I just came across the birth of a project to build an open source tablet built for web-browsing.
As far as I can tell, the specs are settling on the following ranges:
Minimal CPU - from an Atmel manufactured chip with power comparative to a Pentium Pro, to the mid range, a variety of Nvidia and other chips that have specialized hardware to decode h264, to the high end, an Intel Atom chip.
Screen Size & Resolution - People have requested between 7" at the lowest, to the more popular 10". Almost everyone agrees on a minimum resolution of 1024x768.
Battery - From using cellphone batteries (cheap) to a proposed 6600mah (not exactly standard, would yield maybe 4-6 hours of battery life, and larger than the standard laptop battery). I wonder if anyone considered just a bunch of AAs?
OS (Operating System) & web browser - The crowd seems to have unanimously decided on linux and firefox, although some have requested Opera as a browser.
Input methods - Multi-touch, with possible stylus for any drawing apps.
Apps - Unclear. Most people are leaning towards Web apps inside firefox, with maybe one or two other apps beside. The idea is to create a specialized linux kernel that will take up minimal space on both the hard drive and in RAM.
RAM & Storage - RAM won't be under 512Mb, some people are pushing for 1Gb. As for storage, likely a small amount of internal storage (1-2Gb) and slots/usb ports in needed.
Well I think that covers just about everything. I really don't think this project will succeed, but I hope they do. It sounds really cool. (And if Apple does come out with something along these lines, it will give Apple a worthy competitor.)
Thoughts?
As far as I can tell, the specs are settling on the following ranges:
Minimal CPU - from an Atmel manufactured chip with power comparative to a Pentium Pro, to the mid range, a variety of Nvidia and other chips that have specialized hardware to decode h264, to the high end, an Intel Atom chip.
Screen Size & Resolution - People have requested between 7" at the lowest, to the more popular 10". Almost everyone agrees on a minimum resolution of 1024x768.
Battery - From using cellphone batteries (cheap) to a proposed 6600mah (not exactly standard, would yield maybe 4-6 hours of battery life, and larger than the standard laptop battery). I wonder if anyone considered just a bunch of AAs?
OS (Operating System) & web browser - The crowd seems to have unanimously decided on linux and firefox, although some have requested Opera as a browser.
Input methods - Multi-touch, with possible stylus for any drawing apps.
Apps - Unclear. Most people are leaning towards Web apps inside firefox, with maybe one or two other apps beside. The idea is to create a specialized linux kernel that will take up minimal space on both the hard drive and in RAM.
RAM & Storage - RAM won't be under 512Mb, some people are pushing for 1Gb. As for storage, likely a small amount of internal storage (1-2Gb) and slots/usb ports in needed.
Well I think that covers just about everything. I really don't think this project will succeed, but I hope they do. It sounds really cool. (And if Apple does come out with something along these lines, it will give Apple a worthy competitor.)
Thoughts?