XCore's EduBook, a Netbook That Runs on AA Batteries 217
I'm typing this on a netbook with no hard drive, not using a chip from Intel or AMD, and powered by AA batteries. Eight rechargeable AAs, to be precise, in a bank of cells right where a Li-Ion battery would sit in a conventional laptop. The batteries charge in place, too (regulation prevents overcharging) meaning that the power cord is a simple three-prong-to-cloverleaf cord, no wall-wart required. It's the EduBook from Xcore (see that page for some photos of the internals, too), and it's a cool concept. Despite some warts, it's one of the most interesting things I ran into on the CES show floor last month (Xcore's Michael Barnes kindly supplied the laptop, straight from the display case). Read on for my review.
Yes, it runs Linux.
Before diving in to anything else, note that this is a laptop built for running Linux; the one I'm using is running Ubuntu 9.4 (Jaunty), and others that I played with briefly on the show floor were running instead Barry Kauer's lightweight (around 100MB by default) Puppy Linux. Though Puppy's quite a nice OS, I stuck with Ubuntu on the EduBook, because that's what I'm most used to.
Why 9.4, now nearly a year out of date? Because a few bits of stock Ubuntu caused hiccups, which Barnes blames on packaging goofs by Ubuntu. Xcore has tweaked the default drivers to get working two important subsystems -- networking and sound. (Puppy Linux apparently works on these fronts just as supplied.) Until I know that an upgrade won't result in a disconnected and mute machine, I'm sticking with what works. (Other distributions, including Ubuntu derivative Linux Mint, are reported to work well, too.)
Purpose, Philosophy, and Ingredients
The EduBook is what you might get if you gave the OLPC team a simpler mandate in their quest to provide laptops suitable for educational use: it's small, cheap to produce (currently, the retail price for this 512MB RAM/8GB SD version is about $200, depending on order size), fairly sturdy, modular, and upgradable — after a fashion. And like the OLPC project's XO, it's intended as an educational tool, and for distribution in places around the world where computers have long been too expensive to be common. To that end, the company's shipped machines (besides "quite a few" to the US, Canada and Mexico), to South America, Asia, the Middle East, and six countries in Africa (Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, Tanzania, Ethiopia, and Uganda).
Modularity means the EduBook can be readily assembled inside or outside of an importing country, which can make a huge difference in the local price of a computer because of the vagaries of import duties and other taxes. Some countries charge higher import duties for importing un-assembled computer parts, though often the opposite is true. According to Barnes, "Indonesia now allows people to import computers with no tax. Thailand does as well. However, in both countries, they will apply taxes on the components if you bring them in as components. Both countries have programs where you can build in tax free zones and export but if you import the parts to assemble and sell locally, it is cheaper to buy it already assembled."
The machine's guts are made for flexibility. Unlike the all-in-one approach of Intel's Centrino line (incorporating wireless as part of a motherboard+processor package), the EduBook uses a x586 system-on-chip core (block diagram) to provide processor, video and 512MB of main memory, but farms out wireless and storage; for wireless hardware, there's essentially a USB slot and a niche carved out of the motherboard. That way, the latest and greatest wireless interface (or the cheapest and most readily available) can be added at assembly time, keeping the three external USB ports free. Any USB wireless device small enough to fit will do -- it just has to work with the OS. (The company also runs a development and support site for working with the quirks of running a slightly offbeat processor.)
The EduBook is upgradeable, but not user upgradeable. Instead, the parts are modular enough that new chip generations, larger SD cards, or improved wireless modules can be readily swapped in by the maker (or by local manufacturers) while preserving all the user-facing parts (screen, keyboard, ports).
For storage, there's another (internal) slot for an SD card — an 8GB card in my sample — presented to the system as an IDE device. No conventional hard drive (though it is possible to order one in place of the SD card) means that the EduBook lags even typical low-end netbooks for raw storage capacity, and SD cards aren't the speed demons that SSDs are. But this isn't a machine built for carrying a road-warrior's movie collection or sticking into a data-center rack, and XCore86 have snipped out probably the most common failure point for laptops. (And SD cards are easier to source and simpler to replace than hard drives.) In practice, and considering that the system-on-a-chip processor is also aimed at frugality rather than speed, it's hard to fault.
