There’s certainly a lot going on with the new Touch Book by a company called Always Innovating. From afar, it may seem like your average netbook – 8.9-inch screen with 1024×600 resolution, thin-and-light form factor, etc. – but get up close and you’ll notice that the ubiquitous Intel Atom CPU has been replaced by an ARM processor, commonly found in smaller mobile devices.
The machine is a tablet, too, and the entire screen can even detach from the keyboard altogether. Since it uses such a low-power processor, Always Innovating is promising 10- to 15-hour battery life. There are actually two batteries; one inside the screen and one inside the keyboard. The OS is a custom “Touch Book OS” and the company claims that since everything’s open source, you could “install many OSes on the device, including Google Android, Ubuntu, Angstrom and Windows CE, though we would not recommend the latter.”
The machine is an always-on device and is noiseless since there are no fans or disk drives (it uses an 8GB MicroSD card for storage). Total weight is less than two pounds. As far as the touchscreen interface is concerned, “The Touch Book OS has two modes: one for use with keyboard and touchpad, and one for use as a standalone touchscreen tablet. The innovative 3D interface is easy to use and does not require a stylus or a skinny pinky.”
It will also include Mozilla’s Fennec browser and – get this – the screen is magnetic, so when you detach it from the keyboard you can “put the tablet on the fridge to serve as a kitchen computer or digital frame.” Finally, there are a whopping six USB ports – three internal, two external, and one mini. The internal ports are for things like a wireless dongle or a USB thumb drive – stuff you wouldn’t want hanging off the side of the machine all the time.
The Touch Book will be available in “May or June 2009” and will come in two versions; tablet only or netbook (tablet + keyboard). The tablet version will cost $299 and the netbook version will cost $399. Those are both going to likely be tough prices for would-be customers to swallow but perhaps the cool features, tiny weight, and super long battery life will be enough to win people over. If the company could eventually lop $100 off each model, though, this thing might have a much better chance.
Full specs:
- 9.4″ x 7″ x 1.4″ for 2 lbs (with keyboard)
- ARM Texas Instruments OMAP3 chip
- 1024×600 8.9” screen
- 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
- Able to play HD video 720p in full screen
Full press release:
New Touch Book Combines Netbook and Touchscreen Tablet; Provides Three Times the Battery Life at Under Two Pounds
PALM DESERT, Calif., March 2 /PRNewswire/ — Always Innovating today unveiled the Touch Book, a versatile new device that works as both a netbook and a tablet thanks to a detachable keyboard and a 3D touchscreen user interface. The Touch Book, previewed at DEMO 09, weighs less than two pounds as a netbook and has a battery life of 10 to 15 hours — three times longer than most netbooks.
“The Touch Book is perfect for these tough economic times because you can use it in so many ways,” said Gregoire Gentil, founder of Always Innovating and creator of the Touch Book. “You can use it as a netbook computer, a hand-held game device, or a video player. You can even reverse the keyboard to prop it up on a table in an inverted ‘V’. Finally, because it is magnetic, you can remove the keyboard and put the tablet on the fridge to serve as a kitchen computer or digital frame.”
The Touch Book combines the best of open source software and open hardware with a sleek industrial design by designer Fred Bould. The innovative design includes internal USB plugs. “I hate having dongles hanging from my laptop – I often end up disconnecting them accidentally — so we opted to put the USB inside,” said Gentil.
The Touch Book is the first netbook featuring an ARM processor from Texas Instruments, resulting in outstanding battery life, and a fan less, heat-and-noise-free system.
According to Chris Shipley, executive producer of the DEMO Conferences, the Touch Book’s innovative architecture and industrial design earned it a spot on the DEMO conference stage. “The longer battery life is a boon to netbook users. But the Touch Book’s versatility – its ability to function as a netbook as well as a standalone touchscreen tablet – makes it a breakthrough product,” said Shipley.
The Touch Book is expected to ship in late spring and will start at $299. Advance orders can be placed at http://www.alwaysinnovating.com/store/.
