Ron K. Jeffries wrote: > The world has changed a lot since the Nanonote was launched.
Indeed. Picking four random trends: - the world has a lot more cheap yet featureful devices. This raises the bar for a potential future Nanonote. - keyboards have been replaced by touch screens and there is a growing number of people who hate that. This means that the Ben's "killer feature" (the keyboard) is more valuable than ever before. Note that it should be relatively easy to make a "skablet" (skinny tablet) spin-off from a future Nanonote design. - a new market segment has been born with DIY-friendly boards for the masses, like the Arduino, RPi, et al. - NSA spokesman Snowden and the Android update tragedy have each done their part to increase awareness that openness has more than just ideological value. > And how much will these enthusiastic, dedicated > (almost fanatical..) people pay? For something like the Ben, I'd aim at the USD 100-200 price bracket. Go lower and you'll race yourself to the bottom. Go much higher and you get too much competition - even if it's just feature comparisons - with smartphones. Project prices for 100+ kunits but make sure you can survive a 10 kunits first run. Anything smaller should be considered development and be covered by burn money. > Note that the Neo900 project is very interesting. However it want to be a > mobile phone, Neo900 is worth watching for connectivity. That's a challenge their project shares with a future Nanonote. For a lot of other things they're much less open than we'd want to be (e.g., they use the original N900 case and several sub-assemblies, they have blobs in their system, they use Eagle), but that largely (*) make sense for them, given their goals and capabilities. (*) I'd disagree with using Eagle, though. > -- why people want an open device. Learn and tinker, avoid planned obsolescence and forced migration, no spying. > -- what are the main use cases Learn and tinker, "brain" of DIY projects (so include convenient connectivity options, UBB or better), single-purpose portable device. I.e., I'd aim mainly at the current Arduino and RPi market. An all-open design could very easily morph into any specific role that's desired there. > (strawman): Looks good to me. For wireless, I'd say Wifi and/or BTLE. I'd view it mainly as a "terminal" (as far as communication is concerned), so it doesn't have to have both. Of course, if there's a possibility, the more the merrier. > fits in a front pocket, I'd translate this to "roughly same footprint and volume as Ben". E.g., a bit longer may be okay but it shouldn't be much bulkier. So the front pocket should be that of a delicate Asian woman, not that of The Hulk. - Werner _______________________________________________ Qi Hardware Discussion List Mail to list (members only): [email protected] Subscribe or Unsubscribe: http://lists.en.qi-hardware.com/mailman/listinfo/discussion
