£15 Computer ...

linktoinsanity said:
I feel it's a very nice idea, but I don't think the £15 computer will catch on.
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If they could sell it for that price, millions of people would have a use for it. Even if it was technical to use, you would just find people set it up for some purpose like in a car as above and installed on behalf of others.

How many times you sat in a car waiting for someone, being able to play HD this cheaply and this portable is about as common use as you could get.
I got a snap on plastic box that'd fit round that motherboard no problem, bung it in my pocket job done

HDMI isnt specialised, its normal for a modern TV and so on. If this was a private company making this, I imagine they would be worth investing in.

I doubt they can manufacture this cheaply though and even if they could they would be reliant on major component companies who have customers who dislike the competition and would block access to the parts
 
tntcoder said:
You aren't gonna be decoding any decent (HD) media at 700mhz/128mb ram though sadly. Really cool piece of kit - but as people have said it will be much more suited to special use like education or a firewall / router :)
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Could it be used as a media player playing films from a NAS?
Could it be used as a download gizmo?

I might be talking crap but a lot of things are in 'the cloud' now and I've started using Google Documents.
Imagine a school/college/Uni where you bring your tiny little box and plug it into a monitor/keyboard/mouse and everything you need to do is either server or cloud based and when you've finished you just put your little box back in your pocket.
 
Now you see what i would (will?) probably do with one would be wait until Arch ARM works on it then install a small base system, tilling wm and a few console programs - should easily be fast enough for browsing/listening to music/youtube which is 80% of what i and most people use their computer for anyway.
 
Dimple said:
Could it be used as a media player playing films from a NAS?
Could it be used as a download gizmo?

I might be talking crap but a lot of things are in 'the cloud' now and I've started using Google Documents.
Imagine a school/college/Uni where you bring your tiny little box and plug it into a monitor/keyboard/mouse and everything you need to do is either server or cloud based and when you've finished you just put your little box back in your pocket.
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Download gizmo yes :) would be ideal for it.

If the NAS is purely a file store, then you could media play standard xvid stuff ok, but you nothing with substantial bitrates. If your NAS can do the decoding and stream it out over a decreased bitrate or something that this could handle then that would also be an option.
 
Tican said:
Wonder if it could be used as a car pc?
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No reason why it shouldn't or couldn't. Computers like this connect directly as side loaders into device and cars or whatever else and can be preprogrammed with various "stuff" and I see it as a starting point where devices and everyday luxuries like cars will become fully customisable and so on. Imagine being able to unplug the computer or a car's dashboard and simply plug in a newer version which has more power and features 2 years down the line!
 
DAnDan said:
Not sure if this is a stupid question or not, but what's the chances of somebody getting android running on one of these?
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Very high if there is any interest, Android is native to ARM so it would literally be a case of packaging up the relevant kernel modules/drivers and compiling.
 
tntcoder said:
Very high if there is any interest, Android is native to ARM so it would literally be a case of packaging up the relevant kernel modules/drivers and compiling.
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Awesome, should have guessed it would be an ARM in there, wasn't sure though! Could be thousands of uses for something like this!
 
I could program before I could walk, so all this talk about teaching people english, or maths first is rubbish. Starting from an early age defiantly contributed to me becoming a software developer.

Heck I still don't know my times tables by rote, but I know calculus, discrete maths and linear mathematics backwards mostly thanks to programming. I would have probably stopped at gcse maths without it.

Do people gain pleasure from teaching children in the most tedious way possible?

Programming is one of the ways that allows kids to be creative, develop logical thinking, develop mathematical skills and have fun; all at the same time.
 
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I will certainly be picking one of these up as soon as they become available. The possibilities are pretty interesting and the benefit for education is pretty large.

When you consider that the rubbish little boards we use for learning Assembly and C are £250 without any of the required software being able to provide a similar solution for £15 is a pretty big leap.
 
bitslice said:
Yep, point missed :(

Back in the 80's parents bought their kids ZX81's, that led to a whole generation of programmers and electronic tinkerers. Make something that is as cheap as chips and parents might buy them just to spark some interest in their kid.
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This tbh.. - the device has been created for kids to tinker with and learn and encourages this explicitly.
 
gropingmantis said:
It supports SDHC no? How much bloody space does Win8 need? What would be the point in an ARM compatible OS if it isn't small?
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Well I'd hazard a guess that those chips running Win8 are going to be in tablets and phonelets that have internal storage capacities of 16GB and above.

This new computer doesn't have that kind of storage luxury. 16GB of storage alone is more expensive than what these computers will retail for :p Running an active OS off an SD card will kill the flash memory in no time as well.
 
tntcoder said:
You aren't gonna be decoding any decent (HD) media at 700mhz/128mb ram though sadly. Really cool piece of kit - but as people have said it will be much more suited to special use like education or a firewall / router :)
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You do realise that it has proper hardware support for H.264 don't you. I expect you will find decent 1080p playback barely loads the ARM core at all..

Jonathan
 
mrk said:
Well I'd hazard a guess that those chips running Win8 are going to be in tablets and phonelets that have internal storage capacities of 16GB and above.

This new computer doesn't have that kind of storage luxury. 16GB of storage alone is more expensive than what these computers will retail for :p Running an active OS off an SD card will kill the flash memory in no time as well.
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Good point no point spending twice or three times the price of the computer on an SD card. I just hope it will be able to replace the PC in our college project as that would save a lot of ballache.
 
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