Touch Book [Always Innovating]
Very good aspects and design. Also a good price
I soo want one of these. You’re right, DA, they chop $100 off and I might get 2. Always wanted to add magnets to one of my tablets just for the fridge reason. Hmm, maybe I will, my oold stylistic’s just been sitting in the drawer for a while. “Let’s see what happens when we…”
I’m in for one on release day. I’d love it for a cheaper price but $100 won’t stop me from buying it.
I know this is a different brand, but I just found a samsung X360 13.3 inch at 45% off!!! So I thought I had to share it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
http://amazonbest.blogspot.com/2009/01/deal-of-day.html
Portable DVD players for kids run $150-200 plus the cost of each DVD… this would be a great alternative… download movies and let them play games as well.
Very very sleek and I think might compete good with HP, Dell, Toshiba netbooks..
I’m a little skeptical about battery life being 10+ hours. I have a Lenovo 61X and battery life was supposed to be 8+ hours. Well, that’s true if you dim the screen to pitch black and turn off the harddrive and simply type on MS Word. If you do anything else like navigate the web with reasonable screen brightness, then battery life is more like 1.5 hour.
The big deal here is that it has an ARM processor and SSD, which use considerably less power.
Also, my lenovo W500 goes from SFO to BOS (7 hours) while playing dvds, running eclipse and openoffice. So long as the wifi is turned off, and the processor performance is reduced. Everything is still responsive. Wifi is a big battery sucker, unless you are using N. I also opted for the 2GB cache layer between the disk drive and the FSB. It makes a big deal in power consumption because the disks spin less.
Okay, this is pretty bad a$$…..
I might have to drive over there…
This is the start of the end of the Amazon Kindle being talked about as a dominant digital reading device. The only thing this lacks is eInk (which is not really that big a deal since some many of us spend our entire days reading on a regular computer screen) and what it offers up is a whole internet’s worth of reading content and reading software.
Why be content with what Amazon is trying to box us all into?
the kindle is a different beast. for a certain type of user, it’s perfect. the fact that it only does books is fine. sure, it would be better if it allowed more types of (free) content, but that doesn’t matter to the kindle’s target audience.
that said, i’d rather have one of these.
I fully agree – goodbye Kindle. Actually all ebook readers will get squeezed between iPhone and other smart phones on the one hand and netbooks on the other. Why would anybody buy a Kindle for $350 when you can buy this TouchBook puppy for the same price? It is a full featured computer compared to a very limited reading device.
The TouchBook is just the beginning. Wait until other nebook manufacturers or perhaps Apple come out with their take on the modular super mobile netbook. Prices will come down. Yeah baby. And if you take the XO2, which is a two screen netbook scheduled for 2010 and at $75, then you know that these devices are the future of personal computing.
And smart-phones will potentially include flexible screens making them better reading devices due to a larger screen. No need for e-readers and certainly not the monopolistic Kindle. I can’t believe that the press and so many customers are buying into the Kindle to help Amazon built a monopoly, when there are several much better alternatives.
What’s really amazing about this is that just by itself an 8″ stand alone touchscreen is like $400 still, which makes no sense.
That’s awesome you can get a touchscreen computer for less than that. Though I do wish I could just use this as an extended monitor controller for an HTPC (and not via RDC…)
I guess the only thing missing and not sure why it doesn’t come with it is a build in webcam. How cool if you could hang it on your fridge or anywhere and call your friends through skype video.
It’d be great to get something like this with a little more horsepower running Windows 7.
Allow me to use photoshop on something like that and I’d be a happy camper.
if they’d added an IR sender it might have added $1-5 to the manufacturing cost but the computer could have doubled as a high-end universal remote in a high-tech home environment
definitely considering to buy this
One big concern is the ARM chip, which is usually on hand-held device, cellphones. If this cool gadget is not fast enough then the cool factor will fade off very quickly.
