Good question. I searched many pages, could not find any information which CPU model is used in this netbook.

Hi, yes, this is the same thing. Basically, this is a $100~ computer sold to Vodacom and then resold to consumers in South Africa with a data plan and a two year contract for roughly $30/month. Vodacom is making its money on the data plan. You get 300MB/month, which you can go through fairly quickly. After that the rates go up. The device is advertised as 3G (and you get charged for 3G connectivity), but you will spend more time on the GPRS network. The device is slow and has only basic functions, BUT it may be enough.

Let's see....

One interesting item to also watch is that they are advertising Ubuntu. Lately, Ubuntu has been trying to charge a fee for the use of their trademarks. Canonical is now taking the position that if you use the distribution that you must mention that the product is based on Ubuntu and as such it must be certified correctly if the trademarks are being used within the product. For this there is a fee. Being that the Linkbook is being sold in South Africa where Mark Shuttleworth is originally from, it will also be interesting to see how this all plays out.

R&B :)

Freescale just added a few low end QorIQs to their line:

http://media.freescale.com/phoenix.zhtm ... highlight=

1.1W, 800 MHz e500 core, 256kb L2 cache.
Interfaces: 2 PCI express, DDR3 RAM interface, 2 SATA, 2-3 Gb Ethernet, usb2.0, 1x TDM (who needs that today?), 2x FlexCAN, Flash controller.

The 1014 starts at below 20 U$ the 1010 below 24 US$ in low quantities.

did you see this one?
http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/sit ... PC5125-KIT

it's manifactured by LimePC (China) and they ship it with Android too.

Hmm intresting hardware .

Yeah I saw that. I guess with the 5125 and some venture capital an super reduced ultra low cost mini board (retail price about 50 US$ if produced in bulk loads) wouldn't be unrealistic. The 5125 is cheap and everything is onboard. Add 256 MB Ram and use an sd card as storage device an ethernet port and two usb ports to communicate with the outside world and voilá, there you go. Virtually no power usage, but a nice little board for toying around with.

Have in mind that it also has a display controller, so you can also build a little home computer around it, instead of an invisible server. The closest thing to it is the original Efika with the MPC5200B, but this MPC5123 has much more functions, and it's faster. Pity it doesn't have the WiFi connectivity everyone wants now. Would it be very hard to add?

Of course I have the display controller in mind. I am not a big fan of headless computers...
And for Wifi: Sure integrated would be nice, but it adds cost. The 5125 provides usb 2.0 and 100 Mb ethernet. That's enough for a real ultra cheap computer. Add not only an usb A receptacle, but also an internal usb connector to achieve easy modularity (usb is great for such things). If you wish wireless add it by usb.
And yes, I am thinking of something like an ultra low cost, low end Efika.
I was more than sold about the 5121 efika project a few years ago. Well we all know that there were issues and abandonation of that project was probably the right thing for Genesi.
With the 5125 the cards a mixed again to that extend that this chip is *really* low cost and complete. My very rough calculation for a 50 US$ board w/ 256 MB RAM based on the 5125 is probably not too far off. An sd card as msd to keep it maximally low cost (though a SATA connector should still be on the board, since the 5125 has a SATA controller inbuild).
Dunno though what about cache coherence with the 5125. But even if cache coherence is not there I think since the 5121 fiasco some things may have changed. Eventually the 5121 is working. Not at performance one could have expected, but still. But I only touched a 5121 device myself once (and not much to say the least). And for my main personal interest (MorphOS, AROS) cache coherence shouldn't be that much of an issue anyway, since the predecessor OS dealt with those things ages ago.

With such a tiny board something like my eFrame would be pretty nicely doable. I just was at an electronic store today (Saturn) and was watching the latest picture frames again. Prices (quality too) over the last year rather increased. The desigs are still very limited while display quality increased for many frames (not for all). Some are quite matured, Philips seems rather okay. But still...
I use my Efikaframe quite a lot. It has moved to the living room of my 2nd home and serves there for a lot of things. Unfortunately the Efika 5200B was too expensive as base for such a design (the board itself was rather okay, but it also needed an ATX psu, a gfx card and a hard drive), the usb 1.1 was a big limitation, the pci gfx card made the design thick, increased the power uptake and introduced a heat source (but is of course nice for 3D stuff). The RAM ammount of the produced Efika 5200B version was a bit too low (but *if* there would have beed serious demand more RAM wouldn't have been an issue).
The 5125 is low cost and low power. MorphOS is pretty useable on such a chip. A lot of things work. A picture frame that could easily handle most of your media files (of course no demanding video - but simple video is okay). Even rather heavy things like maps.google work reasonable well.
System normally boots into a simple UI for media replay and picture browsing (haven't finished that project yet and am not working on it since ages), but you can reach other things just as well. A bit what AMC is now.
Make a neat, classic design (not this pseudo modern Apple wannabe, sterile, modern plexi, glossy look) and sell it for 150-200 EUR. I am sure it works. A highly versatile (but still easily to use) frame for a price slightly higher than what's sold today.

