Neo1973/OpenMoko as a laptop replacement

Mark wolfmane at gmail.com
Mon Nov 26 17:29:46 CET 2007


On Tue Nov 20 09:52:07 CET 2007 Attila Csipa plists at prometheus.org.yu wrote:

>On Monday 19 November 2007 19:01:14 Mark wrote:
>> My interest in the Neo from the the beginning has been the possibility
>> of running Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice on it. All I would need
>
>Are you really-really sure you want to run those exact applications on an
>embedded device with 128MB RAM and <=400MHz embedded CPU ? From your usage
>pattern an eeepc does make more sense than the Neo (although it seems less
>and less appealing here as the prices have ballooned from 200$ to well over
>300E)

Yes, I'm absolutely certain of that. I don't plan on doing heavy-duty
computing, but I do need to be able to open existing files and do
light editing, as well as use full versions of Firefox and Thunderbird
so I can use my existing plugins and have full compatibility with Web
pages. Adblock and NoScript would help somewhat with the load on Web
pages. I realize that it's going to run these apps much slower than a
desktop (but my main machine right now is a 1 GHz VIA EPIA M10000
Mini-ITX running kubuntu, so I'm not used to lightning speed anyway),
but if it works at all I'll be happy. The whole point is to replace
both my Visor and my Laptop. The Visor is on its last legs, and I'm
tired of lugging around a big, heavy laptop with all its accessories.

The thing that attracts me to the Neo is that there are many times
when I absolutely cannot lug around something even the size of the Eee
PC, but would really benefit from having my files handy and
accessible, not to mention the Internet.

My laptop is 7 years old and the backlight recently died, so I have to
find a way to replace it anyway. I originally bought it as a desktop
replacement, but it was very much overkill since I never got
completely away from my desktop, and the applications I used away from
home were only the ones I describe here: word processing, email and
Web. I did occasionally use GPS and mapping software for navigation,
which would definitely be a plus, but as I have a Garmin StreetPilot
that's not critical. That said, I am very interesting in the
possibilities for the Neo with Geocaching and OSM.

In the same vein, my existing cellphone is a very basic phone. I'm not
the least bit interested in text messaging (although the phone is
capable) or any of the other fluff that you can't buy a phone without
these days. I'll never text message any more than I ever got caught up
in IRC or IM. Voice is much quicker and more efficient. The one
"killer app" the Neo needs with respect to phone function is voice
recognition for hands-free dialing. My current phone doesn't even have
that, though my previous one did.




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