The outside of the case is typical (but tough-seeming) netbook: the only port on the back is the AC inlet to power the laptop and charge the batteries; on the right side of the chassis are two USB ports; on the left, one more USB port, along with ethernet, a VGA out (which I didn't test), microphone and headphone jacks, and a 10/100 ethernet port.
Facing the user is a perfectly nice, perfectly standard, 1024x600 LED-backlit display. A Pixel Qi daylight-readable one would be nice; maybe one will show up in a future iteration.
Fit, finish, feel
The input devices on a laptop with 9" screen are small, of necessity — but for me, even a small keyboard beats a touchscreen or thumbboard. The keyboard is of the "nearly full size" variety. The touch-pad, also constrained by reality (about 2.5" x 1.5") is smooth and responsive — perhaps too responsive. My hands aren't big, but I've still had some curse-inducing frustration and backspacing at typing on this.
One problem I have with touchpads generally (and most laptops are saddled with them) is that an inadvertent tap of the thumb while typing can lead to an accidental cursor jump or text swipe -- and suddenly you're typing in the middle of the wrong paragraph or wiping out a chunk of what's already been written, and scrambling for Ctrl-Z. On the EduBook, this happens far more frequently than I'd like, though it's teaching me slowly to keep my thumbs hovering a bit higher. In use, and knowing that this is a machine built for other than high-end multimedia use, the twitchy keyboard and pointer are my biggest complaints. Another nitpick: the trackpad's buttons work, but they're chintzy, and ever-so-slightly misaligned, catching the skin on my thumb slightly when I move from left button to right.
The case seems strong — a little brick-like, even, at slightly more than an inch thick. The bottom of the case (not metal, but heavy-duty plastic) features two large areas of corrugation for an additional bit of rigidity. I am skeptical of Barnes's claim that it compares well with the durability of the OLPC XO, but that's a very high bar: the sturdy case and solid-state storage sure make it seem more drop-safe than my 10" Asus Eee or most other laptops I've owned over the last 18 years.
What's missing
Going in, I knew this was a small laptop built for getting online and as a tool for school kids, rather than a high-end machine (in which case I'd have a different set of complaints). Taking the EduBook on its own terms, though, I'd like to see a few things:
- Better Battery life indicator. Though the reader can gather from an LED at the front edge of the case whether the machine is charged, charging, or drastically low on charge, it would be nice to have a better-integrated on-screen indicator for remaining battery life.
- An external SD card slot. After first dismissing such a slot as a novelty, owning two laptops with built-in SD slots has spoiled me for the convenience. And on a storage-lean device like the EduBook, its absence is notable. An external SD slot would make this machine a lot more flexible.
- An easier system to change the batteries. The bank of AAs lives behind a small door secured by a pair of small Phillips-head screws. It's a small thing, but one reason I like AA batteries as a power source is that if you really needed to, it would be cheap to buy a few hours' worth of power, or to keep a spare set of Eneloops or other charge-retaining rechargeables around. (No heavier than the wall-wart you don't have to carry.) On the other hand, the batteries aren't soldered in place, and carrying a mini-Phillips driver around is no great burden. And, since this is a device intended for schools and children, the company has no intention to make the batteries or other internals easier to get at. Having accidentally tried to recharge some alkaline batteries recently (in a wall-charger, not the EduBook), I concede this has some merit.
- Working Suspend/Resume. The great bugaboo of Linux laptops raises its head here, too; shutting the lid or selecting Suspend from the Gnome menu triggers the error message that "Suspend is not available on this computer." A shame, when power savings are part of the overall appeal.
Performance, and the Takeaway
The 2000ma batteries in my sample gave me between 3 and 3.5 hours unplugged; that's about an hour less than the best performance I get from my Eee laptop's 4-cell battery, but still a respectable netbook battery life (though falling behind the new generation of all-day machines). Charging (until the light on the case indicated a full charge) took between 4 and 6 hours.
