
How Much !
Far too over priced.
French firm Linutop has launched its latest micro desktop: the model 4. An evolution of the its predecessor rather than a completely new machine, the 4, like the 3, has a 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU, 1GB of memory and 2GB of Flash storage for Linutop's own custom version of Ubuntu. Linutop 4 Linutop sees the 201 x 182 x 30mm, …
Someone is having a laugh at that price. I was thinking of picking up such a device based on the description, then saw the price!
How about someone takes one apart just to see if there is a nice easy way to upgrade the storage and posibly RAM.
Nice try, beter luck next time!!!
"Is it just me or are these guys selling a linux distro for €80 and not offering a free download?"
They don't need to offer you a download (of the source for free or for a reasonable fee) unless you acquire the binary distribution from them. That's what the GPL actually says.
..with all of the above.
The business market may well fork out that kind of cash but I bought atom based micro desktop that screws on the back of the telly from novatech for 150quid less. If they would sell them without the windows tax, half the price*. And it has a hard drive. And built in wireless.
Don't overlook the French market though. I live there 8 months a year and they _will_ buy it because it is French with no regard for the price.
*I haven't got to the bottom of the 'legal reasons' that prevent them. Perhaps they mean commercial reasons.
An Asus one that had a PCI slot (not PCIe), it was the only one I could find with PCI, as I already had a DVB-S2 card which cost a lot......
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_CPU_on_Board/AT3N7AI/
You need to tweek linux to use hardware accel for flash (basically add a file in the right place with a line in it to swtich it on!)
The motherboard is an Intel D945GSEJT ... got for about 80 quid. That exact same case is an EPC-01, less than 25 quid.
And no, it's useless for media playback - no H264,VC1, no HDMI, no 24p ... you can add the Broadcom miniPCIe card and it'll decode them, but it struggles on bandwidth for 1080p so you need to watch 1080p content scaled to 720p to get smooth playback.
Keeps the missus happy though watching media whilst she's cooking, which is fine by me.
Flash is cheap.
Flash is small.
Flash comes in large volumes in a single chip.
Why does this not have 16gb of flash on it?
Also worth noting, unless things have changed recently Ion support on linux is a bit weird. It feels very much like the manufacturer is trying to keep it closed source. The initial linux drivers were rather short on functionality. Assuming Lintop got advanced drivers to actually watch TV on the thing, maybe they are keeping their distribution off the web for a reason.
Note that you only have to give away GPL'd source to your customers. If you put a slip of paper in the box with the GPL on it and 'if you write to us enclosing a bankers draft for $3.54 then we will mail the source to you on paper at your address of initial registration", you are compliant.