ARM powered notebooks?

Hi all, I’m looking to get a little ARM notebook, does not have to be able to run RISC OS, but would be good to have this as a possibility in the future. The Always Innovating Touchbook looks perfect, but at the moment they are not shipping them.

What alternative ARM netbooks are there out there which are actually on sale, to buy, right now? Android would be ideal…

All the best

Garry

The CES 2010: ARM hardware roundup lists a number of devices, not all of which are yet available. And while Genesi’s EFIKA MX Open Client is apparently available ($250), the EFIKA MX Smartbook page lacks a “Buy it now!” button. There’s also the Compaq Airlife 100 referred to in the forum .

Or you could wait for Dell’s Athens . (They seem to be releasing the Streak according to the leaked timescales.)

Shame that you can’t actually buy any of those apart from the Efika MX, and I’m after a notebook for flights, train journeys etc. Efika Smartbook or the HP would be perfect if you could get them. The HP is a bit pricey though, you can get an Intel Android laptop for about half that.

Is there anything at all actually shipping in the UK in terms of ARM notebooks?

Cheers

Garry

...the HP would be perfect if you could get them… a bit pricey though…

Agree about the price. If you have any contacts in Spain, they might be available there on the high street (presumably with Spanish keyboards ). If you fancy a closer look, I’ve found some manuals .

A few products are also listed on wikipedia’s Smartbook page – which you’ve probably also seen, and are nothing new. Anyway, I expect the c.s.a.hardware newsgroup would love to host this sort of discussion (again) – it’s got a wider readership too!

Hmm, maybe I’ll just have to wait around or maybe settle for an Intel one, then maybe swap it for an ARM one when/if RISC OS appears.

I just bought an Airlife on eBay, from Spain. Once it arrives I’m happy to help test RISC OS stuff, although I have zero experience at this kernel level stuff.

Nice one! I hope it’s worth the price. You may find that there are others trying to install alternative OSes too, just out of curiosity, e.g. UNR (although the Airlife’s not on the list at the mo). Therefore there could be some general advice from others which could assist with getting RISC OS loaded onto it… getting RISC OS running will probably be quite a different matter though!

When it arrives, you might also feel like getting in touch with your local RISC OS user group (if there is one). Well done on taking the plunge, anyway!

Thanks Trevor, I contemplated the Intel powered Android laptops, but decided I really wanted an ARM one, and it was worth the extra. I’d love to see RISC OS run on this thing, even if the 3G, webcam etc. did not work. I don’t have much time at the moment to help out, but I’ll do what I can.

I’m tempted too, actually. Is this the ebay seller you used? The price isn’t consistent with this item ! [Edit: That’s because it must’ve had a lower start price.] The seller feedback doesn’t look like anything to be wary of either.

[Edit: OT - for a bit of morning humour, Spanish for ‘sign out’ seems to be ‘desconectarse’! Sorry – couldn’t help commenting on that.]

Anyway, for the record, HP seem to now have this dedicated Spanish domain name . There’s also some retail info at movistar ... and online stores such as this one may stock them soon [Edit: unless there’s an obligatory tie-in to a mobile operator].

Of course, the down side to UK sales is that these things are quite likely to be tied in to a mobile contract. For example, I don’t know whether the Dell Streak will be available as a standalone purchase or not.

That’s the guy, I mailed him before and after purchase, seems like a good bloke, I’ll confirm when it turns up. I certainly did not pay 699 Euros, that seems pretty crazy to me, I guess he hoped to get a sale based on it’s lack of availability most places.

It seems that it’s locked to Telefonica for the 3G, who are the owners of O2, so I’ll maybe see about getting a contract from them.

...the EFIKA MX Smartbook page lacks a “Buy it now!” button…

Not any more: $349 . Here’s the press release and there’s also some discussion here .

The EFIKA MX Smartbook could be quite a nice RISC OS laptop i.m.h.o. Specially the price tag of $349 seems quite reasonable. Let’s hope there will be more like these that will be sufficiently affordable and have availability in Europe too :-)

...availability in Europe…

Future Electronics should be stocking it . I’m waiting for a reply to an email I sent them.

The EFIKA MX Smartbook could be quite a nice RISC OS laptop i.m.h.o.

RE: There is also scope for expanding the port to support other SoC’s made by other manufacturers, e.g. the Freescale i.MX515

A relatively cheap i.MX51-based SBC seems to have been around for a few months. According to the price list it’s €197, which is considerably cheaper than similar boards I’ve seen. (Perhaps I’m wrongly assuming that i.MX51 and i.MX515 are very closely related.)

