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E-book-related hardware: $300 Touch Book netbook-tablet. Plus, Onyx Boox’s evil text-to-speech
March 2, 2009 | 10:38 am
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By David Rothman
Netbooks are okay for reading e-books, but tablets would be even better. But what will you type with?
One Laptop Per Child solved that problem with a convertible laptop that you can also fold into a tablet. How about a different approach, though? Suppose you could simply detach the keyboard and kick back and read your favorite e-books?
That’s what you can do with the Touch Book, from Always Innovating. "The Touch Book is expected to ship in late Spring and will start at $299," Always says, and in both regards, price and ETA, I’d routinely urge caution. Still, if this pans out, it could be hot. Here are unverified odds and ends, in Alway’s words:
- 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
"Always on"
In addition, there’s an "always on" capability and a 3D interface without need for "a stylus or a skinny pinky."
More OS deets: "The Touch Book will ship by default the Touch Book OS. 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." Big question: Why not more powerful versions of Windows? Could this be a red flag?
E-book app angle: I can easily see FBReader or perhaps eventually Stanza running on the Touch Book. Stanza would mean that the Touch Book could read eReader-DRMed books.
Related hardware info: Photo gallery, zipped photos of Touch Book, Gizmodo piece on it, preorder info (U.S. only right now) and FAQ.
Also newsy today: More Apple e-book rumors and further info on the Boox (MobileRead), which indeed supports ePub. YouTube here and earlier TeleRead story here. Author’s Guild, beware. This baby has text to speech, according to the highly informative video! We’re all going to hell. Alas for the AG and Kindle, the Onyx is far more open; and apparently the product concept didn’t originate in America, home of the not-so-free when it comes to gizmos. A near-10-inch version is said to be on the way.
Technorati Tags: Touch Book,Onyx International
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Comments:
Why not Windows XP? Probably because it doesn’t use an x86 CPU but rather an ARM, one of the new OMAP3 chips just out from Texas Instruments.
This also limits the flavor of Linux you might put onto it, and rules out the ‘hackintosh’ path.
But it does give the long battery life and ‘instant-on’ capabilities.
They claim that ‘many iPhone games will run on this’ so I wonder about porting over Stanza and other iPhone ebook apps.
It also gives us a tantalizing hint at what Apple *might* be up to with the long-rumored, iPod-family, ARM-based, Apple tablet…
Yeah, that is what I was going to say. WinCE is the only flavour of MSWin that runs on ARM. ARM is very different than i386 and much better for portable devices. They probably say WinCE is not desirable because it is very slow (although I am sure it is faster than XP or — God forbid — Vista).
Having a mobile device running MSWin is just a waste of good hardware in any case, though.
Pond and LuYu: Many thanks, both of you, for following up on my “red flag” comment. This is a very very interesting device but, as you’ve noted, one with limitations. David
It would be better if both sides were touch screens, so you could have the two page experience like a real book, then use one of the screens as a touch screen keyboard for when you want to use the device as a laptop.
Well, let’s see…it uses an ARM processor. Although a different one, the same family CPU as every eInk ebook reader, some non-eInk readers and most PDAs, phones, etc. For some uses, lack of i386 Windows is a drawback. However, for many other uses, especially ebook reading, ARM is a plus.
I assume that the battery life they quote is for both batteries when the screen is docked. If the screen by itself had that battery life, then this would make a fine ebook reader (with color). Not as long lived as eInk per charge, but very seldom do I read for 10 hours at a stretch. The touch screen is a plus, especially if you can write on it (annotations).
Stanza, FBReader, a better version of Azardi or even Digital Editions (yuck) on this would be great for ebook reading.