A second lease on life for Audrey.
Written: Nov 02 '01 (Updated Nov 03 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Now really cheap (if you can find it), and Hackable!
Cons: Not the fastest hardware, now discontinued by 3Com.
The Bottom Line: For $400-500 bucks, wasn't worth it. Now it's hacked at $90 it's a steal for a fully functioning QNX/Unix terminal that you can fully customize!
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| DrDaveC's Full Review: 3Com Audrey-Linen Handheld |
This product bombed when it first came out and that is the simple but painful fact that caused 3Com to discontinue it. The Audrey was intended to be an easy to use, integrated Web browser, E-Mail client, Address Book and Date Book. It had the ability to sync with several Palm Pilot PDA's to get you Address Book and Date Book information into it as well as to serve as a PC Free docking station for your Palm PDA. It performed these functions reasonably well, but in the end it was too limited for what it cost.
It's Web Browsing was limited to basic HTML pages and on complex or large pages, it's 640x480 screen was awkward requirng much scrolling around (both horizontally and vertically), few multimedia formats worked via the browser or E-mail client (Macromedia Flash, Real Player media and Wav only for audio, no built in .mp3 playback). The E-mail client was exceedingly rudimentary and only supported one user POP account at a time, printing compatibility was limited to a handfull of Cannon Bubblejet printers. Audrey is powered by the equivalent of a 200 MHz Pentium and moved along at a fair pace but it was no speed demon, what was nice was that it came up instantly when you hit the power button, no lenghty boot up process like we see in PC's.
However, what finally killed Audrey was the fact that for the original retail price of $400-500, you could almost buy a complete and full featured low end Celeron or Athalon powered Windows PC with full featured Web Browsing and E-mail applications and the ability to add on whatever programs and software/hardware you wanted. The Audrey was without a market, too expensive, too crippled. However, what is bad for a big corporation isn't always bad for the end users. Several things happened:
1) The price dropped as low as $89.99 (at www.TigerDirect.com, sorry, all sold out now) and to around $100.00 at E-Bay.
2) A huge enthusiasts/hacking community sprung up around the Audrey when some guy named "Sowbug" succeeded in hacking into the Audrey's OS.
3) Several methods evolved to get your Audrey hacked and suddenly, it wasn't that hard to add an mp3 player, Text Editor, X-Term, telnet, VNC, and a host of other applications already out there for Audrey's QNX OS. Some individuals have even written brand new Audrey specific applications. There are also efforts to port over the Linux OS to the Audrey and failing that, perhaps cross-compiling the array of Linux applications out there over to the Audrey.
Thanks to www.SlashDot.org's ability to generate interest, 2 articles mentioning the Audrey's hackability revived interest and this little seemingly doomed Internet Appliance got a second lease on life.
I picked up 2 and considered it a steal. Yes the built in applications (while pretty to look at and friendly) were pretty lame. Good thing this thing has the ability to use any ISP you want via the built in modem instead of locking you into whoever they had set up a business agreement with. A USB/Ethernet adapter to use Audrey with your existing DSL/Broadband access is available from 3Com but it was a bit pricy and hard to find. Similar units from other manufacturers have been successfully hacked to work with the Audrey by several individuals however and these USB/Ethernet adapters have been found for as cheap as $10.00.
It has alot of potential. The QNX OS on board that you can get at once you get it hacked is quite useable and surprisingly powerful. Sort of like having "Unix in a Lunchbox", though you can add on Graphical User Interfaced/Windowed applications, to get things going you have to be comfortable with Unix/Linux commands issued over a text/command line prompt.
As a hacking toy the Audrey is unbeatable for $100.00 odd bucks. It is still usable as a very basic Internet Appliance (which is what I did with the second one, I gave it to my sister who isn't very comfortable with the whole computer/internet experience). The keyboard is a bit cramped, the passive matrix screen isn't the best and the built in software is somewhat lame. But the last point is moot now that you have the ability to strip out what software you don't like/need and add in new capabilities as you'd like. Try finding a customizable Pentium grade embedded PC with Internet connectivity and a color touch screen anywhere for less! Not for the faint of heart, but a Hacker's new best friend.
For more details, check out these Links:
www.AudreyHacking.com
www.linux-hacker.net
www.sowbug.com/audrey (where it all began)
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 89.99
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Epinions.com ID:
DrDaveC
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Member: David Chen
Reviews written: 16
Trusted by: 1 member
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