Wireless performance was quite good at Seattle coffee shops and in hotel rooms in Las Vegas and Portland, but I've hit an odd hitch: it's finicky on the (Apple-based) network at my home — I can see a fairly strong signal, but sometimes can't connect. (Gremlins?) An ethernet port on the side means I'm not totally out of luck.
The practical outcome of using a processor that's proudly taking up the rear of the performance curve is that startup takes over a minute (I timed 1:05 from hitting the power button to the Ubuntu login prompt, and another 45 seconds to a Gnome desktop). The low-power chip means that it doesn't do Flash either (no Facebook Scrabble for you!), but using the EduBook for most Internet tasks, typing notes, creating scripts or other light programming, and even using The GIMP is acceptably, usably quick. But note: applications work fairly well once they've started, but that startup can be a bit painful; more than a minute for OpenOffice, for instance. A faster chip would be nice (and bumps to the processor speed are expected), but as a connection to the Internet with a real keyboard and a decent screen, capable of running standard versions of word processors, programming languages, graphics packages and more, it strikes me as less obviously innovative but more flexible than OLPC's machines. It's impressive to me that an x586 can run Ubuntu and Gnome as well as it does; though there are lots of promising developments in the world of non-X86 chips, too, right now X86 is still the target architecture for the bulk of Linux distros, including ones built for education.
All of this means that the EduBook is slow, but useful, not just in its intended classroom application, but as a knockabout netbook generally.
Re:Waiting for Recall (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, you're that person companies have to write stupid shit like: "Don't get in the bath with this laptop", for indemnity, and because you're retarded.
$199 too high! (Score:5, Insightful)
You can buy a Lenovo S10 with 1GB of ram, 1.6Ghz CPU and 160GB harddrive for $249, and that includes WinXP.
The AA batteries sounds interesting, but since all the netbooks come with a battery, and they are cheap enough to buy an entire new netbook with new battery when anything breaks or wears out.
If this unit was $150 or less, it's slow CPU and AA battery power might make sense. But at $199 it's not worth it.
Re:Hurray for LandFills! (Score:4, Insightful)
Ah, but if you RTFA, then you can make witty retorts to FIRST POSTS which get modded up in a shower of karma. Without paying, either.
Re:Woah. (Score:3, Insightful)
That's gotta be one of the longest press releases (written to be an review) that I've seen in a long time.
I wonder what it costs to have your ad run on the front of Slashdot as a story these days.
Re:Woah. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm still trying to decide whether to be disappointed that the editors no longer care, or happy that they're being more honest about blatantly slashvertising.
Re:Waiting for Recall (Score:4, Insightful)
Direct AC connection? 110-240V? I don't know about you guys, but I ain't gonna put that damn thing on my lap. This is a laptop. I have spilled coffee, juice, other drinks on my laptops. I don't want 240V shock on my private parts. I let my young kids to use laptop too and certainly wouldn't allow this one to them.
Most likely the AC-DC power converter is sealed up. Take a look at a "wall wart" power supply sometime - do you see anywhere for liquid to leak in? Even my EEE's AC adaptor, which isn't sealed, also doesn't feature any openings into which liquid could readily flow.
And then, what do you think this combination of liquid and voltage is going to do, exactly? Is the voltage going to follow the liquid's electrical path out of the abundantly ground-planed environment of the power supply and computer, and follow a path up your arms, through your heart, and then back down to the computer to get to a ground path?
I'm not feeling too scared, really.
Re:Hurray for LandFills! (Score:5, Insightful)
AAs are a horrible way to power a laptop. Why not power a car with them?
Last time I checked, a laptop wasn't an automobile.
And by your logic, AA batteries are a "horrible" way to power *anything*.
AAs are a horrible way to power a TV remote. Why not power a car with them?
AAs are a horrible way to power a phone. Why not power a car with them?
AAs are a horrible way to power a portable device. Why not power a car with them?
See how stupid it sounds?
