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Portables Hardware Technology

HagakiPC - "Postcard" PC 112

Posted by timothy from the smallness dept.
captainJam writes "The HagakiPC, Hagaki meaning postcard in Japanese, is a tiny PC with dimensions of 135 x 109 x 18mm and weighing in at 340g making it by far the lightest and 2nd slimmest handtop. Only 128MB RAM and a 640x480 VGA screen, plus there's no hard drive -- it's meant to run OS's from CF cards (great for D.S.L. and the like). Still only a prototype, so not much info is available, but what we do know (and a few photos) are here." Update: 09/01 12:14 GMT by T : Link to D.S.L. upgraded to a form that doesn't make some browsers choke.
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HagakiPC - "Postcard" PC More

HagakiPC - "Postcard" PC

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  • I think the question on everyone's mind is... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Throtex ( 708974 ) on Tuesday August 31, 2004 @07:56PM (#10124039)
    How much is the shipping? :)

  • uh... (Score:2, Funny)

    by niteice ( 793961 )
    "http://www.damnsmalllinux/" Greatly written link.

  • Great features (Score:4, Funny)

    by themoodykid ( 261964 ) on Tuesday August 31, 2004 @07:58PM (#10124048) Journal
    This CPU is capable of TV out, video in and has Macrovision copy protection built in.

    Built-in Macrovision? Sign me up!

  • Input Method? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ToshiroOC ( 805867 ) on Tuesday August 31, 2004 @07:58PM (#10124049)
    One of the greatest hurdles in getting these very small and very powerful computers to be very useful is how to handle input - its hard to build in a fully-sized or totally usable keyboard into something like this. I'm not finding any straightforward explanation of how you get input into this computer on the website at first glance; I also don't see a stylus in any of the pictures, which makes me think touch screen (which can be implemented well... just not ideal).
    • From the pictures of it that I have seen, the case surrounding the screen has no buttons or anything embedded on it, so personally I would like to see more screen and less case.

      I know there are size constraint issues and all but I think its "cool" factor would go up quite a few notches with that change.

  • Yet slashdot will continue to up the stock prices. It may be have already been said here but this is becoming an advertising showcase site instead of a news site.

  • CPU speed (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Ianoo ( 711633 ) on Tuesday August 31, 2004 @08:00PM (#10124063) Journal
    I know some people are going to claim I'm wrong, but I think a 266MHz processor and 128MB of RAM are pushing it a bit to run modern applications (and more likely, operating systems!), especially compared to the competition (such as the OQO at 1GHz)

    I mean, where is this product's niche? It's not really powerful enough to run XP (or KDE), but then again the battery life isn't good enough to compare it to something like a Toshiba E800 PDA, which can be excused for not running XP or Linux because it's not designed for that kind of use.

    Will people end up running something like Qtopia on it instead? How does the 266MHz compare in terms of raw power with the new XScales, which run at up to 624MHz?

    • Re:CPU speed (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Three Headed Man ( 765841 )
      Reconsider a little bit: 400 MHz, 384 MB RAM. Pentium II, manufactured in 1998. Running SuSE 9.1.

      • Re:CPU speed (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Ianoo ( 711633 )
        Well, okay, perhaps Linux, but realistically, are the majority of people who are going buy this device actually going to use Linux? Alas, the answer is no. Also you have 384MB of RAM, which is much more roomy than the platry 128MB on this box. XP and KDE both feel perky on 128, IMVHO.
    • The Geode is probably a little faster per MHz than the XScale PXA255, but perhaps not that much. But Qtopia? Qtopia is slow on 206 MHz StrongARMs and even 400 MHz PXA255s- I'd look at WinCE or PicoGUI if you're going to be running on a slow machine like this.

    • Re:CPU speed (Score:3, Interesting)

      by mgblst ( 80109 )
      You are wrong... I have a pentium 2 266 portege with 128 meg ram, and it runs windows 2000, and can even play movies....what more do you want????
    • I have a Sony VAIO PCG-C1F with very similar specs (1024x480, 266MHz, 128Mb RAM). Running Slack 9 and Gnome 2.6 perfectly happily. I wouldn't want to use it as a main machine, but I control the HiFi PC with it via SSH, use it to check email and occasionally a bit of web access with Firefox. If only the battery wasn't sh{o,i}t, it would be great to take on train journeys rather than lugging my Inspiron 8200 behemoth.

