The Aleutia is a small desktop PC that is powered by a roll-up solar panel and uses just 8W. It comes with Puppy Linux, a small Linux distributions that is designed for older hardware. Due to the limited resources (128MB RAM, 200Mhz processor, and just 1GB of storage on a CF card), Puppy Linux, DSL, and Windows 95 are just about the only options for it. The Aleutia costs 499 GBP or about 1000 USD.

The problem with the Aleutia has nothing to do with the product itself. It has to do with the product’s competition. If you compare the Asus Eee PC and the Aleutia PC you get this:

• Eee PC is 2.5x less expensive. ($400 to $1000)
• Eee PC has better specs.
• Eee PC is more portable.

The one thing that the Aleutia has over the Eee PC is that it provides a solar panel. Given the price difference (Eee is $600 less), I decided to check the price of third-party solar panels. The first place I found was selling fold up solar panels. A 26-watt solar panel costs just over $300, and provides sufficient power to run the Eee PC at full load and charge its battery at the same time. If you do the math, the Eee PC with a solar panel comes out $300 cheaper, and the Eee PC has a number of advantages over the Aleutia as noted above.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 9th, 2007 at 8:57 pm and is filed under Distros, Hardware, Linux in Developing Countries, Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.