The Ben Nanonote Is Out It Seems

[second exodous]

Well, it's out, I thought it was going to die but lately open source hardware is a good buisness to be in. I watched a video about open source hardware on makezine.com but am to lazy to dig it up.

Anywhoo, /. let the world know that the Ben NanoNote is not dead but is actually out. I might get one just to support this kind of development, if it sells well maybe others will follow suit. It's $99 and no wifi but /. says it works with a wifi SD card, wasteful for space I know but they wanted to hit that $99 price tag I think.

I know it hasn't gotten that well of a reception on here but I think it's kinda neat.

 

[Parkydr]

It pushes all the buttons for me - open, cheap and has a keyboard.

 

[Nova]

It looks like a poor mans Pandora. But I am a poor man and thus interested.

What kinda things can it do? For instance why should I carry this round in addition to say, my iPhone?

 

[klikklak]

Copyleft hardware planet follow this site to see what they're up to. They seem to have debian and emacs. Which is sort of neat. I wonder if there are any microsd bluetooth adapters with linux drivers? But yeah, I don't know why you'd want to carry this in addition to a smartphone. It's probably not even meant for people like that.

 

[crow_riot]

if it is the same we're talking about - the nanonote seems to be binary compatible with the dingoo, too. iirc wejp the guy behing gmu player reported that...

 

[klikklak]

Linux.com review

 

[quote]

^ How is that a review? There's no opinion in there whatsoever. Just a load of specs and info.

And I thought we'd all decided this was a useless POS ages ago.

 

[klikklak]

Well it says 'Review' in the title

Regarding POSness, you might be right. But then again, we're spoiled with multiple devices that do basic computing already. It does nothing that a smartphone doesn't, but neither does any of the consoles discussed on the forum, besides dpads. And you can work around that.

 

[quote]

Well it says 'Review' in the title

Yes I wasn't bashing you, just the site.

 

[second exodous]

I thought we'd all decided this was a useless POS ages ago.

I know, I just thought I would bring it up again because it is actually out and didn't die. I didn't know how open it was until I read the /. article. Nice idea, hopefully they'll be successful with this one and make another that has a bit more power.

I'm really interested in what someone can do with this POS though.

 

[Nova]

Does anyone know the best way to contact regarding maybe getting a demo unit to review for the site? Maybe then I can forward it on to a dev who can do something useful with it.

 

[gruso]

if it is the same we're talking about - the nanonote seems to be binary compatible with the dingoo, too. iirc wejp the guy behing gmu player reported that...

Yep, and Slaanesh has DOSBox running on it with full keyboard support.

http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/52517-dosbox-for-dingoo-a320

A fine reason to own one.

 

[jbrodack]

Yeah doesn't look too great a device. It does have a keyboard but doesn't have any real gaming buttons or a touchscreen or wifi support. So it fails for arcade and console style gaming and fails a a computer. Though it seems like a decent choice for emulating old computers since it does have a keyboard.