The Touch Book is a portable computing device that functions as a

netbook A netbook is a small-sized laptop computer; they were primarily sold from 2007 until around 2013, designed mostly as a means of accessing the Internet and being significantly less expensive than regular-sized laptops. At their inception in l ...

, and a

tablet computer A tablet computer, commonly shortened to tablet, is a mobile device, typically with a mobile operating system and touchscreen display processing circuitry, and a rechargeable battery in a single, thin and flat package. Tablets, being computers ...

. Designed by Always Innovating, a company situated in the city of Menlo Park, in California, USA, it was launched at the DEMO conference in March 2009. Its designers stated at launch that it is the first

featuring a detachable keyboard with a long battery life (more than 10 hours). It is based on the ARM TI OMAP3530 processor (taking advantage of the Beagleboard and existing

open source software Open-source software (OSS) is Software, computer software that is released under a Open-source license, license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and Software distribution, distribute the software an ...

) and features a

touchscreen A touchscreen (or touch screen) is a type of electronic visual display, display that can detect touch input from a user. It consists of both an input device (a touch panel) and an output device (a visual display). The touch panel is typically l ...

. First units to customers were shipped in August 2009. There were some (expected) software issues for early adopters, which are being progressively addressed. There were also some hardware issues, which resulted in community discontent. After much speculation on the community forum, a revised v.2 Touch Book and new ''Smart Book'' product were announced. The ''Smart Book'' is based on the

BeagleBoard-xM The BeagleBoard is a low-power open-source hardware, open-source single-board computer produced by Texas Instruments in association with Digi-Key and Newark element14. The BeagleBoard was also designed with open source software development in min ...

design.

Overview

The Touch Book is a netbook and a touch tablet device. It features a detachable keyboard, a removable back cover to access the electronics of the device, and several

Linux distribution A Linux distribution, often abbreviated as distro, is an operating system that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply product distribution per se, a distro—if distributed on its own—is oft ...

s shipped by default and offered via a multiboot system. The default operating system launched is a custom

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

OS based on

Ångström The angstrom (; ) is a unit of length equal to m; that is, one ten-billionth of a metre, a hundred-millionth of a centimetre, 0.1 nanometre, or 100 picometres. The unit is named after the Swedish physicist Anders Jonas Ångström (1814–18 ...

, being custom themed to fit the small form factor. Since 2010, the Touch Book comes with a multi-boot

graphical interface A graphical user interface, or GUI, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and visual indicators such as secondary notation. In many applications, GUIs are used instead of te ...

, allowing users to run also

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed primarily of free and open-source software. Developed by the British company Canonical (company), Canonical and a community of contributors under a Meritocracy, meritocratic gover ...

and Android. Users can install other OSes like Gentoo and

RISC OS RISC OS () is an operating system designed to run on ARM architecture, ARM computers. Originally designed in 1987 by Acorn Computers of England, it was made for use in its new line of ARM-based Acorn Archimedes, Archimedes personal computers an ...

. Touch Book's major intended uses are media viewing and web browsing, although more power-hungry applications such as

OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org (OOo), commonly known as OpenOffice, is a discontinued open-source office suite. Active successor projects include LibreOffice (the most actively developed) and Collabora Online, with Apache OpenOffice being considered mostly d ...

are available on the device. The Touch Book ships standard graphics

libraries A library is a collection of Book, books, and possibly other Document, materials and Media (communication), media, that is accessible for use by its members and members of allied institutions. Libraries provide physical (hard copies) or electron ...

such as

OpenGL ES OpenGL for Embedded Systems (OpenGL ES or GLES) is a subset of the OpenGL computer graphics rendering application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D computer graphics such as those used by video games, typically hardware-accelerate ...

and SDL. The Always Innovating team claims the device follows an

open hardware Open-source hardware (OSH, OSHW) consists of physical artifacts of technology designed and offered by the open-design movement. Both free and open-source software (FOSS) and open-source hardware are created by this open-source culture movement ...

philosophy, so that anyone can access the hardware design from the company's website, modify it and redistribute it. Although the business model of open hardware is still maturing, it seems to be profitable to the company In addition to this open hardware approach, the Touch Book fully relies on open source software. A

Git Git () is a distributed version control system that tracks versions of files. It is often used to control source code by programmers who are developing software collaboratively. Design goals of Git include speed, data integrity, and suppor ...

repository Repository may refer to: Archives and online databases * Content repository, a database with an associated set of data management tools, allowing application-independent access to the content * Disciplinary repository (or subject repository), an ...

of the entire OS is currently available, allowing for download of the latest

kernel Kernel may refer to: Computing * Kernel (operating system), the central component of most operating systems * Kernel (image processing), a matrix used for image convolution * Compute kernel, in GPGPU programming * Kernel method, in machine learnin ...

source as well as the different root file systems. A community of contributors has emerged and is interacting with the Always Innovating developers.

Technical specifications

ARM In human anatomy, the arm refers to the upper limb in common usage, although academically the term specifically means the upper arm between the glenohumeral joint (shoulder joint) and the elbow joint. The distal part of the upper limb between ...

600 MHz ( overclocked to 720 MHz) Cortex-A8

superscalar A superscalar processor (or multiple-issue processor) is a CPU that implements a form of parallelism called instruction-level parallelism within a single processor. In contrast to a scalar processor, which can execute at most one single in ...

microprocessor core:

Texas Instruments Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American multinational semiconductor company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. It is one of the top 10 semiconductor companies worldwide based on sales volume. The company's focus is on developing analog ...

