More musing on the simputer.

Some more thoughts on $100 handheld/portable pc's.

So, the Nintendo DS cost about $130, that's about right for a small simputer like pc. Two cpu's, one 66mhz arm-9 and one 33mhz arm-7, one graphics copressor, 4MB main memory, 650k video ram, and 2 x 256x192 color displays, one with touch panel. margins on the DS are presumably suplimented by the sale of games but it seems unlikely that they would actually choose to take a loss on the hardware given that their nearest competitor is either their own products (gb advance) or the the psp which retails for $250. Still, Nintendogs is not a productivity tool.



The zipit, instant messenger device is about $100, with a monochrome 320x240 display, 100mhz arm cpu, 16MB of ram and 2MB of flash, it has linux on it already, but it's pushing the limits of usability for something you're going try and install more software on. It's already been heavily hacked on.



Both of those devices have built-in wifi.

Palm hits $100 for the zire 21 with 8mb of ram and 120mhz arm. The palm has neither wifi nor a backlight for the screen, only a docking connector. The zire 72 gets you 320x320 color, bluetooth, sdio slot, camera, infrared and a 312mhz arm, 8MB flash and 32MB ram, but for $250...

There are a couple gsm phones from asian manufactures that hit the sub-100 mark fairly handily for a contract free handset. In cellphone land though a 200x160 screen is pretty big.


The we have the $100 computer (presumably that's how much it costs to make rather than post markup). For whatever reason they don't envision retail sales.