Cheap tablet PC

I recently blogged that an inexpensive tablet PC could provide the magic silver bullet when it comes to a notebook suitable for children in primary and secondary education.

Blow me over, and tickle me pink! 

Seems that a UK firm Elonex have come up with such a beast.  Called 'ONE' the tablet PC features some stunning ideas:

• About half the price of the Eee PC.  (shipping for £99 whilst the EeePC is approximately £200).  Expect it to be around $200-$250 by the time it hits Aussie shores.
• Ships with a 7" screen.
• Runs Linux. 
• The keyboard can detach completely, and the 'screen' can be used as a tablet instead as a traditional notebook.
• The system has 1GB of storage internally, and the option of using a 'digital wrist band' that can store upto 8GB of data.  The wristband can then be synced with any computer via a USB cable.
  
• A bluetooth enabled version of the notebook is also available.  It also comes with 2GB of storage and ships for £20 more.
  

Details beyond this are hard to come by, with ZDNet stating that any hard specs are not being released until the 28th February presentation at The Education Show in Birmingham, England.  Several websites are slowly picking up on the story; including The Times Online and  Engadget,

It will be an interesting wait (the end of next week) to see what this little beauty packs hardware wise and the choice of Linux distribution it ships.

In any event, it's bound to throw further cats amongst pigeons as hardware vendors attempt to capture this 'cheap educational computing' market.  Lets hope the hype being generated in the UK at the moment is worth it!

Last minute update:  It appears that it is a re-badged  Fontastic A-View.  Specs are:

Hardware

CPU: Aday5F-300 MHz X86

Memory: 128/256 MB DDR2 SDRAM

4 MB Flash ROM

Storage: 1 GB/2GB NAND FLASH

Display: 800x480 7" TFT LCD

Network interface: Ethernet 10/100 Mbps

Wi-Fi 802.11b/g (optional)

Bluetooth (optional)

Webcam: 2.0M pixels (optional)

USB sockets: USB 2.0/1.1 port X 2

Audio jack: 3.5mm in/out

Battery: 3 cells, 2200mAH/cell

Weight: 950g(with keyboard)

Dimension(WxLxH): 230 mm x 146 mm x 33 mm(with keyboard)


Software

Operating System: LINOS 2.6.21

Applications: Picture Viewer(bmp, jpg, gif)

Picture Express

Music Player(mp3, wav)

Video Player(mp1,mp4,shockwave)

Web Browser

Internet Messenger(Pidgin)

WI-FI AP(optional)

Bluetooth(optional)

It also appears that the machine in question pops up under a series of different names.

Looking at it, it appears to be a 'glorified' digital photo frame.  In fact, one company even makes that comparison.


Whilst it's commendable - a 300Mhz laptop just isn't going to cut it.  It's bound to be sluggish and likely that 256MB of RAM will just run the applications if utilising modern software for an Office Suite (like Open Office).

Ideally -- my vision of a usable tablet PC that meets the mark would include:

• A screen around 9-12".
• Battery life of 4-6 hours.
• A CPU in 800Mhz - 1.2Ghz range
• 512MB of RAM
• 2-8GB of SSD or a 30GB HDD
• 10/100MB Ethernet port, and supporting 802.11b/g wireless.

Whilst this will likely break the $200 mark, I'm sure it's something that under $500 could be produced.

It seems the EeePC will also ship in Q2 8" and 9" display models (recently announced at CES2008).
The 2nd generation EeePC's could indeed fall into this "suitable" category.  If so it will firm the current dominance that Asus has in the field.

Well, that's enough ramblings by me on notebooks for education for the next few days.