Intel's Linux-Powered Mobile Internet Device 87
An anonymous reader writes "Intel is set to launch an ultra-mobile PC dubbed Mobile Internet Device or MID which will run on Linux. The PDA-sized devices will target 'consumers and prosumers' instead of mobile professionals. From the story: 'MID tablets will run a simplified finger-friendly user interface optimized for the small screens, based on the Gnome desktop but with an Intel-developed master user interface layer to serve as an equivalent to the desktop. Developers will next month see the first MID-specific OS -- a tweak of China's RedFlag Linux known as RedFlag MIDINUX -- while the IDF schedule itself includes a stream of ultra mobile sessions including one on Designing for Linux-based mobile Internet devices.'"
VoIP Phone (Score:4, Insightful)
Interesting (Score:3, Insightful)
Truly, though, as long as I can write my own programs for it, I'd run whatever linux variant that I had to.
A 6" screen and dual-core 800Mhz? Very nice.
The bad part? "next year's release of the products." NOW. WANT NOW.
Re:Late April Fool's? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Poor old modding community (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't wary for us. Instead of that funny intel chinese redflag midinux I will surely install hardened gentoo on it.
Re:Interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Nokia 770 anyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It needs all this stuff to succeed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:VoIP Phone (Score:3, Insightful)
A product's potential to become revolutionary, evolutionary or extinct cannot be separated from its price.
The Newton, while arguably too big, was certainly too expensive to take the world by storm. The Palm was much less ambitious but priced right. Two way pagers were popular for a long time because their cheapness relative to mobile phones created an application niche for them. Now that the scale of mobile phone adoption has tilted the table in that direction, people are more likely to go with SMS.
If this device were cheaper than a mobile phone to buy, and the service was cheaper, then there is no question it would have legs, despite any limitations it might have. If it's more expensive either way, then people will hook PDAs or laptops up to their phones via BlueTooth. They may fail because their service is crap or because BlueTooth is so squirrely for ordinary people to deal with, but they aren't going to pay more for something they could theoretically have for less.
This suggests a device like this needs to have two things to succeed: It must be priced less than any other way of getting the same thing accomplished and it must be at least barely usable for its intended audience. Greater usability at a higher price is not a recipe for success, nor is unusability at a lower price (although it may spoil adoption of a higher priced gizmos).