Touch Book: Tablet Netbook with ARM CPU, 10+ Hour Battery, Detachable Screen | Hacker News Reader

Touch Book: Tablet Netbook with ARM CPU, 10+ Hour Battery, Detachable Screen

crunchgear.com

62 pointsthepanister19 comments

There's a really nice Gizmodo hands on too:

http://i.gizmodo.com/5162584/always-innovating-touch-book-is...

Curious, is this the fabled TC tablet? or is this just another company who decides to make this?

I really like this concept of a dockable keyboard. I wonder if they/3rd parties will offer a way to dock separately. I'd like some kind of charging base to dock it on, so I could have it set up at eye height and use a bluetooth/etc keyboard.

I already have an acer aspire one - the touchscreen is not something I care too much for personally, but I am still curious and who knows, maybe I'll grow to enjoy it.

I think TC would be making a lot more fuss if they had a hand in making it.

3rd party docking probably comes down to product lifetime. Netbooks seem to disappear from the market within months of release, so the aftermarket isn't going to specialise under those conditions. It's promising that the hardware for this is open, which at least means there's a chance we'll see something interesting. I'll certainly keep an eye on this - Netbooks haven't done it for me yet, but something more portable may well be for me.

And it is open source. Based on the Beagle board and OpenEmbedded, this looks interesting. I won't order until it ships, but for $300 I am interested.

This is exactly what I've wanted for quite some time! Previous attempts at getting it have included a Gateway Handbook 486 (which got 10 hours on 4 AAs, but had an atrocious LCD), and the OLPC XO-1. When the OMAP3 started shipping I wondered how long it would be before someone made a netbook with one -- it takes balls most people don't have to ship a non-x86 computer. This one hits it out of the park!

There are some unanswered questions:

  * What's the ratio of battery capacity screen:keyboard?
  * What voltage/amperage is used for the charger? (how big is it?)
  * How fast can it read from the MicroSD and USB2?

My only gripes with it that I can see are:

  * The mediocre keyboard layout (the lower-right corner, as always)
  * Using MicroSD instead of plain
  * Not having a Mini-PCI-E Flash slot in the internal space (could share with one of the USB ports)
  * Only 256mb of RAM (really gimps web-browsing)
  * It's a bit thick with the keyboard (though it's worth it for the battery)

  How much RAM?

256mb - Gizmodo

  What's the ratio of battery capacity screen:keyboard?

"Standalone touchscreen should last between 3 and 5 hours. With the keyboard attached, the system should last between 10 and 15 hours." - their FAQ

  How fast can it read from the MicroSD and USB2?

Faster than I can.

Wouldn't PCI-e require a x86 processor or, at least, x86 emulation for initialization routines?

I have a couple PPC Macs and many PCI boards (mostly video) are Mac or PC-specific.

I'm not asking for true PCI-E -- ASUS used the Mini-PCI-E connector for flash drives starting with the the 3rd? generation EEEs, and it became widespread. It's only true name is "FLASH_CONN", after the label on the PCBs.

Normally a Mini-PCI-E connector supplies USB2 (including the 5v), 1 PCI-E lane, 1.5v & 3.3v power, and control lines. FLASH_CONN keeps the USB2, but uses the PCI-E pins for SATA. A ton of the netbooks have two slots: a true Mini-PCI-E for a WiFi or 3G card, and a FLASH_CONN for the SSD.

Agreed on lack of RAM. It's really depressing to see a machine like this without at least 512MB. I've been waiting for a device just like this for a long time, and I want to hack on it, but I'm looking more for a heavy multimedia mobile, so the lack of RAM may nix that.

Oh, and does anyone know if the screen is capacitive or resistive? Resistive would put it right out of the running.

If you line up devices starting with a big desktop PC on one side and simple mobile phone on the other end, there's a gap today between netbook and smart phone. I wonder if something like this is the thing that will fill the void. Imagine adding a WAN dongle and a Bluetooth headset to this. With Skype, it's half phone/half PC.

Writing this post got me thinking about something. It would be cool to be able to carry this in my backpack in the "on" state and get notifications about important events via smaller, wristwatch-like devices. Imagine your watch vibrating when you get a call and showing you caller ID info or text messages popping up on it.

There are certainly downsides compared to the iPhone or what I hope the first really nice Android device will be. However, I find these too small for "real" work so I have to carry a laptop around anyway. A hybrid could be both to some portion of the population.

Here is a bluetooth bracelet with headset profile so it can show caller ID and accept/reject a phonecall with the button:

http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/26/lcd-bluetooth-vibrating-b...

I've been wondering if it could be paired to a Linux box with BlueZ Utils and get any old script to pretend to be an incoming call and vibrate the bracelet and show a message,,,

Cool. This was sorta what I was thinking of. Too bad it doesn't have two or three small buttons. That could be useful for a lot of stuff. And, it doesn't look nearly as tacky as the version I had imagined. The review misses the point that "time" could be the default state when there's no pending action or alert.

How the power management works on this thing will be very interesting -- how long does the battery last with the screen off, or with the CPU in almost-asleep mode? How much would WiFi or 3G being on take away from that?

http://www.alwaysinnovating.com/touchbook/faqs.htm

The FAQ made me grin with regards to OS:

...This enables to install many OSes on the device, including Google Android, Ubuntu, Angstrom, and Windows CE, though we would not recommend the latter. You are free to do whatever you want.

I was looking at http://www.tabletpc2.com/Review-HPTC1100.htm which was made a few years ago by HP. I've been searching for something like this in the last few weeks, but no one made exactly what I'm looking for yet.

The Touch Book come really close but I want more cpu power out of it.

I have a tablet pc I draw and design on and have though so many times that if I could just remove the monitor I could avoid so many heat problems. I got really excited when I saw this... Unfortunately this device just appears to be a touch screen based on the stats.

Keep in mind you don't "remove the monitor" as the computer is inside it. But you can remove the keyboard/trackpad...

OK, this kinda does it for me..

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=325896

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