I haven’t gotten a chance to try a Touch Book yet, but I want to. Who wouldn’t? The netbook made by Always Innovating and making its debut at the DEMO conference today, claims to offer 10 to 15 hours of battery life, weighs under 2 pounds and perhaps most importantly, starts at $299.
That’s cheaper than [...]
That’s cheaper than an Amazon Kindle. And this thing can do a whole lot more.
For $299 you get a tablet computer, a device with a touchscreen not unlike a larger iPhone. And for $399 you get the Touch Book can turn into a full netbook as well. Its screen can rotate, and be made to face opposite a keyboard for a full laptop experience.
The other specs sound impressive as well:
- 9.4″ x 7″ x 1.4″ for 2 lbs (with keyboard)
- ARM Texas Instruments OMAP3 chip
- 1024×600 8.9” screen
- Storage: 8GB micro SD card
- Wifi 802.11b/g/n and Bluetooth
- 3-dimensional accelerometer
- Speakers, micro and headphone
- 6 USB 2.0 (3 internal, 2 external, 1 mini)
- 10h to 15 hours of battery life
The internal USB connectors sounds a bit odd, but Always Innovating claims it’s a new design to prevent you accidentally disconnecting them as you might on current laptops/netbooks. It explains this feature and more on its FAQ page.
On paper this all sounds great, but its true test will come when it is shown live in action as it will be at DEMO. The biggest question mark has to be its Touch Book OS. Rather than run Windows XP or some variety of Linux as many current netbooks do, Always Innovating decided to develop its own. It claims to use a fully 3D interface, one that makes it so you don’t have to use a stylus to navigate its touchscreen, and rather can use your finger. There’s no word on if it includes multi-touch technology, but seeing as that’s not noted anywhere, I’m going to go ahead and assume that it is not.
Perhaps even more interesting though is a note on the FAQ page:
The Touch Book has been designed with the help of a vibrant open source community which believes in diversity. This enables to install many OSes on the device, including Google Android, Ubuntu, Angstrom, and Windows CE, though we would not recommend the latter. You are free to do whatever you want.
That should excite a lot of people.
Some other key points about the device include Always Innovating’s assertion that Intel’s Atom processor is too power-hungry and so it went with an ARM processor made by Texas Instruments. The company claims that this will allow for not only 10 to 15 hours of battery life, but allows it to be “always on,” meaning that like a cellphone, you’re not meant to turn the Touch Book off every time you finish using it.
Also of note is that the Touch Book will use Mozilla’s upcoming mobile web browser, Fennec.
The device itself has a basic black look, and looks like it will be pretty solid. It will be available only in the US at first and should be ready to ship by “May or June 2009.”
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