10 August 2008

Where are we now?

The aim of this blog is to discuss using the Elonex ONE family of computers. So, while it's interesting to follow the problems of scheduling delivery of several hundred thousand computers in a way that keeps the maximum number of customers happy (?), I thought it was time to bring together what we know so far about the machines.

I have therefore created two tables: http://groups.google.com/group/elonexone/web/hardware-comparison
and http://groups.google.com/group/elonexone/web/software-comparison
to list what we know and what we suspect.

On the hardware front we know quite a bit - it seems that predecessors of the Elonex ONE and ONEt have existed for some time under different names - that they are produced by two different manufacturers, but they have very similar specifications.

On the software front we know a lot less - software is relatively easy to change and while there is some information on the predecessor machines, we cannot guarantee that the same software will be preloaded on the ONE and ONEt as was loaded on the predecessors.

Let's emphasise a consequence of that - we cannot guarantee that the same software will be on the ONEt as there is on the ONE! The ONE appears to use a processor that is compatible with an earlier Intel machine, making it that little bit easier to find compatible software than the ONEt that appears to use a "reduced instruction set" processor. This may make the available software on the ONEt more restricted and make it harder to get the very latest version.

Human memory is a funny thing - I was looking at the Elonex Accessories page: http://www.elonex.dslshop.co.uk/index.asp?page=accessories to check that the printer they show is really an HP Deskjet (sensible because HP do make Linux drivers available for their printers) - and I think the "speakers" have totally changed their design since the last time I looked - can anyone else confirm this? If so, it's another example of the complications that can follow when you try to order a very large number of anything...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

How to get a root xterm on an Elonex One (original, not OneT):

Pop up the virtual keyboard with alt-tab and hover over the xkbd logo.

Hold down the left button and select 'manual'.

Yay, root xterm.

Luckily whoever did the half-baked machete job (it may have been Debian once?) missed a trick or two - no man command installed, so the xterm that is spawned drops us into a jolly helpful root xterm.

Killing the naff firefox menu suddenly makes this little machine a lot nicer, btw.

That's enough to get my embedded app running, so I'll leave a real distro to someone less lazy than me! ^_^

-Kamen Otoko

Anonymous said...

Hi 5 to Elonex: the replacement “ONE” arrived at work today and is just fine. Now for some fun, and a proper review later after I’ve taken it for a spin..

Anonymous said...

Anyone booted straight debian?

I want to use the elonexone+ to replace my NSLU2 which doesn't have enough RAM. (or bluetooth, or wireless LAN, or a screen, or a keyboard)

Sam