Re: [9fans] more little hardware

[John Floren <slawmaster@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 2:06 PM, Jack Johnson <knapjack@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 5:57 AM, Stuart Morrow
> <morrow.stuart@googlemail.com> wrote:
>> However, there is one "smart" feature that for me would be useful enough that
>> carrying a big chunky thing that lives for a quarter of a day on battery might
>> actually be worth it, and the feature is so damn trivial to do with Plan 9 -
>> setting/unsetting the ring tone to/from silent in a cron job.
>
> I would like my ringtone volume to adjust periodically to the ambient
> noise, which also seems fairly trivial.
>
> What did you folks with bitsies and iPAQs find useful? Any of you
> still packing one?
>
> -Jack

I have fiddled with an iPAQ/bitsy on and off over the last few years.
What's really nice about it is that you get access to a "real
computer"; I booted wirelessly off my CPU server, which meant I had
access to all my files and music, which was nice because the bitsy's
sound hardware is supported. As long as you have a wireless
connection, it's the best way to use a PDA. If wireless goes away...
life sucks.

It was nice--the reason I don't use it is because the adapter which
gives PCMCIA capability makes the device about 3 inches thick, and the
battery is pretty old/weak.

By my assessment, the bitsy was just a little too primitive for Plan
9. You need a bulky adapter to get wireless (PCMCIA sleeve + orinoco,
basically), the boot process is a bit weird, there's not really much
local storage, and of course it's a PDA, not a phone, so you still
have to carry around a cell phone too.

If we could either port to a modern ARM-based phone or work out some
sort of relatively space-efficient combination of the Beagleboard +
touchscreen + cell radio + battery, I think life would be nice. The
OpenMoko platform is quite cheap, but I don't know that there's much
future there; I can't find the reference now, but I'm pretty sure I
read somewhere on the site that they do not plan to design any more
hardware.

John
--
"Object-oriented design is the roman numerals of computing" -- Rob Pike