slowish/imprecise keyboard, but more recent versions on a fast CPU are much better.

I'd bite and take the bet.

I'm a gadget lover, wouldn't want to give up my Android (and mourn the braindead WebOS and MeeGo kill-offs), but a feature phone Nokia beats a touchpad in every way if we're talking text messages.

You can type blindly (you might need some time to know that a certain combination always suggests something wrong first, the real word is N alternatives away). You have good tactile feedback. And - the prediction is far better than what I've got on WebOS and Android as well..

I had to go back to T9 whilst travelling in the US (no pay as you go for smartphones) and even after 3 months I still struggle. My muscle memory is never going to be as good for T9 as it is for a keyboard, writing symbols is a pain in the ass, the dictionary is much smaller (I always have to add proper nouns like Reno) and I can't switch languages/alphabets.

Look at Gumstix.com for their Overo products, which basically do what you want, for under $200.

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