Sharp to sell a 5-inch Linux "babybook" in September

If it has all the functionality of a netbook I'll want one. The 5" screen size and itty bitty keyboard is perfect. Finally a machine that's small enough! 10 hour battery life and less than a pound sound wonderful to me. That 68 key keyboard with a 14mm key stroke may be a bit difficult to use, though. We'll see...

@me 1 1/2 hours ago: "I'd take a slow laptop with 8-10 hours of battery life in a minute, thank you very much."

Wow.

Um, if someone offered me 100 million euros and a cottage in the Swiss Alps, I'd take it in a minute. ::holding breath::

Seriously, I'm waiting to see more info as well, but that looks promising I have to say.

If they are targeting 6-8 yr. olds I guess this will sell... Otherwise: TOO SMALL

@klhrevolution: I've got three words for you: you're totally wrong. The UMPC market, meaning tiny devices, sell very well, Executive types love them. So do a lot of geeks. Small always sells well. In the past you paid a premium for tiny. Now that small is also inexpensive, well... people still say netbooks are toys and too small too.

You want to tell me that I'm a seven year olf... I don't think so.

It has one USB and one mini USB so you can probably connect a larger keyboard and/or mouse. Also looks like it only does wireless LAN. I don't see any kind of VGA or DVI connector.

But 409 grams, man that thing will get lost in the lint if I don't clean my pockets! I hope it can survive an accidental trip through the washing machine!

A hyper-portable packet sniffer. What's not to like?

That looks awesome!

If it costs $299, I'm not interested. If it costs $99, I'll get one, but I doubt it will be that cheap.

At $299 I would be interested. There is a similar box on the market which came out last year (sorry, I forget who makes it) but it has something like a $799 price tag. Sony has one which costs something like $1500. $299 would be affordable to me. The others are, well, a toy for rich people.

As I have said previously, my BlackBerry is almost enough for me to use as the only computer...this might be the thing I've been waiting on. Very interested. Prefer to use Linux over the BB OS any day because it's Free, another plus.

make it "less than $200" and available in the US and I'd definitely be interested. It looks like an ideal "field" netbook if it can be had in the

Quoting:make it "less than $200" and available in the US and I'd definitely be interested.

If rumours are correct, dozens more of these devices (when you count smartphones as well) are coming, though not officially announced yet. This Sharp comes with the Freescale i.Mx SoC, but both Qualcomm with its SnapDragon and TI with its new OMAP 4 series seem to promise a lot. In OMAP 4 - presentations (Youtube for it) you can see you can connect your "mobile device" using HDMI to HD-screens, so if you don't require 'high performance' for your computing needs, desktops might be a thing of the past.

Reminds me of my Zaurus 5500. http://www.myzaurus.com/

One of the downfalls of the Zaurus was its lack of a USB host. It was a USB device, for synching and such, but it could not take a larger keyboard, external (not CF card) network, etc.

Glad to see progress marching on. I still use the Zaurus for audio and text books at night when I don't want a light on.

Quoting:If rumours are correct, dozens more of these devices (when you count smartphones as well) are coming, though not officially announced yet.

One can only hope. Competition is a good thing and I definitely think the market is there.