OMAP3530 System-on-Chip * 512 MB DDR-333

SDRAM Synchronous dynamic random-access memory (synchronous dynamic RAM or SDRAM) is any DRAM where the operation of its external pin interface is coordinated by an externally supplied clock signal. DRAM integrated circuits (ICs) produced from the ...

* 256 MB NAND

flash memory Flash memory is an Integrated circuit, electronic Non-volatile memory, non-volatile computer memory storage medium that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. The two main types of flash memory, NOR flash and NAND flash, are named for t ...

* DSP Core video processor at 430 MHz *

2.0 compliant *

Freescale Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. was an American semiconductor manufacturer. It was created by the divestiture of the Semiconductor Products Sector of Motorola in 2004. Freescale focused their integrated circuit products on the automotive, embedde ...

-based 3D

accelerometer An accelerometer is a device that measures the proper acceleration of an object. Proper acceleration is the acceleration (the rate of change (mathematics), rate of change of velocity) of the object relative to an observer who is in free fall (tha ...

* Integrated

Ralink Ralink Technology, Corp. is a Wi-Fi chipset manufacturer mainly known for their IEEE 802.11 (Wireless LAN) chipsets. Ralink was founded in 2001 in Cupertino, California, then moved its headquarters to Hsinchu, Taiwan. On 5 May 2011, Ralink was ...

-based

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for Wireless LAN, local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by ...

802.11 IEEE 802.11 is part of the IEEE 802 set of local area network (LAN) technical standards, and specifies the set of medium access control (MAC) and physical layer (PHY) protocols for implementing wireless local area network (WLAN) computer c ...

b/g/n * Integrated

Bluetooth Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology standard that is used for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances and building personal area networks (PANs). In the most widely used mode, transmission power is li ...

2.0 * 1024x600 resolution touchscreen LCD, 8.9" widescreen, 16.7 million colors *

SDHC Secure Digital (SD) is a proprietary, non-volatile, flash memory card format developed by the SD Association (SDA). Owing to their compact size, SD cards have been widely adopted in a variety of portable consumer electronics, including digi ...

card slot (currently supporting up to 32 GB of storage) * Headphone output, microphone input * Standard

QWERTY QWERTY ( ) is a keyboard layout for Latin-script alphabets. The name comes from the order of the first six Computer keyboard keys#Types, keys on the top letter row of the keyboard: . The QWERTY design is based on a layout included in the Sh ...

keyboard and touchpad * USB 2.0 OTG port (480 Mbit/s) * 6×

USB 2.0 Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard, developed by USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), for digital data transmission and power delivery between many types of electronics. It specifies the architecture, in particular the physical i ...

host ports (480 Mbit/s) *

JTAG JTAG (named after the Joint Test Action Group which codified it) is an industry standard for verifying designs of and testing printed circuit boards after manufacture. JTAG implements standards for on-chip instrumentation in electronic design ...

debugging interface * Runs the

Linux kernel The Linux kernel is a Free and open-source software, free and open source Unix-like kernel (operating system), kernel that is used in many computer systems worldwide. The kernel was created by Linus Torvalds in 1991 and was soon adopted as the k ...

(2.6.x) * Dual 12000

mAh ''Mångha'' (') is the Avestan for "Moon, month", equivalent to Persian ''Māh'' (; Old Persian ). It is the name of the lunar deity in Zoroastrianism. The Iranian word is masculine. Although Mah is not a prominent deity in the Avestan sc ...

+ 6000mAh rechargeable

lithium polymer battery A lithium polymer battery, or more correctly, lithium-ion polymer battery (abbreviated as LiPo, LIP, Li-poly, lithium-poly, and others), is a rechargeable battery derived from lithium-ion and lithium-metal battery technology. The primary differ ...

* Estimated 10+ hour battery life for video and general applications * Detachable magnet system for the tablet * Dimensions: 248 mm × 158 mm × 19 mm for the tablet, 248 mm × 180 mm × 33.5 mm for the full netbook * Mass: 675 g for the Tablet; 1,418 g for the full netbook

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Other

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s using OMAP3500 series processors include OSWALD, Beagle Board, IGEPv2,

Pandora In Greek mythology, Pandora was the first human woman created by Hephaestus on the instructions of Zeus. As Hesiod related it, each god cooperated by giving her unique gifts. Her other name—inscribed against her figure on a white-ground '' ky ...

and

Gumstix Gumstix is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Redwood City, California. It develops and manufactures small system boards comparable in size to a stick of gum. In 2003, when it was first fully functional, it used ARM architect ...

Overo series. Since launch of the device in March 2009, several similar devices have come up in early 2010, such as the ''Freescale tablet reference design'' or the

Lenovo Lenovo Group Limited, trading as Lenovo ( , zh, c=联想, p=Liánxiǎng), is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in designing, manufacturing, and marketing consumer electronics, personal computers, software, servers, conv ...

U1 IdeaPad. or the Panasonic Toughbook.

References

External links

* {{Acorn computers, clones and compatibles RISC OS Embedded Linux Texas Instruments hardware Linux-based devices 2-in-1 PCs Computer-related introductions in 2009