Folks -
I've acquired two of these machines - for those of you in or near 1CC, you can
find them on my desk and are welcome to play with them. I ordered one for $99
with Linux and one for $119 with Windows CE (there is no difference in the
hardware). I removed the case from the Linux model and plugged in a USB
keyboard and mouse, so you can use it while admiring the motherboard.
The machine I ordered is described at
http://www.cherrypal.com/secure/product_info.php?products_id=9 and that seems
to be a reasonably accurate description of what I received (the photo shows a
silver case, but mine is black). There are a few minor discrepancies but
nothing of note.
The ARM SoC is an ARM9-based XBURST part from Ingenic, and the specs are at
http://www.ingenic.cn/eng/productServ/AppPro/JZ4740/pfCustomPage.aspx - you'll
notice the 400 MHz processor described by Cherrypal is described as 360 MHz
by the manufacturer and the boot-time diagnostics report a 248 MHz speed
while the Windows CE manual refers to the ARM920 266MHz Multimedia Processor.
The motherboard is labeled WISMILE NB0702_V1.6 090626 and the entire device
closely resembles the WISMILE MyWSNB0706 mini-netbook described at
http://www.wismile.com/en/detail.asp?ProID=393SortID=46 - the only difference
seems to be the logo and cherrypal text attached to the upper display housing
with stick-on letters.
The motherboard is mainly notable for the number of connectors with hot melt
glue glommed on top of them after assembly. The side of the motherboard
connector for the battery is bent/broken a bit and appears to be slightly
melted and browned.
The Linux distro is anonymous, and appears to offer no command-line access (at
least, none easily found). The File Explorer application shows a filesystem
root described as C:/ but that appears to be the default user's home
directory - there's no visibility outside.
I wouldn't drop the thing 1 foot onto a carpeted surface without expecting
something to break, but it seems OK and not bad for $99. The screen is 800x480
(7 diagonal and looks pretty decent (indoors, of course). The packaging is
decent, which is good because it got pretty squished in transport; there's a
lovely outline of Africa with motivational words (in English) written on the
box.
- Ed
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