Net Tablet: Always Innovating Touch Book

By Jane McEntegart
published

When a new netbook hits the market, we usually stifle a yawn, heave a sigh and try to sound interested as we hammer out the same specs we’ve been printing for roughly a year and a half. The Touch Book from Always Innovating has just made my day.

In what’s probably the most impressive netbook to date, the Touch Book was unveiled at the DEMO conference today and is making headlines as a $299 tablet device that lays claim to a battery life of 10 to 15 hours. For $100 more, you can get a Touch Book that is a netbook and a tablet in one. While we’re not going to get excited about the ridiculously good battery life until someone can prove it, we’re pretty excited about the machine itself.


Full specs for the 8.9 inch netbook are as follows:
 9.4" x 7" x 1.4" for 2 lbs (with keyboard)

  • ARM Texas Instruments OMAP3 chip
  • 1024x600 display
  • Storage: 8GB micro SD card
  • Wifi 802.11b/g/n and Bluetooth
  • 3-dimensional accelerometer
  • Speakers, micro and headphone
  • 6 USB 2.0 (3 internal, 2 external, 1 mini)
  • 10h to 15 hours of battery life

Okay so now the 10 to 15 hour battery is starting to make a little more sense. While Intel’s Atom processor would take the battery life down considerably, we’re not sure how people will react to the fact that the Touch Book is ARM-powered. We’re also not sure how the general public will react to Always Innovating's own heavily customized OS. Rather than opting for XP, the company went ahead and developed its own operating system (Linux-based), which could hurt it when it comes to your average, everyday user who’s used to seeing Windows and nothing else, though supposedly Windows CE and even Android could be in the cards. The Touch Book is available for preorder from the Always Innovating wesbite now and is expected to ship this spring.

Jane McEntegart
18 Comments Comment from the forums
  • I was ready to buy one until I saw "ARM processor". Too bad, but incompatibility with standard computer software is a dealbreaker.
    Reply
  • ARM is indeed too slow to install XP on it!
    If it would work, Win98Se would be the heaviest OS I'd put on this machine.
    The 10 hours battery life could be true, since ARM processors are very low power processors, and like the Atom, after a job always fall back into some form of 'sleep-mode' to preserve battery.

    It's great looking device, despite me not liking the empty space under the screen, but the price is not justified for the single core ARM processor (OMAP3 = 600-1.000Mhz).
    Then again I don't know if the linux distribution supports multi-cores.
    Reply
  • Master Exon
    Oh for fucks sake!

    Can nobody make a tablet netbook without fucking something up? (lack of x86 support, FYI)
    Reply
  • descendency
    @Master Exon:
    You my friend are dead on. I love my Asus EEE PC 1000H (the first one) I got for 450$. It does about everything I need as a college student, but quite frankly the keyboard is so so and the display lacks 128 horizontal scan lines to make it desirable (the minimal amount they would need to increase the netbook size is ridiculous and it would probably add 100$ to the price. 1024x768 isn't too much to ask for).
    Reply
  • Master Exon
    Then I'm guessing you would love the Gigabyte tablet netbook. That is, if it were not a Europe only product. It has a 1280x800 version, which is the smallest resolution I'm willing to buy.
    Reply
  • WheelsOfConfusion
    I would love this, if I could load a normal Linux distribution onto it.
    I'm still holding out for the Pandora, though.
    Reply
  • It's a shame that everyone is whining over non-x86 and no Windows XP. The x86 architecture is a dying breed, a dinosaur if you will. The future of computing and mobile computing especially is ARM, MIPS, PPC, Spurs Engine and Cell B/E based units. They are more efficient for power usage, smaller and infinitely more capable than the P4, Atom, i7, Opteron, etc... For high end servers, supercomputers, laptops, desktops you have the Power 5 and Power 6 as well as the Cell B/E and its' variants and future iterations. Mobile computing is fully covered with PPC and ARM based units such as the OMAP-3, MPC8610 and even the ARM based nVidia Tegra. It's truly a shame that people are so dead set against change when the change would be nothing but beneficial to not only mobile computing but computing in general.
    Reply
  • if I can use it as an advanced Ebook it
    Reply
  • @Master Exon:
    Lack?
    The ARM technology is 100% intetional, therefore it can not be a lack.
    Who would even NEED x86 these days, x86 is old and inefficient, and for netbooks its simply stupid.
    I would argue that i still like my C2Q gaming computer, but then again, this is as far from gaming as you will ever get.
    If you dont need DX support, you dont need windows. It is the only real advantage a windows machine will give you, otherwise, its just an energy/calculation power/memory consumer.
    A good linux dist. beats windows on all aspects but gaming.

    This is a netbook i will buy as soon as it is available with the right keyboard layout.
    Reply
  • You people want your netbook to do everything - run Windows XP, play video games, etc.

    If you want a portable computer for doing those things you want a LAPTOP, not a NETBOOK.

    If you really wanted a netbook, all you would want to do with it is surf the web, read some e-mail, edit some documents, read some book, etc.

    Really, this netbook is exactly what the netbooks should have been in the first place.

    Nice work, AlwaysInnovating.
    Reply