Acer may have thrown down some new netbook love this week, but it doesn’t mean they’re getting ready to join in with the latest trend: putting Google’s Android platform onto the budget ultraportables. At the company’s launch event, Acer’s business IT product manager Jim Wong told reporters that while the company plans cellphones using Android, he believed the platform isn’t ready for the “total internet experience” on netbooks.
We’ve a definite soft-spot for the UMID M1 here at SlashGear, but with the company themselves dragging their feet on official US and European sales, and import prices riding ever higher, it’s hard to see the clamshell MID ever finding its niche. Australian-based importer Justek have tweaked the pricing on the non-HSDPA version of the M1, but for US customers it’s still in excess of $660.
It was only at CES 2009 that we played with the latest iteration of the OpenMoko FreeRunner, there running the Google Android OS. Now the company’s CEO, Sean Moss-Pultz, has announced that production of the FreeRunner has ceased, and that 50-percent of OpenMoko’s staff have been cut in an attempt to bring costs down to manageable levels.
Envizions is finally moving forward with their EVO Smart Console. This gaming platform is Linux-based and offers up quite a few impressive features for those looking for an out of the ordinary gaming console option.
Final specs have been released and they include a 2.4GHz Athlon 64×2 5600 processor, 2GB of DDR2 RAM, an ATI HD 3200 graphics card and a 120GB HDD. The console will run on Mirrors, a modified version of Fedora that’s capable of quick-booting. This can be updated to Mirrors Evolution X.
Plus, there’s a cloud service that provides users access to Amiga games and Akimbo videos. Games are expected to cost $20 online or in SD card form. You can pre-order the console now and betas can expect to receive their version starting on April 10. The final version will be available in June for about $380.
[via Ubergizmo]
Intel have handed over the reins of the Moblin platform to The Linux Foundation. Moblin, the open-source Linux OS that Intel have been developing for the past two years, will now be accessible to a larger number of programmers, and Intel’s stated purpose for the transition is to take the OS “to the next level“. At the same time, the chip-maker is obviously hoping that greater adoption of Moblin would drive interest in their own Atom processors.
Super-compact Linux computers will have to step up their game, with the launch of the Round Solutions AarLogic C10/3. Not only does the 104mm x 63mm board have dual ARM processors but a complete communications module with quadband GPRS and SiRF3 GPS.
Ah, the perils of not being specific enough. When we said we wanted UMID to sort out the first-gen M1 mbook having non-US-friendly HSDPA, what we hoped was that the Korean company would switch radios to a US-spec 3G chipset. Instead, they’re now planning to leave out HSDPA in the first wave of shipments.
No brand, no model name, and very little chance of seeing it outside of China, but this MID does at least have some design intelligence that makes it stand out from the crowd. The Linux-based touchscreen device comes with a carry-case docking station, which boasts both its own Li-Ion battery and headphone, ethernet, USB and VGA ports.
The iPod may have won the popularity war for PMPs in many markets, but that hasn’t stopped a healthy ecosystem of unknown-brand media players that are usually cheap and, in varying degrees, cheerful. Such players just got a little more useful, with a hack to run Linux on PMPs using the common Ingenic JZ4732 chipset, such as the Onda VX747.
Video demo after the cut
While at first glance not perhaps the most inspiring of images, this is actually a very special desktop: it’s that of the Maemo 5 Alpha SDK, which Nokia have freshly released today. Comprising the new UI framework and app development APIs, the SDK now supports hardware acceleration for 3D graphics at WVGA resolution.
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