Aleutia is reading this and thanks for pointing me towards the Beagle Board. I'd come across it before but seeing Ubuntu ARM running on it has re-ignited my interest. USB-power means we can offer a single AC (possibly 12V DC) USB power hub to run a classroom of them.
Ordering one and will comment if we commercialize it.
Posted Feb 16, 2009 23:10 UTC (Mon) by pjm (subscriber, #2080)
[Link]
http://elinux.org/BeagleBoard has lots of useful information. In particular, note the differences between the currently-available revision B, and revision C2 due "end of March", such as USB HOST (EHCI) issue.
The display is typically a significant drawer of power, so note a couple of issues relevant to output: the Beagle Board has HDMI and S-Video output but not VGA. See also the above page's comments on interfacing to raw LCD panels.
Also of interest is http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS7369895239.html (which would be a competitor for Aleutia) and related products such as the eBox systems (note there are both DX and earlier SX versions) and their associated underlying systems-on-chip. (Note that it's the system-on-chip that has the low power consumption; I haven't found any claims as to how much power the computer as a whole uses, making me suspect that the system as a whole doesn't have so impressive a number.)