MadPengiun has a review of the PepperPad, a Linux-powered competitor to Microsoft’s Origami concept, and concludes: “Overall, the Pepper Pad is a sleek ultra mobile PC in a nice form factor with a great touchscreen for navigating, launching applications, watching video and surfing the web. With the advent of AJAX web-based applications for calendaring, editing video, word processing, creating spreadsheets, and more, you can have some good fun with the Pepper Pad and get a wee bit of work done as well. The Pepper Pad won’t replace a Sony PSP-type game platform, or a PDA, or a notebook, but it will do some things that those devices won’t do.”
Interesting device. Looks like a competitor for UMPCs if all you want to do is surf the ‘net.
Bad article. Stopped reading when they mentioned ‘Mac Fanboy.’ Real, uh, professional and objective article there.
Agree, very bad article. Especially when your first line goes:
[i] Once again, Tux has beat the Borg to the punch with a new innovation.[i]
If you don’t have the decency to to say “Pepper Computer Inc. has beat Microsoft to the punch” then I’m not going to take the article seriously at all. Using slshdot style terms isn’t going to prove the case to use this device.
This little diddy came out about a year ago:
http://www.archos.com/products/ip_centric/pma_400/index.html?countr…
Runs Qtopia: http://www.trolltech.com/products/qtopia/
Primarily works great as a portable media player/pvr but it also makes a reasonable pda.
The only thing letting it down is a relatively low hardware specs but for me the video support beats the Origami devices, so far, hands down.
When I see this kind of device, and the price of 800$, then I much prefer my 12″ laptop which is not that much more expensive. It’s clear that a laptop is much more powerful, has a better keyboard and is much more useful all round.
As for the portability:
The Pepper Pad: 309 x 175 x 20mm at 1043 grams
Apple iBook 12″: 285 x 230 x 34,2mm at 2200 grams
Sure, the laptop is bigger and heavier, but the Pepper Pad doesn’t look that much more portable to me.
It’s an interesting gadget from a technological pov, but I don’t really see the target audience for this kind of device.
I agree. For $500, you can buy yourself a used thinkpad subnotebook that doesn’t weigh that much more than the Pepper Pad, is far more sturdy for portable use, and actually runs real software.
I agree and wonder how long they’ll be around. Microsoft can amuse themselves by fooling their partners into this sort of ill conceived adventures but I’d be surprised if the peperpad makers could aford it for much longer.
The laptop is one of these devices that is here to stay, only bettered by the tablet, although the latter doesn’t bring enough extra to the table for buyers to venture outside of conventions.
As the device is dependent on web-based apps it will only be as useful as the site serving it. It it is AjaxLaunch it will be pretty hopeless as all the application links there are dead! 🙁
This is a very interesting gadget. And the fact that it runs linux makes it even better. The only crutch is the price.
well, this is a cool little gadget, and for 250 bucks it might be worth it. but $800, that seems way out in left field for this type of product. I’de be willing to bet if somebody wanted something that is actually useful and had 800 bucks to throw away on a toy, they would spend twice as much and get this http://www.geekzone.co.nz/content.asp?contentid=4396 a super small full powered and full featured notebook that can be a toy and actually be useful to.
Edited 2006-05-06 02:12
yes, but does it run linux?