CherryPal out sweetens Apple with 2W, ultra-cheap PC
Here’s how you to get to CherryPal. Gather up all of the hot technology buzzwords – cloud computing, going green, communities – and mush them together into something about the size of sandwich. CherryPal has unveiled a device that’s billed as a cloud computer. Don’t be intimidated by the name. We’re just talking about a PC that …
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Help !!
Can anyone please remember details of the similar pc in a box that drew its power from the NIC ??
(having a minor argument here about whether this is possible)
Cheers
Web Audio
I hate any site with audio you cannot turn off! C'mon! Sort it!
Firewall Device
Surely you can run a firewall with one Network port just use two subnets.
lol
That's great, until you want to use vista, or a game, or any office application.
Looks like fun to tinker with...
How about an external 1TB USB drive for storage & a USB sound card? Might be nice for a simple media center.
Power over Ethernet
@Andy G
PoE can push 25w but is rarely used on a home network. and businessess wont use these... Maybe A PoE thin Client though.
@ Craig Ringer
"Hmm, I think we need a TLA soup icon."
A TSI ?
Where's the wifi?
If this thing is to be bought to be used in the living room/bed rooms, daddy sure's not happy to put ethernet wires all over the place.
laptots??
'and other laptots'?? dare I ask what laptots are? sounds a bit wrong if you ask me.
honestly, the amount of typos in El Reg is comparable to The Grauniad. Do you guys not have spellcheckers? You'll need to change your name to 'The Regsiter' soon. Or 'El Rge'?
Soekris sounds much better
Anybody who finds these interesting should have a look at a Soekris box.
The fastest runs at 500Mhz and half a gig of RAM, and costs a little over €300 (more like €400, about £300, when you get through all the charges).
They are amazing little boxes for running as home servers / firewalls etc. They are upgradable, having hard drive connectors, PCI / mini PCI and USB connectors built in, plus they have 4 ethernet cards.
The only thing they lack compared to these cherries is a VGA connector (you can add a PCI card) and they use more like 10W, but that shouldn't matter compared to a normal 400W or so PC.
Mine runs OpenBSD a hell of a lot faster than any Windows PC I've ever seen and it won't randomly delete your backups like Windows Home Server...
If you want a PC substitute I think you can forget about these types of devices, but for a little data server, firewall, router etc I haven't seen anything better.
Plus, for Jamie Kephalas, the website doesn't play any stupid audio...
@matt - Laptots
Matt, laptots was one of the phrases bandied around a few weeks ago when the whole small, cheap computers thing kicked off with the Atom EeePCs, Acer One, etc - as opposed to a peados portable PC, or something.
I like the idea of something like this that I can hook my half terabyte drive [and any future storage] up to over USB, and map into over NFS or SAMBA from my crappy old lappy without having to worry about my main PC drawing a couple of hundred watts 24/7. I dare say it would make a perfectly usable DHCP/DNS server too. Which would save my d-link router from needing restarted after heavy torrenting sessions when the onboard DNS passthrough thingy seems to shit itself.
Not to mention the tinkering options, and the non-x86 architecture which makes me go 'ooh' for no thoroughly explained reason.
At the right price, I'd be severely tempted.
Go Power!
End the x86 domination. Now.
:)
( Now if only someone would continue to develop desktop ppc64 type chip and build some machines and sell em. Don't worry about the OS, we'll linuxify it or something! )
Fit PC
I own a Fit PC ( www.fit-pc.com ). A bought another for a friend. A company I know bought several units, because they are selling haematological analysers, and since they have to sell PCs too to run the analyser SW, they prefer to *fully include* the PC inside the analyser enclosure; yes, it also runs Windows. Mine runs Gentoo, heavily customised for my needs, and 198MiB of its 256 MiB RAM are still left for disk caching.
was that a ZX81
looks like my first machine from all those years ago....
Why iTunes?
I'd think the major reason for iTunes compatibility is that they plan to market to the same style driven, form over function segment of the market that iPods and iPhones are pitched at.
Perhaps they're working on some sort of hosted iTunes back end with a Firefox extension for the front end. ( http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/eng/700182570.html )
Seeding the Blogoschmeer
A little grassroots marketing?