  • manufacturer website link + more info (Score:5, Informative)

    by timecop ( 16217 ) on Tuesday August 31, 2004 @08:01PM (#10124068) Homepage
    specifications (in japanese):
    http://www.hagakipc.jp/ba_spec.htm [hagakipc.jp]
    http://www.hagakipc.jp/ [hagakipc.jp] front page.
    Notice the hit counter, this was probably "news" long before slashdot "found" the link.
    It also supports CF microdrives, which should give you up to 4gb of storage.

  • Why? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by The_Mystic_For_Real ( 766020 ) on Tuesday August 31, 2004 @08:01PM (#10124070)
    I think that these ultra small almost entirely functionless handhelds are just wasting the time of good engineers who could be making something that is actually useful.

    From a corporate standpoint, the development costs of making this sort of product are very high. The sales from these are fairly low as the only people who buy them tend to be impulse buyers, most of whom are scared away by the high price needed to make a profit.

    Between CF cards and actual pen-and-paper notebooks, this type of machine is entirely unneeded.

    Nothing to see here, please move along.

    • Rule of thumb: The technology you gain is worth more than the profits from these. They can gain a market advantage and availability for future rollouts. The price will go down, the technology will go up. The way things always work.
      • I'm confused.

        My point is that the entire field is a uselss money black hole. Future rollouts are just as unprofitable as current rollouts.

        • Re:Why? (Score:1, Redundant)

          by Three Headed Man ( 765841 )
          "I think that there will be someday a worldwide demand for maybe 5 computers." --Somebody important at IBM, probably.

          I forget who to attribute it to.
    • Why would you want a device similar to this? Simple - convenience.
      I do not like the current handheld devices - I thnk that they all lack functionality I would like... similarly, my laptop, while having all the required functionality, is still to big and bulky for my tastes.

      A device similar to this would fulfill my requirements perfectly - small enough for it not to be a burden to carry in my backpack while riding my motorbike, yet with(almost) all the features of previously mentioned laptop.

      Granted, the d
      • I look at it, and I don't see something much more convenient than the current generation of things. From what it looks like, it's a high-powered PDA. In fact, it's almost the same size as my Zire 71, although maybe a bit longer and 50% wider. It's got a higher resolution screen, which is always nice, and it has more memory. The processor is a bit slower, and it's meant to run a much bigger OS than the Zire 71. Those limitations really mean to me that this isn't much more than a powerful PDA.
    • BTW, this thing has more computing power than my 12-inch 4-GB-HDD Win-98 Vaio that I bought back in Windows-1998, so I'm sure it can comfortably run Windows 9x, at least. Would be cool if it had GBA-like controllers built in (think emulators).

      Checking Apple Japan's website (they use metric. Ooo... new iMac G5s!), size comparison with the modern iPods are:

      ipod mini: 91.4×50.8×12.7mm
      ipod 20GB: 104.1×60.9×14.5mm
      ipod 40GB: 104.1×60.9×17.5mm
      HagakiPC: 135 x 109 x 18 mm

      So it's sl
    • From a corporate standpoint, the development costs of making this sort of product are very high. The sales from these are fairly low as the only people who buy them tend to be impulse buyers, most of whom are scared away by the high price needed to make a profit.

