Sorry Litl, but the FCC just spoiled your surprise party. Described as "a web computer" running Litl OS (sorry Microsoft), the 3.38-pound Litl Easel (built by
FIC) packs a 1.86GHz Atom Z540 processor beneath that 12.1-inch 1280x800 pixel display, a meager 2GB of storage, 1GB of DDR2 memory, 802.11b/g WiFi, and webcam all powered by a 2600MAh battery. There's also HDMI, a single USB jack, and an IR receiver for a Litl remote. A dedicated baby-blue "Litl" key on the keyboard would appear to act like a home key that takes you back to the "Card View" home page. Based on the description from the manual, the Litl OS will present information in stacks of cards: blue cards are "permanent" cards for the card catalog, family and friends, and settings; white cards are web cards displayed in a Mozilla browser; and black "channel" cards (known as widgets everywhere else) feature a Litl alarm clock, New York Times headline ticker, and weather channel. And if the cutsie-wutsie factor of the Litl Easel is lost on you then perhaps the "best results if plugged in" label on the power brick will help drive the message home. Litl already has a teaser page up so we expect this to launch Stateside sometime before the holidays.
Read -- FCC document
Read -- Litl teaser
posted Oct 28th 2009 3:14AM
pre killer lol
there are eels in my hovercar?
You'd like.. a magazine? Gum? Tobacco? Cigarettes? Ah yes, cigarettes. Cigarettes it is.
"Litl OS"???
More like Litl lOSt...
Come on, surely it wouldn't be that much more expensive to put even 4GB storage in the thing?
Litl POS?
Looks a Litl awkward.
Hdmi? Sweet. Hi def power rangers porn!
It's adorable! ........ but I wouldn't want to be seen with it.
best results if plugged in? that's just going a litl too far.
i guess if you make a bad product, market it to kids.
It looks like something made by Fisher-Price
The buttons on the keyboard look like they are from startrek
litl on storage ;)
The OS on these things probably isn't joking - they've got some good programmers - like Havoc Pennington (ex Red Hat, worked on lots of the key bits of GNOME)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havoc_Pennington
I'm expecting this to be really exciting from a software POV
Well apple pinched it from sony.
Im sure iKurt is dumbfounded that Apple took this design from someone else.
Surely your world is crumbling....No?
*hits report*
Wonder what iKurt XIII will say about this. Tune in next week to find out!
I know rite?!! First thing I thought: iPhone clone.
Microsoft used "channels" with Internet Explorer 4, so the term predates "widgets".
I actually like the style of it. I would prefer dedicated page up and down buttons though; something that too many netbooks lack. 2GB of storage just isn't enough either. Maybe it would be ok if there was an SD card reader, but there isn't. The charge port is in an odd position too... Other than that I'd love to try out the system though.
As much as you´d like to I advise against watering that thing to make it grow into something worthwhile.
Yeah--Star Trek is exactly what I thought of too! I could totally see Spock walking around with one of these...
The 2GB of storage tells me they're seriously focused on some sort of Cloud computing model. In that case, the storage will only be used for booting up and connecting to the OS home-base in the Cloud. As a parent (I've got 4 kids), this thing could be a no-brainer. While the hardware looks really cheap--almost disposable--that's probably intentional, meaning this thing might be really cheap. With no word on the pricing model yet, I'm imagining a really low hardware cost (like so ridiculously cheap, how could you NOT buy it), with Litl making its real revenues from some sort of subscription model--with the subscription being for access to your data/files and a suite of customized web applications (possibly targeting kids, including maybe some streaming movie or educational video content--cartoons?) all stored on their servers.
If it's cheap, what make this so attractive to parents is that you can afford to buy and give this thing to your kids with no worries of them breaking it or losing their data. If they break the thing, no big deal--it's so cheap you just get them another one. In our home, we've got both Macs and PCs (one running Ubuntu), it's clear that my kids don't really care what OS they're using. That's because all they really want is a web browser they can use to access all of their stuff online (Facebook, email, blogs, homework websites)--most of which is ALREADY online. So I'm really intrigued, and hoping this might actually be the very thing I've been waiting for.
Another "killer" feature for parents (as the ones most likely paying for a subscription--again, assuming there even is one!) would be a palette of parental controls they could use to manage their kids' access (with recommendations based on age maturity)...
Okay, now you have my wish list!
Aaw cute netbook *--*.
wat oo''? Litl OS? I never heard about it D:. This OS exists in other notebook or netbook oo''?
"xbryan @ Oct 28th 2009 4:05AM
It looks like something made by Fisher-Price"
Yep it really looks like o.o'' and really remainds me that notebook for children D:.
You guys wondering about the 2gb storage, or other design decisions, here are some comments from a developer of the machine
(as someone has already stated, this machine is made by cool hackers in the linux/gnome community)
http://blogs.gnome.org/lucasr/2009/11/04/litl-webbook-some-technical-comments/
$699 doesn't seem very cheap.
http://store.litl.com/
Yeah, but it's worth it.
http://litl.wordpress.com/2009/11/06/thinking-of-a-netbook-id-rather-buy-a-litl-let-me-explain/
(I'm from the company by the way)