CHERRYPAL: World’s Most Affordable Green PC
by Evelyn Lee, 06/26/08
CherryPal is taking cloud computing mainstream in a big way with a soon to be released green personal computer. This green PC comes in a small, affordable package weighing just 10.5 ounces and consuming no more than two watts of power. The triple-core processor only has one fifth of the components of traditional computers, boots-up in 20 seconds, and promises to be faster than Vista and mac’s OS-X.
CherryPal had us doing our computer research to understand the power behind utilizing cloud computing. The PC contains only 4GB of flash storage, 256MB of memory, and a power architecture-based 400MHz Freescale mobileGT MPC5121e chip on a Linux operating system. To the everyday user, this means that most of the computer resources will be owned and accessed by a third-party provider in a data center – the type of service on demand similar to the way we program a Tivo. It also means that computer viruses will truly be a thing of the past for Cherrypal users.
For those of you who are a little more tech savy, here’s a more complete list of CherryPal’s Hardware:
- Freescale’s MPC5121e mobileGT processor, 800 MIPS (400 MHz) of processing
- 256MB of DDR2 DRAM
- 4GB NAND Flash-based solid state drive
- WiFi 802.11b/g Wi-Fi
- Two USB 2.0 ports
- One 10/100 Ethernet with RJ-45 jack
- One VGA DB-15 display out jack
- Headphone level stereo audio out 3.5mm jack
- 9vDC 2.5mm 10 watt AC-DC adapter power supply
- 10.5 ounces
- 1.3″ high, 5.8″ x 4.2″ wide
Skeptics standby, CEO Max Seibold stands firmly behind his product believing it will not only deliver on energy savings and cost, but also on speed, making it “the most affordable, greenest computer on the market.” According to Seibold, CherryPal will be able to appease the music collectors, the gamers, and those looking for a simple to use word processor. While official pricing hasn’t been released yet, sources say to look-out for prices well under $400 sans the monitor, keyboard, and any additional accessories necessary to run the desktop. Look out for an early August release along with a laptop to follow in the near future.
Linutop looks like a better alternative, at least it is already available :
http://www.linutop.com/linutop2/index.en.html
Aurélien