Writers/Bloggers/Students wanted for tech startup marketing (free computer and appealing compensation model)We are a new vendor of ultra-low cost (price of an iPod), highly energy efficient (very green), super fast (same performance characteristics as a $3,000 Mac or PC), new generation of desktop/laptop computers.We are going to build the brand based on our core values, inexpensive, green, user-friendly and last but not least open. Open in our world means open source software applications as well as open communication; a consumer brand that encourages users to share ideas and influence the roadmap of future product releases.The products will be launched in July ... with a really big bang!!!We are looking for "Brand Angels" who can spread the word through social networks like Facebook, MySpace, and others.Last but not least - we have very interesting compensation models (including stock option plans) in place. You will receive our product for FREE, and we rely on you to share your experiences through social networking sites/blogs. We will compensate you for promoting our product.Want to be a part of this "cheap/green/easy" consumer desktop/laptop success story by promoting a company that believes in sustainable living?We look forward to hearing from you.
http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/wri/717358501.html
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/wri/717350122.html
http://washingtondc.craigslist.org/doc/wri/717436053.html
Firewall
I've actually convinced some people short on real computers to set up a single port firewall by combining their residential gateway with a Linux box. The Linux firewall runs dhcpd, tells clients to use it as their main gateway, then has it's own gateway set as the linksys/dlink/netgear/whichever. Not elegant, but functional, and you can still use the wifi ap built in.
If you're looking for low power firewalls though, MSI makes a mini itx w/ a 500mhz geode cpu. The cpu itself consumes so little power that it doesn't even need a heatsink, and obviously no fan. The board has dual gbit ports, mini pci slot for a high power wifi adaptor, bootable cf card slot, and takes some form of cheapish ram. power consumption would probably mostly depend on how beefy of a wifi card you loaded in there, but I do imagine it'd be low, plus with the cf card you could go with absolutely no moving parts. Obviously I dearly want one of these boards... but my ancient donated 500MHz PIII HP desktop seems to still be working alright.
Fugly Box
It looks as though it might get Freeview, too...
Once again into the breach...
Grow up, kids. The Reg is getting better about limiting the stupid sophomorics in article titles, how about some corresponding improvement in the Comments section?
Just how bored do you have to be to point out phallic symbols in computer logos? (At least references to the AT&T "Death Star" logo were entertaining.)
And this Paris Hilton thing? Yeah, I could drop her name jokingly as if I were in some way personally familiar with her, but who would I be fooling?
Yours curmudgeonly,
Anonymous Codger
P.S. I hope nobody ever illustrates a Reg article with a Georgia O'Keefe painting.
@Anonymous Codger
it's a boring article of a boring box .. hence, if all on-topic, the comments would be boring as well
Paris, because her box isn't boring
IT'S FOR PORN!
CherryPal, get it?
These people are fn brilliant. They sell these things in the developing world. Out of the box it only does one thing: surfs porn (err.. the "web"). Everyone buys them just for that. And then CherryPal can sell to this install base Terminal Services. Besides porn, you can have Office, Photoshop. HELL you can even have Crysis (with StreamMyGame). Without going out to the internet cafe, that is.
(On top of that there's an ulterior factor: telcos like China Telecom need to move away from piss-poor voice by offering other services, and are looking to jump into thin clients hooked to their DSL lines.)
Only problem is that these app subscriptions will have to compete with free. The free you'll get by forking for real hardware and pirating all the apps from your friends.
But it's not about apps. Not yet. Now they just want you to to buy the machine and keep it in your bedroom.
Exaggerated, but should be usable
I think CherryPal's greatly exaggerating the performance, and they really shouldn't.. they'll have people benchmark it and simply tear them a new one. But, as long as the CPU and chipset are reasonably modern, a dual-core 400mhz PowerPC-based setup should be quite pleasant as a desktop. And it's hard to argue with 2 watts.
Is It A Bird? Is It A Plane? No, It’s LimePC!
This box looks like another fruit: LimePC!
Check Freescale site,
http://lwn.net/Articles/264264/
http://www.engadget.com/photos/hands-on-with-the-limepc/571857/
Anyway, hardware platform looks interesting/promising.
sophomorics into the breach
I had successfully resisted the temptation, but now I must wonder aloud, metaphorically speaking...
What will the customer service department to do remedy the situation when a user calls in to say she has a busted Cherry?
@ Snert Lee
"What will the customer service department to do remedy the situation when a user calls in to say she has a busted Cherry?"
Err... gratz?
I'll buy one...
I have a number of things that HAVE to run all day and which are just not CPU-intensive and for which this is a great solution. These things currently run in an ancient 600 MHz iMac and are all running in the command-line layer. They will port just fine to Linux!
Great box
This box has quite a lot of potential. I personally would market not only the complete box, but also the board inside of it seperately.
For example you could build a new case which looks like a desktop phone, maybe with a nice LCD screen and camera.
Or maybe inside of a radio-like case. Or inside of a TV-set. There are lots of possibilities.
Is CherryPal actually a LimePC?
The CherryPal seems to be a rebranded LimePC. Check out www.limefree.org.
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