Here my ideas of a flexible cheap notebook made as Open Source. The main points are low power (less 1W), long run (more than 24h using 20Wh LiBattery) and flexibility. The disadvantage of lower speed (if so) should be compensated by the price.
- Wireless Network: IEEE 802.11b (2.4GHz 11Mbits) or better
- Multi-SSID capable
Managed and AdHoc Mode at the same time for meshed networks (Freifunk, OLSR)
- Tx power management (using lowest possible Tx power)
- min.2xUSB(low power) + IR(?) (+2xEth? instead of USB?) connections for extensions
- CPU ARM or MIPS (low power is essential, cheap, efficient)
- without Branch Prediction, speculative execution, operand forwarding
(expensive, not robust), replaced by SMT and/or multicore +
hardware messaging (performance for otimized SW)
- underclocking possible in a wide range
- integrated chipset (serial busses only, 6*USB, LCD)
- optional FPGA coprozessor for high performance computations (power +0.1..10W)
may be IR, Wireless and Sound should be connected to FPGA for most
flexibility (FPGA chip only as System on Chip?)
- Memory or Flash as Memory (not to slow but serial making the board cheap)
- screen 10-13" reflective (missing colors is acceptable for first version)
alternatively an eye projector (monochrome, LED)
- sound, Quad-Input, Quad-Output (its cheap)
- IO is important for new applications (robots), here we have enough
for acoustic localisation and directed sound or 4*A/D channels
- input keyboard + morse key + touch pad or screen (with stroke recognition)
speach recognition (or reading from lips?)
- CCD
further comments/ideas welcome
Looks like a modified (improved) Linux-PDA is a good starting point.
Look at my Homepage for contact address.