I want one

Story: We Want A Dead Simple Web Tablet For$200. Help Us Build It.Total Replies: 15
Author Content
Sander_Marechal

Jul 23, 2008
10:35 PM EDT 		If the final machine even just somewhat resembles the artist impression at TechCrunch ([HYPERLINK@www.techcrunchit.com]) and it does indeed cost just $200, I want one. Hell, I want a stack of them :-)
tracyanne

Jul 24, 2008
1:37 AM EDT
Quoted:
What will we call it? The best name I can think of is the Firefox Tablet, but that will take a round of discussions with Mozilla.


If it's to be thin like the Mac Air, I suggest Silhouette. I think that suggests something light, slim, and desirable.
jacog

Jul 24, 2008
1:59 AM EDT 		To me the word silhouette just means opaque with the light behind it. :P

And I am sure there's a joke in there somewhere about vapourware / air etc. My wit fails me right now though.
tracyanne

Jul 24, 2008
2:17 AM EDT 		Yes that is the exact meaning of the word. Stop being an engineer for a moment.
jdixon

Jul 24, 2008
7:22 AM EDT 		> Stop being an engineer for a moment.

If you're an engineer, you can no more stop being an engineer than you can stop breathing.
Bob_Robertson

Jul 24, 2008
9:22 AM EDT 		> silhouette

Paper or steel target with a plain black figure printed on it?
tuxchick

Jul 24, 2008
12:03 PM EDT 		Engineers are not capable of fanciful wordplay, or emotions? So how does an engineer handle a romantic moment- "Darling, your pheromones are triggering a natural behavioral response that my gametes are responding to."

Bob, I had the most fun last weekend- one of the guys at the shooting club brought his Thompson. Yep, a real .45 Tommy gun- and I got to fire it. Now that is fun. Loading it, however, is less fun.
jdixon

Jul 24, 2008
1:22 PM EDT 		> Engineers are not capable of fanciful wordplay, or emotions?

Sure they are, but that doesn't mean they stop being engineers. Engineering is, at its core, a way of looking at the world.

> ...and I got to fire it. Now that is fun.

I'm sure it is. :)
tuxtom

Jul 24, 2008
2:17 PM EDT
Quoted:
So how does an engineer handle a romantic moment

Engineers have romantic moments?
tracyanne

Jul 24, 2008
2:25 PM EDT
Quoted:
Engineers have romantic moments?


Yes, I knew one that was romantically involved with a steam train
thenixedreport

Jul 24, 2008
2:40 PM EDT
Quoted:
Engineers have romantic moments?


*cough* *cough*Linux Torvalds
azerthoth

Jul 24, 2008
4:27 PM EDT 		Linus has to have romantic moments, his wife can kick his butt and any 4 friends he might choose to bring to the party.
jezuch

Jul 24, 2008
10:02 PM EDT 		I once read somewhere, that another word for "geek" could be "technosexual". Now, if we consider that all engineers are geeks... ;)

Quoted:
"Darling, your pheromones are triggering a natural behavioral response that my gametes are responding to."


Yeah, that sounds like it...
hkwint

Jul 28, 2008
9:41 AM EDT 		Oh darn... Screw ya, all of ya! (I'm an engineer, at least my job description says so, mind you?)

Anyway, what we need are some RepRaps and a free 3D drawing program capable of making drawings that the RepRap can interpret.

Anyway, more people are working on something like this; please see the $75 laptop project (Mary Lou Jepsen who 'designed' the OLPC sreen founded Pixel Qi); which is evolving at a slow pace:

[HYPERLINK@www.pixelqi.com]

Quote:

Quoted:
We contend that new displays, with integrated touchscreens, and wireless capability are the future. They are essentially motherboad-less and don't need much an operating system at all. We are currently in a world of $10 CPUs, next year they will be less expensive. We see the future of the portable electronics as simply the display with embedded electronics eventually right in the display glass itself.


But of course, nobody wants to wait for them to arrive, so therefore this is a good project. Coincidentally, I was looking at a CherryPC with less features - meaning cheaper and less bloated. I can't find it. It should run a web- mail- and fileserver @ <2 Watt, and be cheaper than the CherryPC. It doesn't need display capability or Wifi, as long as you can log in via ssh / ethernet all is ok. Therefore I was looking at embedded systems - but that's not as easy as one might think. There's a plethora of choices out there when it comes to embedded systems, and a lot of them are capable of running Linux.

Anyway, if you want someone to make a 3D model for a case, mail me, send some sketches and I will mail the model back to you. Fiddling with Pro/E is what I do almost everyday...
Sander_Marechal

Jul 28, 2008
11:51 AM EDT
Quoted:
Anyway, what we need are some RepRaps and a free 3D drawing program capable of making drawings that the RepRap can interpret.


There's FOSS CAD software out there. Not much, but it's there. Perhaps even Blender can be extended to do this? It already has support for solid bodies and all that.
hkwint

Jul 29, 2008
8:37 AM EDT 		The problem is not CAD software or 3D CAD-software; the problem is more specific 3D CAD-engineering software. There's tons of CAD software for Linux, but most are not suited to make drawings or 3D files to be interpreted by CNC-machines (like RepRap). However,

There's quite a lengthy article about the '3D CAD engineering and Linux' issue written by someone from FSF, but I've lost the link. However, someone is making it for KDE at this moment; though that's kind of Alpha today.

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