Re:SD slot??? (Score:5, Insightful)
SD slot??? WHY??? How about just a USB reader and a USB port on the machine?
Then you can use SD, CF, microSD, xD, miniSD, MMS,...
If you look at the pictures: the SD slot is internal. It's one of the options for primary storage. I can only hope the thing has a very good SD card interface... The reason they included this slot is to provide a cheap way to configure the machine with solid-state storage. SD cards can't compete with good-quality SSDs, but it's very cheap to add an SD slot to a machine, the SD cards themselves are cheap and easy to find, and it doesn't take much physical space inside the machine.
I own a EEE 901 - personally I find the built-in card reader quite convenient. IMO it beats dragging around a USB accessory, at least in cases where I'm just dealing with one memory card format. (It's actually very rare these days that I have to deal with anything other than SD - though I do sometimes travel with a USB card reader just in case.) I like that even if I forget to bring a card reader with me, my 901 can read SD cards for me... Other netbooks are even more handy in this regard, as they feature multiformat readers...
I honestly wouldn't want to run a machine like this on AA's, and I'm not sure that having that capability is worth the trouble - but I do kind of like that they threw that feature in there. I can imagine a couple years down the road having trouble finding a replacement battery for my 901 (well, Asus uses the same battery pack in other models, so maybe I've got a while before that would be a problem) It's kind of nice that this machine uses "off-the-rack" li-po batteries instead of proprietary packs, and the AA fallback option is interesting... Reminds me of my old TRS-80 model 100, actually. :) I've seen tons of old laptops at flea markets - rendered not only obsolete but fairly useless as well as a result of the batteries having gone. Meanwhile, I was using my model 100 to type up reports in the late 1990s. The idea of a machine like this being genericized to the point where replacement batteries can be found anywhere is really appealing - even if the machine is very weak by today's standards.
Overall, I'd say the machine is pretty much junk. XD But it's fun junk, like the way the original EEE 7 and 9 inch models were fun junk. When they mention an internal USB slot it makes me think that they've got hobbyists in mind as much as anything... Netbook hackers just love an internal USB slot. :) ...Though it does seem that you need that slot for wi-fi, so maybe not?
Oh boy. This IS the future. (Score:4, Insightful)
Soon on Slashdot, we will not longer be discussing laptop computers because they are going to be as ubiquitous and cheap (as in 'Toys R Us' cheap) as the humble pocket calculator.
My Dad's first calculator cost $300 and it took a full pack of AA's and it had glow-y red numbers inside tiny light bulbs or vacuum tubes or something. And it came with a power cord. And it was the most exciting thing in the world! If there had been an internet back then, there would have been feverish discussion and hardware hacks and all kinds of 'boy' chatter regarding it and other devices competing for the same market.
But nobody talks about pocket calculators much these days. We've solved them. They're done. They work perfectly, and most of the time the build-quality is somewhere between "Fischer Price" and "Dollar Store G.I. Joe reject".
This is the second computer on a chip I've seen this week. ARM had an even smaller system which out-powered the one in this article by many orders of magnitude, all destined for the same market.
Yeah, it's kind of cool that portable computers are about to be Capital-S SOLVED; that we'll have long battery lives combined with high computing power in a small form-factor, all for $29.95 (or less). Great. Computers are going to be no more exciting than a new binder, pencil case and protractor set. -And probably about as durable, because stuff that lasts doesn't make money. Welcome to the Industrial Age.
Sigh.
So stop and look around. These are the last of the, "Good old days". Breathe it in, folks. It's never going to be the same again.
Of course, I'm sure we'll all find something new to get geeky about. Maybe radio-control cars will come back into vogue. Who knows?
-FL
Re:Woah. (Score:3, Insightful)
Runs linux? Check. Oddball underdog processor? Check. Not in general availability yet? Check. A few interesting wrinkles on the popular-but-now-somewhat-dated netbook concept? Check.
Re:uhhhhh....... (Score:3, Insightful)
***for the times you run out of power and can find AA batteries but not an outlet?***
More for the times you left the charger in Dayton, or the charger pins don't match the wall plug, or the $#@(*& charger just won't work for no very obvious reason. You really can get AA cells just about anywhere.
