Pc That is the Size of a Credit Card

[Yami]

Where will these kids going to find 20" HDMI T.V.'s? And keyboards...

It has composite video output as well, so it can work on any TV from pretty much the last 40 years. And keyboards really aren't that expensive, and people are likely to have a spare anyway.

Well, what are the specs going to be on this thing?

It's got a 700MHz ARM, I believe. GPU can do 1080p via the HDMI so it can't be that bad.

 

[Nitestick]

I'm definitely going to be buying one when they come out. I'm excited Last I heard it had a 700Mhz ARM processor and could run Quake 3 and some variant of Linux (I'm hoping Ubuntu). So not bad for $25

Currently they won't have official Ubuntu support but I'd say doubtless there will be a customised variant for it made by some hacker. It should be outright Debian compatible. There is a demon on youtube of it chugging along on Quake 3 at 1920x1080 (interlaced I think, so half bandwidth but still impressive). Apparently the GPU performance is comparable to the original Xbox which again is impressive given the units size, price and power consumption.

Well, what are the specs going to be on this thing? Some programs require a little more than minimal CPU speeds to run. Again you need to plug it in somewhere, if this is for a non-profit gig... Where will these kids going to find 20" HDMI T.V.'s?

As has been mentioned it's a 700MHz ARMv6 which should be quite ample for the sort of usage these devices would see. So you won't be able to play Crysis or Windows but there's a lot you can get done with this. The composite video output makes it near universally compatible with TVs. The entire computer can be powered off a USB port which with a lot of current TVs means you could power it directly from the TV itself.

 

[MindoverMaster]

Do they actually have a "case" for this little beast? What form factor would they call that?

 

[Nitestick]

No case yet but I think they're looking at both producing one for sale and then releasing schematics to make your own. If the market for it takes off, which I think it pretty much has already then I guess third parties will come up with cases too. For me I'd only care about covering the top and bottom, not the sides so a couple of pieces of aluminium bolted either side of the PCB with risers would do the trick I reckon.

EDIT: Actually, looking at pics of the beta boards there's no screw holes through it so you'd need to come up with something with retaining clips or heck....hot glue it down on something insulated and then attach the other side to the base.