Subscribe
Previous Post
In case of an emergency black out or if you’re going on an extended trip in the remote areas with practically limited electricity, then you might want to have a netbook which can run on 8 NiMH AA batteries. ;) It’s not very difficult to get such batteries, all tihngs considered. And since the targeted price is less than 200 USD, this will be affordable to more people. This is manufactured by NorhTec and I can’t help but be amazed at how they accomplished this. This product is set for release in July. It is called the Gecko Edubook. 
Of course, I find it awesome that you could opt to have Ubuntu installed by NorhTec. Aside from that, the hardware is interesting because you could use refurbished laptop drives and SD cards as storage media. Either way, it will be cheap so a lot more students could possibly buy one.
I hope that Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, Fedora Core, Mint, Mandriva, etc. will not have problems running on this netbook so that its buyers and users will fully enjoy the experience of Linux. For those are in developing countries, I do hope that the could also afford to get one for each household so that their children will learn more about technology, especially free and open source software.
AA cells is the future for ultra low cost netbooks.
Thank you for blogging about the Gecko Edubook. The Edubook will be available mid-June to early July. The Xcore86 (www.xcore86.com) is a x586 core with Floating point. It should be able to run any Linux that isn’t specifically compiled for x686. The CPU runs at 1 Ghz. The CPU only draws 1.2 watts at 1Ghz and this includes all the functionality built into the system.
As the power draw is so small, there is no need for ACPI support. There are two modes, full speed and suspend. Therefore, when setting up Linux, you should install or boot with no ACPI support.
The system is designed to show 85% power until it drops to 15%. A red LED will indicate when the charge is down to 15% and any power monitoring software will show either 85% or 15% power.
The Xcore86 Device on Chip probably best compares to the AMD Geode LX800 in terms of processing speed and power draw.
The NIC is a r6040. This is supported in newer kernels but has to be compiled into the kernel for older kernels. As many people will only use WIFI, this might not be a concern to users who do not plug the units into a network.
We have tested the Edubook with Kubuntu, Damn Small Linux, Puppy Linux, Slax, Debian, Mint, and Voyage Linux.
We will soon have a keyboard computer called the Gecko Surfboard and we hope to have other devices as well. I have asked our technical people to test out Android with FB Reader as we believe such a combination will be very useful for a energy efficient device that can be built with the Xcore86 Device on Chip.
Genius! It’s about time they came out with something light and affordable. I hate to travel with my laptop. This would make thing so much easier.