I'm extremely hesitant to post this
(in case the delay in my posting doesn't suggest that
), but I'm curious about the flood of "Windows CE laptops" that aren't particularly hard to find on eBay
(and, if I'm feeling particularly insane, Alibaba
). I'm fascinated with these for no other reason than the fact that some of the cheaper models I've found incorporate a 100MHz CPU, making them the slowest "embedded" devices with a large-format screen I've yet found.
Now, unlike most of the people unwittingly buying these, I realize what WinCE is
(the first things I'll be installing are VNC, SSH, and an RS232 terminal program
). That said, I've still read umpteen thousand million "DO NOT BUY, THESE BREAK IN ANYWHERE FROM 2 DAYS TO A MONTH"-type messages, which is a bit disconcerting because these units typically retail between $60-$100+, which is a LOT for something that will last a very short period of time.
That said, I'm interested in ANYTHING with a a >6.5" LCD and a keyboard running on a low-powered/embedded platform, Windows CE-based or not
(although I do want to try WinCE
). A good example of the kind of system I'm looking for is the Sony CLIE TH-55 Palm OS 5 PDA, which ran a Sony-built CDX2230GA CPU that could dynamically scale from 8MHz to 124MHz depending on how much power Palm OS needed at any given point in time. The result was a color PDA with serious oomph which you only needed to charge
weekly. But the TH55 is a PDA, and its 3.9" 320x480 LCD is a
tiny bit small
stingraze:
I've been considering old PC-class hardware for a while now, but I actually think that it's the overall electromagnetic "profile" of the device as a whole, rather than just the CPU for example, that decides whether it'll be a problem or not. So I'm actually *specifically* interested in a CE-based device, both because it uses a
(presumably
) lower-power ARM processor, but also because the other components in it - at least hopefully - will be lower-power than their PC counterparts, because of the device's general classification as "low-power".
All of that said, it's entirely possible that I could find a PC laptop that fits my requirements - but of course that requires testing, and testing requires sourcing hardware to test
- finding stuff that works is a slow process mostly involving chance. By targeting low-power architectures, I can at least hope my chances of finding something that'll work for me are higher
(especially based on the feedback from my PDA
).
CE Geek:
Umm, aesthetically speaking, that looks
really... *fruity*, is I think the word. And a 3.5" floppy drive?! O.o wow... fascinating
...I'm not sure...
-i336_