[Edit: Farnell have them for £175+VAT ]

[Edit: There’s a support wiki too.]

a RO port to this little beastie http://www.aliexpress.com/product-fm/339573278-Netbook-with-VIA-ARM-32bit-300MHz-CPU-Windows-CE-6-0-OS-7-LCD-Screen-128M-wholesalers.html

with a via arm vt8500 cpu/soc would be valuable, based on its price tag – $63usd – cheaper than the beagle…..

...little beastie… via arm vt8500…

This is the x706 (7” 800×480). They also do the X1006 (10.1” 1024*600). TechChunks have investigated reports of a similar model being available for just $37 via ebay. The MicroClient TC desktop client also uses the same chip and offers 1024×768.

Note that there are >100 pages of related linux discussion on the ubuntu forums (>1000 posts running from Dec 2009 to last week).

I think these products are a little dated now in terms of performance but the prices are definitely an attraction!

Future Electronics should be stocking it . I’m waiting for a reply to an email I sent them.

Well, such a reply never came. However, the UK list price is £160.04: probably the Smarttop rather than the Smartbook, judging by the price¹. For those interested, follow the ‘build on beagle board’ thread!

¹ And their stock is listed as a big fat zero.

Rockchip’s RK2918 has been spotted in a netbook.

What do folk know about the Acer Iconia Tab A500 with a Tegra 2 cpu? Is this a ‘no-no’ for RISC OS due to NVidia’s closed source policy or have they published enough information on their SOC to get RISC OS going on it?
It is being sold by Currys, Comet, HMV, John Lewis, Micro Anvika and PC World according to an advert in the Grauniad of 19/4/11 and runs Android 3. I have checked the John Lewis website only to find an AMD/Windows 7 version. :-(( I have emailled John Lewis about this.

Acer Iconia Tab A500

A yes, this is the one that’s also available as a dual screen (the non-ARM version).

NVidia’s closed source policy

It’s far from perfect.

• Unboxing vid
• Review
• Docking station for £60, but doesn’t seem to allow a keyboard, so that’d still have to be via USB
• Root access hack: “a stepping stone on the way to completely customising the device’s software” but I guess that doesn’t necessarily mean a completely different OS can be loaded

Unless RISC OS apps are designed to also be usable via a tablet UI (e.g. single touch for Select, long touch for Menu, no support for Adjust), it’s difficult to see tablets being viable for serious use. For slideshows/ebooks/web browsing/email¹ I guess they could work. Dave, IIRC you’re interested in use within an educational environment. What other sensible uses could there be without a mouse/kb (assume on-screen keyboard)?

¹ Assuming working Wi-Fi.

I wonder what the NewsPAD did to make up for having a touchscreen, for that matter.

You could use multitouch. E.g. single touch for select, single touch with another finger tapping afterwards for Menu (located on the point of the initial touch) and single touch with two fingers tapped for Adjust. You could treat swipes within windows in a similar manner to (hypothetically “correctly” implemented) scroll wheel events.

There wouldn’t be an issue trying to figure out correct delay timings between the first finger tap and subsequent one or two finger taps because you work on the point of tap release (“finger up” not “finger down”) and you’d make sure that two and three finger simultaneous taps were not in use in the GUI. If they were, then you’d get into a grey area of having to allow some difference in time between the fingers going down but still being treated as a two or three finger tap gesture rather than a Menu or Adjust gesture.

Bung MoreDesk in there and use multi-finger (e.g. four) up/down/left/right swipes for workspace switching and you can start to use applications in a more task orientated, full screen kind of way.

A large tool icon and sprite set would help with potentially small on-screen targets, though you’d obviously have much more trouble with things like !Draw. Being able to rapidly zoom in on the entire Desktop, a sort of full screen magnifier (OS X has this built in) would be one possible workaround. You could commandeer a pinch-to-zoom gesture to work on the entire screen, or if you thought you’d really want to keep that gesture for zoom within applications (unlikely given the way zoom is implemented in most RISC OS applications though), you could use a three finger approach; have one (e.g. little) finger held down on the panel while the thumb and forefinger pinch or expand.

With a bit of thought, you start to see ways to adapt RISC OS to a tablet without having to put in a vast amount of work – but a robust and responsive multitouch driver is a prerequisite. And there’s the issue of “why?”, since the whole point of e.g. an iPad is the touch screen apps which take advantage of the device form factor and usage pattern.

multitouch

Very useful thoughts on this – perhaps we’ll be able to test it out one day!

large tool icon and sprite set

Some further thoughts here.

Acer Iconia Tab A500

Here’s a comparison with the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer. Also Tegra 2, but some sources are available. It’s for sale at Comet and there could be some hacks in the future.

[Edit: androidroot.mobi could be worth noting.]