And there is no indication how much memory it has and how to expand the storage rather than USB support.
So, the price is good but also suspicious. I’ll wait and read box-open blogging before jump in.
This isn’t the ARM11 core in your blackberry curve. This is the much more modern ARM Cortex A8 core in the TI OMAP 3 which is much faster. It won’t be quite as powerful as atom for pure number crunching but it will render webpages plenty fast and includes an opengl es 2 graphics core capable of some very nifty tricks. I’d happily trade a bit of cpu power for much longer battery life and no heat.
The biggest loss going with ARM is not the loss of power but the loss of windows. Personally it’s not a big deal since I can run angstrom or the new armv7 ubuntu that is coming but it’s a deal breaker for a lot of people
Almost forgot. In terms of memory it will be 128 (maybe 256) MB. That sounds like very little until you remember ARM is designed to be as small and efficient as possible and so applications on arm actually use less ram then on other architectures. Add that to the fact OS images for ARM are always configured for very low footprints and even 128MB of ram is enough
This is the right design. detachable keyboard, touch screen…
nice specs, and the price looks very well too.
This is a game changer. I’ll take 2 please!
this is neat.
as a simple notebook to replace pen and paper in meetings, a music player, an eBook reader it makes way more sense than carting a Kindle, an iPod and a Netbook around.
if they can deliver it with useful apps (I like the combination of WIn7+OneNote+Outlook and I use Paint.Net rather than Photoshop) and it really can keep the battery alive for a whole day of *real* use this could be a winner….
WiFi is nice but a bluetooth/USB connection to my 3G phone would give me data (and much better concept than the RedFly as a phone companion)
But what about battery life? Do you guys believe that battery life comes anywhere near the 10-15 hours?
I like the design and the fact that it is totally open. I would get one if the price would be just a little cheaper by about $100.
I would be curious to see this thing against the maybe future CrunchPad.
I. WANT.
I’m sending back my sony reader and waiting to get one or two of these..
10h to 15 hours of battery life? This would be a great advantage for traveling use.
Just want to know how long does the battery took to charge?
That kind of battery life is only to be expected when the screen is almost pitch black dark, and other hardware is not running or is barely running, like if you have MS Word open and all you’re doing is typing slowly for 10 hours. Battery life probably goes down to 2-3 hours or less if you multi-task, such as going back and forth between the internet and opening documents. It also goes down drastically if your screen is bright enough to see colors.
Amir, again even the Atom netbooks like the Dell Mini with SSD get a solid 6+ hours of real use without dimming the screen. Lots of wifi use would be the #1 power drain on this setup. There are no moving parts, no motors, no fans and the new CCFL and LED lamps use a third of the power of traditional lamps. At full brightness, watching Youtube videos, you can expect 6-8 hours easily on a device like this. Playing videos of the SD card at full brightness with no wifi, you will get 12+ hours easily.
And no, I do not work for AI. But I am working on a device running similar hardware with impressive results thus far.
I’m glad it has not only speakers and headphone connections, but also a “micro”. That way, if you use the screen’s magnetic backing to place it on the fridge, you can heat your lunch too! :)
ARM ?
iPhone OS !!!!!
Finaly a device worth to hobby with , Great specs.
8GB micro-SD card? WHY????? A netbook like this should be using at least a SDHC slot (maybe even 2), and give plenty more storage space.
I’ve got one question, is it multi touch?
If answer is yes, I’m going to be $300 poorer the day this comes out. If the answer is no… I’ll get it when I can pick one up for < $250
I don’t believe that it will be multi-touch.
This looks like it could be an excellent device for the classroom
OK. Maybe I am the only one, but paragraph by paragraph this piece of equipment got more and more appealing. The functionality and attention to detail is great. I also believe the battery life given the system’s lower storage and processioning speeds. This is within a hundred dollars of a lot of products that only do 10$ of what this unit can. Before I bought one I would check this digital security site to verify it would be secure for my commercial applications.
