Does anyone know the specifications of the new Efika's coming out next month?
I'm curious to know if the improvement will be worth making the purchase and what the likely price will be.
At this point an old Powerbook still seems like a better investment.

> Does anyone know the specifications of the new Efika's coming out next month?

AFAIK it's essentially the same as it is now only with i.MX535 instead of i.MX515. The implications of the SoC upgrade can be deduced from looking at the SoC's specs and comparing it to the predecessor's specs:

http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=i.MX535
http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=i.MX515

Comparison i.MX53 vs. i.MX51:
http://www.freescale.com/files/32bit/doc/app_note/AN4271.pdf

Discussion:
http://www.powerdeveloper.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1972

Not bad. A little evolutionary improvement. Hopefully it won't create a significant cost increase.
Thanks Andreas.

> Hopefully it won't create a significant cost increase.

I don't know Genesi's price policy but at least the pure BOM shouldn't cause any cost increase:

http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=i.MX535&tab=Buy_Parametric_Tab
http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=i.MX515&tab=Buy_Parametric_Tab

@Jim

Genesi is taking various steps to *lower* the cost. This could either mean better profit margins at current price, or lower price at current margins (or a little of both).

Genesi will be at Freescale Technology Forum 20-23 of June. I think we could expect some more info about this coming from that event.

[ Edited by takemehomegrandma 16.05.2011 - 10:16 ]

Let me know what you find out. I'm seriously considering one of these.
Obviously, its not as powerful as an Intel Atom based netbook, but the very fact that its not an X86 makes it attractive.
Besides, I like the Linux distro that comes with it.

Also, there's supposed to be a new, very fashoinable form factor nowadays. It's been mentioned several times in "powerdeveloper.org" by Genesi themselves. Here, for example:

http://www.genesi-usa.com/event/genesiscrum

"The focus will be the new i.mx53 Efika MX Smartbook and Tablet"

Of course, it couldn't be anything else. By the way, do you remember that freescale tablet reference desing, shown in public a year ago? Funnily, it was named "smartbook" indeed!

Genesi took the trend of the netbook form factor exactly when it was hot, but then was late delivering. When the SmartBook (a great little computer, by the way) came, its netbook shape wasn't trendy anymore. This time, perhaps, timing is right. They even said that they can't show anything until the freescale tech forum, a month away from now.

> This time, perhaps, timing is right.

I guess Genesi will be late to the tablet party the same as they were late to the netbook party. It's just that there's nothing on the horizon yet displacing tablets in the way netbooks have almost completely been displaced by tablets in rather short order. That's kind of godsend for Genesi.

@jcmarcos

From Genesi's holiday greetings from last Christmas:

"We are designing our next products now. They are based on the Freescale i.mx53. The goal is to produce a low-cost board that can be sold as a single board solution, a desktop, a laptop and a tablet (we could say a smarttop, a smartbook, and a smarttablet, but you get the idea)."

Cut costs by improved economy of scale from using a single design for all applications. Hope they succeded!

I think it should be kind of obvious now why they have been involved with Android all this time...

@ jcmarcos

Quote:

As a secondary or tertiary device, tablets are indeed very attractive for a variety of reasons. However, tablets have a very different perceived value if you consider them as your primary and only computing device as billions of people would who earn less than your average Western European or North American citizen.

> "[...] The goal is to produce a low-cost board that can be sold as a single board solution [...]"

http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=IMX53QSB

Lower cost than this?

Yes.
R&B :)

> Yes.

Nice :-)

>>> "[...] The goal is to produce a low-cost board that can be sold as a single board solution [...]"

>> http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=IMX53QSB
>> Lower cost than this?

> Yes.

And "*less* than $49 for the board", as suggested by takemehomegrandma?

@andreas

That price quote was a mistake by me, where I simply misinterpreted the *actual info* that your link-to a link-to some linkpage eventually contained. That price obviously was for the HDMI-card only, but I thought it was for the bare PCB without screen etc.

> That price quote was a mistake by me

Thanks for clarification. So we're still at less than 149 USD then.

> the *actual info* that your link-to a link-to some linkpage eventually contained

Huh? As you can see right in the very posting you just replied to I linked directly to the i.MX53 Quick Start Board product page on the Freescale website. So what are you on about here?