New Advances in Mobile Computing
There has been a large rise in the need for mobile computing over the last few years, this year should see the bar being raised on two fronts with the Raspberry Pi as the smallest mobile PC (which will sell for around £15) and the ChromeBook which should be the fastest mobile computer on the market.
The Raspberry Pi
The Raspberry Pi Prototype
The Raspberry Pi (prototype at the moment) is a fully functioning Linux PC around the size of a USB memory stick; this is being developed to help youngsters get involved with
computer programming without the fears of damaging their home PC. At the retail price of around £15 if it breaks or gets lost there is a simple solution – buy a new one.
The specs of this miniature PC are not too bad, using basically the same architecture as Smartphones used a few years back:
- 700MHz ARM11
- 128MB of SDRAM
- OpenGL ES 2.0
- 1080p30 H.264 high-profile decode
- Composite and HDMI video output
- USB 2.0
- SD/MMC/SDIO memory card slot
- General-purpose I/O
The Raspberry Pi will also come with a range Open Software installed, including the Ubuntu OS, Iceweasel, KOffice and Python.
Once problem I see with this device is that due to its low cost and mobility it could become the PC of choice for hackers around the globe and would leave no traces, for this to be done all you would need is an Android pay as you go phone (for internet sharing) which retail at around £30 and you are sorted – hack a few websites pay another £65 and then hack some more.
Anyway getting back to the point, the Raspberry Pi looks like a great little machine at a great price and should help produce some of our future programming geniuses.
The ChromeBook
Upcoming Acer ChromeBook
The ChromeBook is Google’s answer to the Windows / Linux powered netbooks, but with one main advantage – cloud computing. Cloud computing does have one small disadvantage – you need to be online to operate apps and store / open files, to get around this they have added two things to their feature list – 3G connectivity and a 16 Gb HDD to store the OS and copies of the files you store on the could.
The full spec list for these machines is:
- Dual-core Atom 1.66GHz N570 processor
- 16GB solid-state drive (mSATA)
- HDMI port
- 11-inch and 12-inch class displays
- All-day battery life (about 8 hours)
- Instant-on
- Instant Web connectivity
- 3G connectivity, pay as you go
At the moment retail price being talked about is around the £250 mark which is in line with the current NetBook market, but will the consumers prefer the ChromeBook to a NetBook? Acer and Samsung seem to think so as they have signed up to produce these, although I am currently unsure if they will continue to produce their existing line of netbooks which has been very popular with those looking to get on the mobile computing ladder.
If there is anything I’ve missed about these two new products please feel free to comment and I will add it into my post.
