

3 micro-computers you can use everyday - nwlinux
http://nwlinux.com/3-micro-computers-everyday/

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unwind
If we're talking about small computers that are okay to be announced but not
100% ready to ship, I think the Open Pandora (<http://www.open-pandora.org/>)
deserves mention.

There are some ... production kinks left to iron out, but I'm sure we'll see
them shipping with some kind of predictability in, say, two months time.

Currently production is being re-targeted to Germany, with what seems to be
awesome results, so far. I'm very impressed by the guys behind this project,
if I'm sounding very much tongue-in-cheek that's just because I bought mine in
March of 2009, and am still waiting for it to ship. :)

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lgeek
I've never heard of the allwinner A10 before, and it looks great on paper:
1.5ghz Cortex-A8, 1 GB RAM, SATA, 3d graphics and hardware video decoder, and
the other usual stuff like SD, HDMI, Ethernet, NAND and various other I/O
ports, plus full GPL source code (I was under the impression that ARM don't
release the source code for MALI drivers under GPL?).

However, it looks like they haven't produced a single unit yet. It's
vaporware. They hope to sell an initial batch for something closer to $70,
which seems more realistic, but I still think they're overly optimistic.

On the other hand, Raspberry Pi is looking good. They've had considerable
delays (I think initially they were intending to start selling the boards in
November), but they're making good progress and seem to have plenty of
traction. Their target price seems more easily reachable considering the lower
specs compared to the allwinner A10.

~~~
asb
November might have been mentioned as a possibility, but end of the year or
December has afaik always been the stated target. I'd hardly say delays so far
are 'considerable'.

~~~
lgeek
Well, I remember them mentioning late November as a likely time to start
shipping boards. You'll find some references to this on their [FAQ
page](<http://www.raspberrypi.org/faqs>). We're in late December and they
haven't even sold the beta boards (although that will probably happen soon).
Manufacturing and actually shipping the first large series will take some
time.

I'll agree that 'considerable' might be a bit too much, but they're late
according to the initial schedule.

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phelmig
Great Article, but I think it also should mention the Global Scale stuff
(D2Plug, DreamPlug, etc.)
([http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/c-2-globalscale-
techn...](http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/c-2-globalscale-technologies-
products.aspx)) They have an identically layout, are a little bit more
expensive but they ship at least!

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hopeless
From the title I'd thought this would be about practical uses of this
hardware. They sound really cool but I haven't seen the big "need" that
they're fulfilling.

~~~
justincormack
They are small, low power, and silent. Hopefully cheap too. There has been a
gap for stuff for applications like building your own tablet, netbook, robot,
media centre, home automation, helicopter, 3d printer etc that people are
looking to these to fill, especially now that the graphics are good enough to
do video which previously ARM SoCs couldnt. You can have something under 5W a
few inches square with integrated interfaces for not much money soon.

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Newky
Will the raspberry pi ship with some form of Ubuntu?

I hadn't heard this as the specific distribution of choice, but I could be
wrong. Would be an interesting choice considering all of the Ubuntu media
turbulence.

I had heard at one stage that it would run some form of fedora. Will be
interesting piece of hardware regardless.

~~~
wcchandler
It was buzzed around that Ubuntu would be their targeted distro but it doesn't
support ARMv6.

------
elchief
* every day

