Hi sluggers, <spam alert> For those who may be interested in purchasing a linux Openmoko Freerunner smart phone [1]. If you are not, stop reading now. </spam alert>
The Freerunner has recently gone into mass production, and is still a little hard to purchase [2] as the factory ramps up production. Some of the Australian Openmoko community got together to "group purchase" 60 phones last month from the first factory production run. The purchase went smoothly and Simon Matthews in Perth has offered to coordinate a second purchase. This purchase order will be sent in the next 2-3 days .. so the window of opportunity is closing now. See [3] for details of the purchase, and how to get on board if you are interested. Price for the Freerunner is expected to be AUD $440. IMPORTANT The software stack is still very early in development. Some early buyers who were expecting a finished product have been bitterly disappointed. Think the first few months of your favourite distribution's new release cycle - unstable and possibly needing to re-flash to get back to usable (ie make phone calls / sms). If this is not you, wait till the software is ready :-) Also, the purchase involves transferring your hard earned $440 to Simon's bank account in order to secure a place in the group purchase, in the next day or so. If this is not your style .. just don't do it :-) Again .. see [3] for details. If you want/need more info, feel free to reply to me off-list. hope this is of interest to some ... davidv [Disclaimer: I am making a purchase in this group, and also purchased one of the early prototypes model Neo1973, late last year. Nobody in the group stands to gain anything other than early access to purchasing the very cool Freerunner - with reduced price and lower shipping costs through the bulk order]. [1] http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/FreeRunner_Overview [2] The issue is that getting the 900MHz version of the tri-band phone means that Australians need to order from the European distributors, since Openmoko are only selling the 850MHz version direct from their website at the moment (that will change in coming months). [3] http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Group_Sales_Australia -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