This is truly an amazing device! If they chop the price i would probably buy 4, one for each family member. I could only agree whats been written before and 2 things that i think is missing is a webcam and ir to use it as a remote with my htpc.
It would also be nice to know what the upper limit for memory expansion is and it should of course be possible to use a sdhc card as a main memory. Never the less, right now i’m drewling lol.
I would like a video out port so I could connect to a projector for presentations. That would make the device more usable and a better by for users from students, to teachers, and on into the business world.
I also am curious as to the maximum amount of memory possible, both for storage and working RAM.
Everything else sounds pretty good to me!
So….is this a concept killer for the Crunchpad? Did Always Innovating beat the crunchpad to the market?
Awesome Touch-book from https://www.alwaysinnovating.com
The best feature for me is that it’s powered by advance ARM Cortex A8 processor and has a very simple yet attractive design. I think I will be able to compromise some CPU speed for 10 – 12 hours of non-stop power. I am not sure what would be the selling price here in England, being a student I will definitely use a price comparison website site such as http://www.pricelooker.co.uk to compare price before I purchase.
I am new to Linux platform. and wondering to build an application on this sleek unit, two questions: 1, who provides the development kit? 2, Can be used on other Linus based on ARM?
I do want to buy the Touch Book but….I heard that there is another nebook called Archos. Now I am not sure which one is better? Any Idea?
Still waiting for the European (Swedish) release date.
My question is this (and maybe I’m just dumb and didn’t read it right): Can I use the touchscreen to take notes like with a Stylus pen? Or is the only writing I can do with the keyboard. I’m thinking taking notes in class, and I use a lot of diagrams and such and would want the pen so I could write or draw whatever I want, and not just character recognition software.
Touch book does not come with a handwriting recognition software.
Will this system run MS Word? If not what will and give many hours of use?
Thanks
since the OS is basically Linux, you should be able to run Wine with a WindowsCE emulation. so if Word will run with CE, . . .
No, MS Word works on intel architecture. This is an ARM-device. Wine does not emulate hardware. You could probably run qemu with windows in it and then words on top of that, if you are really feeling like punishing the hardware, but: why?
It wile come with abiword or openoffice writer.
In terms of the Archos, I think you mean the Archos 9, which is a keyboardless netbook basically. Interesting to look at, but from a practicality standpoint, I quite like having a keyboard when I actually have to get work done. That the Touch Book offers both is true innovation and sets it apart from other netbooks. Let’s face it, most netbooks are pretty much the same internally, with the Samsung NC10 and it’s newer models coming in on top in terms of battery life (everything else offered is pretty much the same as other netbooks). As for the memory issues, it’s ships with 8gb SD card but supports SDHC. Not to mention the 7 usb ports (4 internal)… I imagine that would make for some flash memory upgrades too, no?
…forgot to mention, regarding battery life, according to AI, the 10 to 15 hours of battery life is dependent on the keyboard being connected to the monitor as there are two batteries to work from then. The touchscreen on it’s own, they quote at about 3-5 hours of battery life depending on usage.
https://www.alwaysinnovating.com/touchbook/faqs.htm
any gossip about the release date? I pre-ordered and the info page on the site says “July” which is almost here and gone. I use a device with similar hardware at home (Beagleboard) and believe what they say about battery life–it should be more than my Nokia N800 which can be left on for days. Memory is 256MB but I wish they had negotiated for a bit more. Still, video playback (on Angstrom) is great on mplayer and on Ubuntu, apps do seem functional and streamlined. They seem to have done a great job with the design and the commitment to open source hardware and software.
I am jevmlof from Phil. I found out touchbook is a good one but one thing I woul like to know, how much really the price is? and Also want to know why it only run for linux os and cant run the windows os?
@jevmlof: According to their site $299 without keyboard and $100extra for the keyboard.
And no, it won’t runt windows, cause microsoft haven’t released a version that run on arm-hardware. Blame microsoft for being lazy?