While it is still more then 2 weeks, before Christmas arrives, the presents are already known 🙂 But as a sidenote, they stay under the Christmas tree, until the Christmas night !
I bought an Apple IPAD for Christel, the 64GB version with 3G on it (I already jailbreaked it !) Furthermore I bought some accesoires, like a leather case/stand to put the IPAD in, some screenprotectors and a car charger. I also already installed a few interesting apps, and a few 100 ebooks and comic books onto the device, so she can start playing with it, right after unpacking it 🙂 It al started as a “small request”, which escalated … Christel likes to read books, she asked for a small light to attach to here books, but I’m not fond if this type of solutions. Things like that, always gets damaged, lay around, and sit in the way when not in use. So, I proposed to buy an Ebook reader, which she agreed upon. LOL, but a real ebook reader doesn’t have an illuminated screen, so on to the next solution 🙂 I did look at HP slate, some Android based IPAD “look-a-likes” (google for EPAD or APAD), but nothing comes even close to the brilliance, performance and possibilities of this *magnificant* IPAD 🙂 (Note that I’m normally *not* an Apple fan, I don’t even have an IPOD or IPHONE) So, I finally decided to buy the “full monthy”, the one with 64 GB and 3G (additional to Wifi), so she can also use it “outhouse”, in combination with here Mobile Vikings dataplan.
Since I’m “into” home automation / embedded systems / linux (besides my electronics & modelrailroad hobby), I decided it was time for me to do some development on an embedded system. I did look at beagleboard, Texas Instruments OMAP4 devices etc … and finally arrived at a mini2440 (FriendlyArm) device. a Single-Board-Computer board, based on an ARM9 processor, with lots of I/O ports, I2C connectivity, LAN, 4 serial ports, 1 GB Nand, and best of all, a 7″ touchscreen. (I also asked for a VGA extension, a serial camera module, bluetooth add-on and wifi add-on, so, actually “the full monthy”, a more-then-complete set) Best of all, this little device only draws a few Watts ! This device comes with a Linux kernel with Qtopia pre-installed, but you can also install Android, Debian Linux, Windows CE etc … on it. It’s really open-source, and will give me a lot of “joy” (and possibily also some head-aches, lol) in the next year … Note that this is *not* a full PC, it’s an embedded system !