CherryPal: The Green Little PC That Could

Written by Jaymi Heimbuch
Friday, 27 June 2008

Even the name is adorable. CherryPal. This tiny 10.5 oz PC is coming soon, and will use no more than 2 watts of power without sacrificing speed. The triple-core processor uses only 20% of the components of traditional computers and will start up in only 20 seconds, promising to be faster than Vista and mac’s OS-X…though it doesn’t take much to be faster than Vista.

It can be so fast with so few part by utilizing cloud computing. So while the PC itself has just 4GB of flash storage, 256MB of memory, and 400MHz of processing, it will be able to access resources from a third-party provider in a data center. So not only can it be small and fast, it will also be virus-free, not needing constant virus protection upgrades that take up room and slow it down. It’ll have standard features like two USB 2.0 ports, Ethernet with jack, headphone level stereo audio, and a 10 watt AC-DC adapter to charge it up. Creators say the small size will provide a great energy savings, and combine that with the low cost of the computer itself, they say it’ll be “the most affordable, greenest computer on the market.” Official prices aren’t out yet, but Inhabitat’s sources say it’ll be well under $400…but add on to that the cost of the monitor, keyboard and other accessories, which can be found very inexpensively for those of us who care about the affordability factor.

When I first read the title, I was expecting to read about something that would be solar powered, or use recycled or clean materials in the creation. Sounds like CherryPal, though far cuter than other cheap “green” computers out there, only has low power usage as its leg up on the competition. As for "green," the low power thing is kind of a so-what feature. With the leaps and bounds being made in low-power, high-ability computers, I don’t think this will be in the lead for long, if at all, which I suppose really is a good thing for all of us if it means more computers that use less power on the market.

Via Inhabitat
http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/1801/