Re:Waiting for Recall (Score:1, Insightful)
Then again, I'd be upset in his situation, too. The guy replying to him is a tool and a troll, not Insightful.
Accidents happen. Not wanting 240V applied across your testis isn't unreasonable.
Re:$199 too high! (Score:2, Insightful)
This is about damn time. Using standard rechargeable AA would be awesome. Right now, each laptop, netbook, and mobi has unique and expensive to replace battpacks, cords, and warts that have to be specially ordered instead of purchased off the shelf. You could replace AAs easily and inexpensively. Hopefully this will start a new open power revolution.
Re:uhhhhh....... (Score:5, Insightful)
This reminds me of the time when I was in Nuremberg and the batteries for my camera died.
I ran into some random shop and managed to get a new pack of AAs without even needing to speak the language (I speak _some_ German, but I have no clue how to say 'AA batteries')
So, say you're in some random city outside and the batteries die. Where do you plan on plugging in? Sure, a laptop is a bit different than a camera, but still. You can't plug in everywhere. You _can_ usually find batteries everywhere. What if you're taking a 12 hour flight? Sure is nice to have extra batteries to switch out in such a case (I carry a spare for my laptop in such occasions). Or if you're on a train? Or even a coffeehouse without public outlets or where the public outlets are all in use or far away.
Let's see, this week alone I've been in the following situations where I would _like_ to be able to charge my laptop but no outlet was available:
Running a table for a student organization on my campus. There are no outlets where they place the tables, and I can't exactly just move. And hell, in the summer we do those things outside.
Attending a meeting. Yes, there are outlets in the room. Two of them. No, there weren't any open chairs near the outlets.
Hosting a meeting. For some reason they didn't think to install a power outlet anywhere near the VGA input for the projector...
Just sitting outside doing work.
And this is on a college campus, where everyone has laptops with them damn near all the time. What about third world countries, which is what this laptop is really _designed_ for? You really expect children in a third world country to have access to a power outlet absolutely everywhere that they go?
No suspend/resume is a dealbreaker (Score:1, Insightful)
Suspend/resume is hard to get right. It didn't work on the XO for quite a while, and then when it finally was a supported feature it could trash the external SD card. (That bug was squashed several months later, wasn't it?) There are potential problems with devices on USB (like the wifi in in this EduBook). I think the XO-1.5 redesign included several changes for the purpose of better enabling suspend/resume. (And the XO also had the audacious goal of supporting micro-naps with near-instant resume to really extend battery life, which unfortunately they never achieved.)
Really, having no suspend/resume is just a total dealbreaker for a laptop that isn't chained to the classroom wall. Plus it's an indication of a not-well-tested product IMHO.
Re:Waiting for Recall (Score:1, Insightful)
Just because you're well educated doesn't mean you can't be an idiot. I've know plenty of smart people that are completely stupid.
Re:Woah. (Score:3, Insightful)
Regardless... I am in love.
Seriously.
This machine specs out like a lady at my parents' house, and a slut in the bedroom.
Re:uhhhhh....... (Score:3, Insightful)
How do you say "AA" battery in Romanian?
R6
How do you say "AA" battery in German?
Mignon
Re:$199 too high! (Score:4, Insightful)
Since I'm posting, the AA batteries are a HUGE advantage. I've refused to buy any digital camera that doesn't take AAs for ages now and the result is that the last three cameras I've bought are all still perfectly usable. Meanwhile, I'm onto the second battery for my Eee (which I effectively got by buying an entire 2G Eee fairly cheap), and my early digital cameras (which I spent quite a bit on) are glorified paperweights. There are some very, very nice rechargeable AA options [eneloop.info] out there and some seriously good chargers [thebatterywizard.com]. I've invested in some of this stuff and would love to be able to use it with my netbook.
Re:uhhhhh....... (Score:1, Insightful)
Remember to smuggle a little screwdriver onto the plane for the battery compartment