      While I agree that I can't see a lot of use for this, I don't think we can apply the standard U.S. business models to a tech device built in Japan. They have a different market and set of consumers for tech goods. As I recall (from ten or so yea
  • That's interesting that DSL has its own TLD now: http://www.damnsmalllinux/
    • To the person who has moderated the parent post as -1, Troll: I strongly object. It should be moderated as -1, Redundant and even that only because there is no -1, Has Already Fulfilled Its Important Purpose. The original Slashdot story contained a critical yet subtle error, namely a link to http://www.damnsmalllinux/ which was subsequently corrected to http://www.damnsmalllinux.com/ thanks to my humorous remark. The parent post was not Troll and I find moderating it as such at least offending, if not outri

  • URL Correction (Score:5, Informative)

    by MC68040 ( 462186 ) <henric&digital-bless,com> on Tuesday August 31, 2004 @08:01PM (#10124073) Homepage
    Damn small linux (D.S.L) points to http://www.damnsmalllinux/ which makes some browsers, think it should slap a .com (or whatever) onto that and end up on a advertisement page. Now http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ [damnsmalllinux.org] is the correct link. Just FYI.

    • ...when the damnsmalllinux TLD was approved, and which registrar I could buy domain names from...
    • Damn Small Linux is a business card size (50MB)


      Maybe it should be www.damnbiglinux.org. This is even bigger than the default install of Debian was a few years ago, and that's saying something.
      When I heard the name 'damn small' , I envisaged something that is well under 1.44Mb (the size of a floppy), so it would actually be useful for systems with limited resource. If I want a 50Mb version I can just go and get any popular distro and not install Xwindows and development stuff.

  • More cons than pros (Score:5, Interesting)

    by usefool ( 798755 ) on Tuesday August 31, 2004 @08:03PM (#10124090) Homepage
    I guess this is another wannabe portable device to find market niche, the only advantage it has over a PDA is its 640x480 screen, otherwise all specs are actually worse than a PDA. PDAs are cheap now, and will this "new" gadget be cheaper?

    I still strong suggest the use of Virtual Keyboard [canesta.com], as input method seems to be a hurdle for small/light portable devices at the moment.

    • Re:More cons than pros (Score:4, Informative)

      by rsmith-mac ( 639075 ) on Tuesday August 31, 2004 @08:27PM (#10124236)
      the only advantage it has over a PDA is its 640x480 screen

      That isn't even the realm of "big" devices only anymore; the latest PocketPC/WindowsMobile devices(specifically, high-end Windows Mobile 2003 SE devices) have VGA screens.

    • I still strong suggest the use of Virtual Keyboard

      A vaporware input device for a vaporware PDA? I agree, that's a good combo.

    • I still strong suggest the use of Virtual Keyboard, as input method seems to be a hurdle for small/light portable devices at the moment.

      Good idea! Except for two things:

      • Canesta only makes a virtual keyboard chipset for OEMs; they don't sell keyboards.
      • There aren't any OEMs that make keyboards with the chipset.

      In other words, the only way you can get one of these keyboards right now is to purchase the Canesta development kit for $7500 and then write a keyboard program that runs on their hardware.

  • Nifty, but... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    This seems to be just another blurring of the lines between PDAs and tablets and PCs and MP3 players and cell phones and...

    I mean, yeah. It's gee-whiz nifty technology and gadget lovers (self included!) will go for it. But does it do something a PDA won't? Or one of these new "Portable Media Centers?" Or is it just supposed to be a really tiny laptop, sans hard drive? The whole tech industry seems to be blindly cranking out portable technology with various levels of integration and capacity in hopes

  • I've seen better (Score:5, Interesting)

    by whoever57 ( 658626 ) on Tuesday August 31, 2004 @08:10PM (#10124137) Journal
    Last year, someone brought a prototype into the office where I work. It was postcard sized, but the screen covered the entire face. The screen also hinged out to reveal a keyboard.

    It had a hard disk and a Transmeta processor (about 1GHz, I think). It was fast enough to run WinXP.

    The whole device was a prototype, but it seems to me that it blew away the PC described in the article. They were taking it to a show (Comdex?).

    • Re:I've seen better (Score:2, Insightful)

      by antikarma ( 804155 )
      That was probably an OQO [oqo.com]. There was a prototype at CES earlier this year. I held it in my hands for a few minutes. I thought about slipping it in my pocket, but then remembered the security guards and metal detectors at the doors. I did get a cool brochure though...

