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Whoah... it's like I'm back on 8bc again.

But seriously, it's an OK paint job I guess, if you're going for the "covered in grease pencil" look. And an interesting way to maybe recycle an Xbox controller badge and buttons maybe. Still, I'm sure after a few attempts you can make one that looks better.

Wait, huh? What about the Magic-1? That was quite possibly the coolest thing ever.

So, is it an MCU driving it, or an actual CPU? I feel more comfortable with the latter, but hey. Guess I'll actually have to click the link. :)

EDIT: I looks cheap, yes. But you get what you pay for. No Linux or open source support. :(

Nice, but I want a keyboard and a more readable size display, so no ipod-wiki for me. However, reverse-engineering those ebook files could be useful.

Oh by the way, the header which calls this a "computer" in quotes is misleading. This is a 100% Turing complete computer. It even goes beyond the Turing definition of computer to include keyboard input (instead of just register switches) as well as readable text output, a fully programmable tri-CPU design, and onboard storage to the tune of 4 gigabytes maximum. The tools used to code the device are even open source.

Lastly, I looked through the design files, and this thing can do PWM sound, and potentially much more than that with some clever programming. The USB device control CPU could be re-programmed for sound generation or any number of things. It's intended to be used as a reprogrammable co-processor.

EDIT 2: I also looked through the bill of materials (which is quite small) and a presentation which the designer(s) made to a group of Unix geeks a short while ago, and it seems that even with a pitifully small volume of production (100 units) the cost per-unit minus the cost of enclosure and SD card is a paltry $25. With 10k units it would cost a little under $15. It's amazing to me how inexpensive this could be. Compared to an Apple II+ (which sold for $1200 with no floppy drive or monitor!), which is the closest thing I can think of to compare it to, (in terms of the user-perceived output) it has 48 times the CPU power, quadruple the RAM, and literally thousands of times more storage space. I know that (probably) Steve Wozniak would have killed his own grandmother for computational muscle like that back in the day.

Now- if one could put the entire textual contents of wikipedia onboard and then make it into a handheld I'd buy one. In fact, if there is a good place to obtain such text (or a good script to do it with) then I'd build myself something like this for the sheer utility of such a thing. PSOne screen + mini keyboard + Humane Reader = Awesome. In fact, it takes VT52 control codes, so it'd make a decent portable serial terminal too.

Now, the only way this would be more awesome would be built in Basic or a built in assembler and support for an 80 column text mode.

I personally think that uber-cheap low-end computing could be a great thing in the future but there needs to be some network infrastructure changes. TCP/IP is, for the majority of people, far too much than is really needed. It's like using an elephant to transport a flea. Devices like this with an efficient network transfer protocol for fast and efficient text mode send and receive would allow the rest of the world to have access to computing.

I read the guy's post where he complained that the sources the article quotes aren't reliable. I think he need to have his head staved in. Go for it iLKke!