The Ben NanoNote: smaller than my wallet!
The Ben NanoNote: A computer smaller than my wallet
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Today I received by post my Ben NanoNote, from Tuxbrain. What is it? A palmtop computer, really small. It has also really small specs... small screen, small keyboard, little RAM, and so on. Just a geek toy. But isn't it nice? You may wonder: How much is it: 99€, or 99$, depends.
I have seen quite a few videos on unpacking the NanoNote... I took some pictures. The usual unpacking process: tearing the bag, opening the paper bag... Then comes the really nice, smallish box. Well packed, it is!
It comes quite tightly packed (not as tightly as Apple gadgets, mind you) as you can see. Some foamy packing to keep it from getting knocked, underneath it comes a box with a small booklet with some hints (Internet forwarding via USB, Ethernet via USB, USB Boot and reflashing), a cleansing towel (quite nice, iPod style) a USB-miniUSB connector and charger and something that looks like a plastic "switch" to toggle the hardware USB boot.
Below you can see it running. Still little software... Luckily, this will improve over time, with help from all developers worlwide. This is an open project, every owner can help, and I'm doing the best I can to improve it. Long live the Ben NanoNote!
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5 Awesome Comments. Add Yours!:
It's a nice looking device. Does it have WiFi, I didn't see it mentioned on the spec.
For my portable device at the moment I'm using a Nintendo DS with an R4 card and homebrew software. :-)
It doesn't have Wifi. That's its main drawback, although it is fully compatible with Spectec MicroSD-Wifi (don't remember which model number). It costs between 30 and 75$, I'm not really sure. If it had wifi, it would probably be "better", although for a hundred € it is quite nice.
If you consider it some sort of PDA, it is over the top, anyway. Only if it had emacs... (I'm on it, but may take ages).
For portability, I use my iPod Touch (which I love quite a lot), but this looked so nice in the Engadget review that I just bought it by impulse. Now the problem is finding uses for it (NetHack playing aside :D).
How is it "typing" in your DS?
Typing is a bit of a pain using the DS's on-screen keyboard. It's fine for a quick visit to IRC or to check a few websites though.
Sweet, I may have to look into getting one of those just to play with ... given that I came up with something stunningly similar in a design class at school sometime in the mid 90s :-D ... even with a similar name.
I'm not bothered that it's "my idea", instead pretty damn pleased that someone's actually made a device along the same lines. Probably completely useless in practical terms (I want to do stuff like that For Realz, I now have an android phone...) but sure to be entertaining and nice to look at.
That screen, though... I count 40 characters across, and estimate 16~18 lines high. So, assuming a regular 9x14 font, it's a mere 360x240?
And therefore the usual question I'd ask of such a thing: Can we get a suite of Atari ST / CBM Amiga / Sega & Nintendo 8/16bit emulators for it, and an environment to run PC classics with? It looks very linuxy... or is it a proprietary environment that it's running?
Cheers :)
Hi Tahrey,
yes, it's 360x240 or very close, I don't remember exactly. With fbterm you can squeeze smaller fonts, but the pixels are always the same.
So far, I think there are no emulators available, but that depends on the distribution you run and how much time you want to spend. It's just Linux (I have Debian, the default installation is OpenWRT)... you can manage it as you wish. I tried compiling/running the ScummVM, but couldn't. But someone else managed to do it in a purely OpenWRT system, so it should be possible to get oldies on this little box.
Cheers,
Ruben
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