Openmoko/Neo FreeRunner, nanocomputing (was: best office/home office setup - the telecommuter)

[Joshua Judson Rosen]

Alan Johnson <alan at datdec.com> writes:
>
> On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 3:11 PM, Greg Rundlett
> (freephile)<greg at freephile.com> wrote:
> > Moving to a new employment position, I'm once again faced with
> > purchasing some computer equipment.  I'm wondering what hardware,
> > software and combination people like the best for working seamlessly
> 
> One of these (http://www.openmoko.com/product.html), a portable HD and
> a couple of USB KVM docking stations?

There are, actually, already products specifically for this sort of
thing: Celio's REDFLY <http://www.celiocorp.com/>. OLO
<http://olo-computer.com/> shows a similar idea wherein an iPhone
would dock into a shell that looks like a laptop, but with the iPhone
in place of (and becoming) a touchpad.

I'm not really clear on how the REDFLY devices work, but maybe they
could be used with the FreeRunner.

> Maybe not, but some day.  Then again, maybe now depending on the
> kind of work and the if it can support USB video adapters.

My guess is that the USB 1.1 isn't quite fast enough to support any
particularly high-resolution/-framerate graphics (ditto for the
HDD). QVGA, maybe? But the *inbuilt* display is a full, beautiful
640x480, so you might be better-off just putting a big Fresnel lens in
front of it. :)

Keyboard and mouse, however, are quite do-able--either via USB (with a
slave-to-master converter for the port on the FreeRunner) or via
bluetooth.

> Still how cool is that phone?!

I've had one for about six months now, so I can say firsthand:
it's *wicked* cool :)

Though I have to admit that, most of the time, I use it as `just a
mobile phone' and alarm-clock (ffalarms is *awsome*); occasionally I
use Pidgin on it, or a web-browser, or TangoGPS (I'm somewhat of a an
`old-school', map-reading navigator, so TangoGPS provides just the
sort of sort of thing that I like). I've read my e-mail on it using
Claws, a few times.

It *is* also a lot of fun to to develop for a platform like this,
though (I've got ~1.5 projects in the works with it, right now).

Anyone else have one? Anyone else doing anything neat with it?

(has everyone who /doesn't/ have one yet seen the `A6 blowout sale'
going on at the openmoko.com store?)

-- 
Don't be afraid to ask (Lf.((Lx.xx) (Lr.f(rr)))).