  • Am I the only one... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by RsG ( 809189 ) on Tuesday August 31, 2004 @08:14PM (#10124157)
    ...wondering at what point you start to hit diminishing returns for miniaturization? C'mon, how small do we need? Anything smaller than a laptop gets you into major trouble with input devices (as another poster already mentioned). I have enough trouble with existing Palmtops. There's gotta be a point at which modern technology can be miniaturized further, but benefits no one in doing so.

    Call me a luddite, but this level of shrinkage strikes me as being more of an PITA than lugging around a larger unit. What someone needs to develop is a method of interfacing with a device this tiny that doesn't require tiny keys or voice input. I have absolutly no idea what kind of interface could fill that role, even theoretically (never mind realistically).

    Anyone have any ideas?

    • Re:Am I the only one... (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Although I'm not current on the topic so perhaps this is just wishful thinking, but has anyone ever gotten anywhere with brainwave transmission/reception used for a control application. And please, I don't mean the whole space alien thing, there has been some credible research in this area. I suppose, if we can't even get speaker-independent voice recognition to work reliably, I don't imagine we'd get much further along with brainwaves; and of course, this would leave out that whole female population of u
    • Call me a luddite, but this level of shrinkage strikes me as being more of an PITA than lugging around a larger unit.

      Dood, if your unit shrinks so much as to be a pain in your ass, you need to see a doctor. Immediately!

  • Sweet! (Score:5, Funny)

    by IronChef ( 164482 ) on Tuesday August 31, 2004 @08:15PM (#10124169)
    It's got Macrovision built in! I told myself long ago I would not buy another computer until I could finally get one with video copy protection on board. That RULES.

  • sure linux but windows? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by uodeltasig ( 759920 ) on Tuesday August 31, 2004 @08:18PM (#10124189) Homepage
    I'll give you that it can run damn small linux, but damn small windows? Most people are not going to want to run a win-ce system on something that claims to be a pc... in this case it's just an oddly shaped, poorly designed, less powerful Pocket PC with a lot of RAM.

  • Bah (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Laptop, palmtop, handtop... bah! Wake me up when the fingertops start coming out.

  • OS (Score:2, Insightful)

    by StevenHenderson ( 806391 )
    Did anyone else notice that they recommend small footprint versions of Linux but show XP in the screenshots? HA! Good luck fitting Windows on a CF card and keeping the total cost down. Sure if the thing is $500, you still have to buy a microdrive of some sort then to have a normal-footprint OS.

  • already works (Score:3, Insightful)

    by skating_tortoise ( 790104 ) on Tuesday August 31, 2004 @08:45PM (#10124352)
    The selling point seems to be the x86 compatability, but linux already works on many embedded processors, and the thing is to slow to run windows.
  • ...but can it run Doom 3 (or the first doom for that matter lol)

  • Mitsuishi (Score:4, Funny)

    by Bushcat ( 615449 ) on Tuesday August 31, 2004 @09:00PM (#10124445)
    The manufacturer is Mitsuishi. URL is http://www.hagakipc.jp. Pricing for 64MB & 128MB variants to be announced; power consumption is 4W. I hesitate (momentarily) to post the next link, but Mitsuishi's also got a page at Geocities [geocities.jp], so we're not talking multinational corporations here.

    Its previous hardware product from Jan 2003 was a fan.

  • Slightly bigger than a Zaurus SL6000-L... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 31, 2004 @09:04PM (#10124477)
    ...and the Zaurus (which is also 640x480x16) has a slide-out keyboard, a 400MHz PXA255, 802.11b, USB (host or slave), IRDA, microphone and speaker (you can do VOIP with it), CF and SD slots, and three times the battery life. Plus it runs Linux.

    The TV in/out is certainly unique to that HagakiPC, but I'm not sure what they have in mind for that.

  • What I really want: A 1lb Xterm with WiFi ... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by neurocutie ( 677249 ) on Tuesday August 31, 2004 @09:24PM (#10124580)
    Why do we need all these architecturally heavyweight handhelds ? What I want is for the engineers to concentrate on the display/power aspect. It would be great to have a very lightweight remoteable graphics display, about as smart as an Xterm, connected via Wifi, weigh no more than 1lb, sized like a magazine (8.5x11), INCLUDING depth (no more than 0.5"), and battery life of 10 hours or more. I would probably even consider color secondary.

