News Sharp announces Ubuntu-based slate

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2010/04/22/sharp-announces-ubuntu-based-slate/1

 

Meh, it doesn't have much over my phone. Not a pad-killer i'm afraid.

 

Yep, it's pretty meh. And 9.04? That's already a year old!

 

Coming to a store near you: behold the direct competitor of iFail, the iCrash

 

if it costs about 150 -200 quid it'll be excellent and a worthy addition to the battle depending on apps.
Any more and no thanks.

 

actually 100-150 is a better price range..

 

I'd agree with that; that kind of price range would make me very tempted.

Would be much better if it had integrated 3G capabilities, but if it has a USB host that's somewhat negated. The main limiting factor I can see with this however is that the processor is not x86 compatible - it's ARM.

 

so what if you need your micro sugar fix get win CE.... Your Open Office saves will be compatible any way. After all this is just a surfer / email in bed type of device any way.

 

I think you misunderstand me. Linux isn't a limiting factor, the CPU architecture is. If it's going to be marketed as a slate/tablet device, you're going to want to put other Linux applications on it. Even though it runs UNR, there aren't going to be many pre-built binaries for the ARM architecture; the vast majority are either i386, i686 or x64. That means that if you want to install any software on there you want - which is a major benefit of using an open platform, and a selling point in the article - you're more than likely going to need to start compiling source code at some point. For tinkerers and hackers, that's not a problem. But I can't see Joe Public regularly compiling packages from source.

Hell, I couldn't even find an i386/i686 XBMC binary for UNR or Moblin and had to build it from source. That doesn't faze me, although I had to switch from Moblin to UNR as I couldn't get all the required deps to compile on Moblin, but it did take nearly 45 minutes to build; that's a far cry from simply downloading something from an App Store.

 

And there you summed up pretty exactly why Apple sells so much at the moment.

I really don't see why I'd need that 5" slate without 3G. For mobile internet/email I have a phone, for bigger tasks a desktop. I don't know where this would fit in my daily life.

 

Yeah, but I'm a big nerd so I'd still be tempted if this was released in the UK at a decent price

 

Stick Debian on it, all the apps included in x86/a64 are also in the arm distros. Thats part of the reason Debian release schedules are like bus time tables.

 

This device will have appeal to those who want to experience web sites with Flash content eg YouTube. For everyone else, there's the iPad.

 

If the screen is pressure sensitive, I'm all over this. There is no good, affordable tablet for drawing that doesn't separate the drawing surface from the image (i.e. Wacom tablets) and cost keeps the cintiq tablets woefully out of reach.