Prob is: I don't have a venture capital at hand, but only my own pretty limited resources which hold back my own company founding plans already (scientific/teaching devices and services). It's a shame if you have ideas, but no (financial) partners.

So, if anyone is interested I may do a verbose project draft.

you'are talking about something like the chinese LimePad E7F.
I asked them for infos but they never answered to me. Really bad.

Not really. While pads are pretty en vogue, I wouldn't give it the "pad" label but rather stick more to a digital picture frame.
A pad has web browsing and stuff like that as main focus. But for demanding things as *main focus* a 5125 is not powerful enough. From a "pad" you'd expect more. The ipad (and soon the RIM pad, too) are the de facto standard to be measured by if you are going for a pad. That's just not feasible with a 5125. Disappointed clients preprogrammed (okay it would be way cheaper than the powerful options, but still).
My focus hence would be the easy tasks like showing pictures and replaying music. Silent, low wattage, elegant. But with the option to do much more if and whenever you want. A device for the living room, wall mounted or on a stand.
It's more like you're sitting in the living room doing #? and suddenly you feel the need to look up something at the wikipedia. You don't have to go for your laptop or other computer, just use the media frame that's powered on anyway and replaying music while displaying selected pictures/photos, breaking news headlines and your local weather forecast...

It would also be ideal for information kiosks (be it in an elevator in a hotels, product information at a shop or providing touristic information at some tourist information).

With the SATA controller there's the *option* to use it as storage/backup device/small file server as well.

Having a full but light weight OS with fast GUI in the background the options are endless.

http://via.i-networx.de/eframe/eframe.htm provides a little info about my Efika 5200B based eframe (which today runs MorphOS 2.6). I think about more or less the same but at a competetive price.
Maybe I should take up development of my easy UI again and provide more information about that.

Ulrich, that's the most detailed description I've red from your "picture frame" Efika. Love to hear it's still running.

ALso, it's very interesting to read about further things you'd like to do with it. What you've acheved si fantastic, because there's a very big hurdle since the start of your ptoject, and it's the Efika's form factor, totally unadequate for a flat computer. That one with the soldered graphics chip would have been a bless, but it never got real.

Some of the things you say sound like you want to reinvent the digital photo frame (a dead route), but I hope I'm wrong. Because interactivity is the added value, which user interface were you thinking about? Perhaps the omnipresent touch panel, or the remote control... Or both? Each one would almost fix your computer into an specific market.

A specific market isn't the worst as long as it has a sustainable size at least. You know, some 5125 device cannot challenge an iPad or iMac. It can't - period.
But it can challenge Philips, Kodak or Sony (well, their digital picture frame devisions). Based on the 5125 the hardware doesn'tnt need to be much more expensive than current "better" pictureframes. But such a device could offer a lot more: youtube client, internet browser (on 400MHz slow, but surprisingly okay), breaking news client (based on google news), pdf-viewer, emailer, a few games and more (not too much though, as we can learn from Apple: less is more and simplicity rules).
The idea is rather the way a PS3 works: Normally it is just a console for games and media replay, but if you like you can use it as full computer (okay, needs a custom installation on a PS3, while the media frame would come with the full system preloaded (usually hidden behind the simplified UI for Joe Average).
And I would go for a remote instead of a touch screen - while a touchscreen is a nice thing fingerprints aren't too appealing for a device where one of the main purposes is to look great. I may workout a business/product draft during the next weeks.

Sure. But try to attract investors with something that they immediately recognize as a digital photo frame...



Given the right software, it can ;-) Just joking. The problem, altough, is not entirely technical, but also cultural. No matter what you build, it will be seen as an Apple product "copy". For example, just yesterday, I saw some TV news about an stupid effort to fill children classes with computers - yet again. The "novelty" this time was that they were tablets instead of portables (ooooohhh...). Go figure: Although they were some other design, the TV said they were "ipads". I guess that wouldn't happen, if they were painted in a different color.



But you can't keep people from entering famous, bloated, crap web pages, and say that your product is crap because they are unusable.

On the other hand, I'm amazed that there's no electronic book that READS books to you, via speech synthesis. Am I a genius, and no one else really thought about it?



Warning: Already existing products, some with actual money put into promotion, already exist, perhaps at unbeatable prices and performances. What else could your product provide? Perhaps the geek factor alone. But that edge has never succeded in history. But I guess you, me, and a dozen more would just rave about it.



Go figure when people ask where the mandatory app store is... By the way, it nakes me sick, all this "appstore" buzzword around. It's Aminet for dummies, it has existed since decades!



But we all know why people buy PS3.



I see. But nowadays, touch user interfaces is a must have. But the idea of having both touch and remote might make some people's mind blow, in front of such a revolutionary dual concept...



Keep us posted. Wether it's viable or not, it's great to learn and comment about it.