    Can't they take the display technology from the Palm's (even Palm V), add just enough CPU and memory to make a decent performing Xterm, add Wifi and that's it. Backlight optional as long as the reflectivity is very high (like Palm V).

    Perhaps pouring methanol into it would help it last 10 hours or more (but the Palm V already lasts 30 hours).

    Then you could just connect up to the near compute server, with specs of your choice and just surf, read, hack, whatever, from the comfort of your sofa, your lounge chair outside, etc. Most current laptops are just too unwieldy to replace a magazine.

    • Lucky for you, While researching Tablet PCs, I stumbled across the Viewsonic airsync V210 [viewsonic.com]. It's pretty much exactly what you described.
      • umm, close but no cigar.

        Its THREE pounds, display is only 800x600 10" TFT, no Xterm, and battery of "up to" 4 hours, and looks "fat" (not 0.5" thick). In short, it is no better than my (old) Toshiba Portege 3020ct, which is 2.8lbs, with 800x600 TFT, 0.4" when open (very thin). In addition the 3020ct is a fully laptop with hard disk and keyboard and could be an Xterm or run a full x86 OS.

        So it is intended to address the same market, but falls very short of even old and current ultralight laptops.

        No, to

  • Right now, I use a 22 year old Tandy M100 laptop for taking all manner of notes in school, as well as for programmable math. I haven't really considered a modern laptop because they're too large (M100 is same size as a sheet of paper) if you don't pay an indecent sum for a mini-mini, and because it's not ridiculously expensive to get batteries for (4 X AA == 20 hours operation).

    Now, I would like to take the low power consumption of the M100 (1 watt in it's case) and it's full-size, GOOD keyboard and combine it with a more modern but still reflective LCD display. Rather than have a keyboard with 3-5 inches of space on top and bottom of it, build the laptop into the area covered by the KBD (12 by 5 inches or so). Now use a pair or 4- or 5- inch LCDs side-by-side as a display. Install a CF drive for mass storage and BAM, you got a winner.

    On the software side, do something new with an operating system. Create a multi-tasking Kernel like that found in Contiki (GUI os for Commodore 64), along with a very basic windowing system. Keep 1) A word processor, 2) A simple spreadsheet, 3) A calendar, 4) A high-precision calculator, and 5) basic web browser/e-mail client in ROM on the system. Also, something that's good for "quick'n'dirty" programming, like the BASIC of the M100, and also similarly user-friendly.

    Yes, quite a wishlist... probably never gonna happen. But I can dream, right?
  • I don't want the Macrovision, is it possible to trade it for a bong or something?
  • I can see how this would be perfect in industry. First off, if you need a keyboard, it does have USB. This would be perfect to drive ad displaying computers since it does have video out. It could be used at museums and librarys when connected to a larger screen that has its own touch screen capabilites and where the tech folks dont want to have to bother with full pcs. The cf makes it absolutly perfect for these applications because at the end of the day, the cf could be reimaged and put back in to get off

  • HAY! (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "Only 128MB RAM and a 640x480 VGA screen, plus there's no hard drive"

    What the hell do you think I am surfing on, you insensitive clod!
  • There's an awful lot of wasted space on the front. I mean, it really looks like an industrial appliance or something. Guess that's why it's a prototype. Of course, the shipping version will be priced out of the market and only sold east of India so should we even be concerned?

  • update (Score:1)

    by TCM ( 130219 )
    Link to D.S.L. upgraded to a form that doesn't make some browsers choke.

    Am I the only one asking: WTF? http://www.damnsmalllinux/ makes "some browsers choke"? It's missing the TLD. It's invalid. Plain and simple. Are Slashdot editors so brainwashed by browsers that magically slap various TLDs onto some gibberish that they refer to correct behaviour as "choking"? The implication seems to be, that it was no error in the first place but the correction was merely to satisfy those picky choking browers.

    Get a

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