Comments on: Keeping the CherryPal in Perspective

By: Dave

Dave — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 09:41:29 +0000

I’m writing to let readers know that I finally got my CP last night. I went to the CP community form and complained there about not having received it in nearly six months, and had a tracking number within 24 hours. However, the unit I received is a used one, with all kinds of unusual settings that have me stymied right now. (Also, the plastic top of the case is slightly deformed; I think I may have a unit that was used by one of the developers’ it’s serial #66). I went to single digits on the clock, learning about gnome-panel and resurrecting it. Checking out all the Chinese-language favorites saved in Firefox will have to wait till I can connect to the Net, ’cause the person’s set-up has me baffled, but I’m working my way through it. Oh yeah, in the trash was a nice-sounding Chinese mp3 titled something like “Linux Is For Humans.”

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 19:55:45 +0000

I’m happy for the few individuals who have received their Cherrypals. I eagerly made my Paypal purchase on July 21 after reading the green pal-in-the-cloud hype, hoping to make a birthday gift of it to my wife. Despite all the assurances of the company, including the ridiculous 114 tie-in to the US election, the claim that a big order from Africa had taken all available units, I couldn’t even make it a Christmas present. No reply to our last email Christmas Eve. Nearly six months and counting — if you’re thinking of ordering one, please wait till you hear I’ve received mine.

By: Justin Gehring

Justin Gehring — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 17:34:01 +0000

@John

To some degree John, Cherrypal is an open PC. It’s running a modified version of Ubuntu, so you can do just about anything you could on a normal linux computer. The only problem at the moment is that they have hidden the ability to access the bootloader. I’ve been rebooting over and over again trying to find the magic key, but they did a good job at making it either hard to find, or a timing thing that I haven’t figured out… Perhaps I’d be better off looking at the files in /boot/

@ Chuck and @Muriani, it is running an OS called LimeOS, but looks nothing like the screenshots over at limePC. It also is running a worse processor than what Lime claims to have…

The worst part about the Cherrypal at the moment though is it’s lack of reliability from the company… First the shipments were delay. Now the OS has a gaping security issue (they shipped it with a default username and password that they told people not to change, and then left SSH running…), and people aren’t being communicated to when they send emails in (either that, or they’ve started ignoring me… wouldn’t surprise me)

By: Chuck

Chuck — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 20:07:54 +0000

@Muriani

Check out FitPC’s forum under Support. There are lots of interesting inputs.

By: muriani

muriani — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 14:55:08 +0000

@Chuck
The CherryPal *is* a LimePC.

I’ve looked at the Fit-PC a bit as well, especially the Slim. I’m concerned about the performance of the 500MHz Geode though, but I guess I won’t know until I try, eh? The 12V (+/-3V) power input makes it an EXCELLENT candidate for a carPC as long as it can keep up responsiveness with the navigation and media software.. That and it’s insanely small.

By: Velcro_MM

Velcro_MM — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 13:42:39 +0000

Green Tech Girl, it’s great to read the CherryPal reports from you about this. Keep ‘em coming I say. I am into environmentally-friendly alternative devices and this one could be a mammoth hit if the software on it gets to a very functional state. There is an alternative OS called MorphOS 2.1 (I say “M2″) that is extremely responsive on lightweight hardware. It would blow Linux away in responsiveness terms on CherryPal hardware, make using the device a joy and not an excruciation, but M2 needs more stability and a more capable browser. Those things are attainable, M2 and CherryPal should explore a relationship. But I’m interested in CherryPal regardless.

By: Benjamin

Benjamin — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 09:22:29 +0000

I’m part of the fit-pc UK team at Anders Electronics, and we would be happy to supply a review model of the fit-pc for you to test for a couple of weeks.

We’re confident it will stand head and shoulders above the green-pc competition!

Benjamin

By: John

John — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 04:19:56 +0000

It would be really interesting if CherryPal were to become an open computer. When I first heard about CherryPal I was very interested, being a PowerPC fan for a long time. I was quite dismayed to learn it would only provide a browser interface and not give developers access to the bare metal, making it quite useless for me, alas. But I’m quite interested in watching the CherryPal saga unfold.

In the mean time, I’ve picked up a Beagle Board (http://beagleboard.org) to satisfy my need for a non-Intel development platform. Beagle Board is doing it right — great processor, low cost, low power, [mostly] open software and documentation, and have thereby collected an enthusiastic international developer community. CherryPal should try this — what have they got to lose?

By: Chuck

Chuck — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 23:50:01 +0000

Excellent, honest evaluation!

Fit-PC is a proven product. They have excellent support and a forum site to answer most questions.

You might want to check out the LimePC site (limepc.com) their pc looks exactly like the Cherrypal. They will be at CES in Jan 09. We might get some good reviews from there. Their software is customized for their unit.