Cameron's Thoughts

The Jackito is a device that has been announced at a number of websites. One such news story was this one at Brighthand. This device is not a PDA as the company that makes it says. It's a 'TDA', Tactile Digital Assistant. Why is this? You don't use a stylus, you use your oily fingers to touch the screen. The website for this product has a lot of good to say, such as "7 parallel processors" and all kinds of features such as a color screen, high-sound quality, wireless capabilities and weeks or use on a single AA battery. But, is it a lot of talk, or is there any truth behind this greatness? So I investigated. First, a trip to the pricing. The base unit, $600. Oh, but you wanted color? Not included, an extra $138. And what about the wireless capabilities? Also, not included. Bluetooth, an extra $80, WiFi, another $150 on top of that. Would you like a camera, add on another $100. So, just for a decent PDA, and by that I mean color screen and WiFi, this device is already going to cost $888. For that price, surely this thing must be powerful. How much RAM is there? 2.5MB. Yes, that's not 256MB, that's 2.5MB, or about 2500KB. Don't worry, they do throw in 14MB of NOR Flash memory so you can store your apps and things somewhere. That is, if anyone makes any apps for it. Must have a good sound system since it's advertised to have "high-quality sound". To start with, the MP3 function, which is also not included, will cost an extra $45. But, they do offer an FM radio, for $30. So, what kind of speaker is built in? From the webpage: "LCD loudspeaker 100Hz-10KHz - 0.1 Watts". Very low range, and a tenth of a watt?? Plus, I have no idea what an LCD loudspeaker is, almost sounds like the LCD screen is the speaker. This was a bit too strange for me, so I didn't feel like researching that any further. They do mention that you can buy headphones for $20, or a Bluetooth headphone for $100. I just hope they have a standard 3.5mm minijack so normal headphones can be plugged in. I wouldn't be surprised if this was some proprietary jack they use forcing you to buy there headphones. Hmm, so what about the "7 processors". This raises a number of thoughts.

• Won't it be hard for developers to program for seven processors?
• How can a single AA battery last 'several months' powering all those processors?
• With such little RAM, why so much processing power?
• Is this even for real?

The main CPU is a Mitsubishi CPU (M30803) and from what I can find, that tops out at 20MHz. The other "CPU" mentioned is the Texas Instruments CPU (MSP 430), a 50 cent processor that, while it has low power consumption, doesn't seem to be all to powerful. Couldn't find any specs other that it's a 16-bit processor. Seems that it's mainly used to perform simple tasks such as controlling an LCD screen. The other "CPU's" mentioned are simply programmable logic chips probably also used to control other simple functions on the device such as sound and video. So, there are just a number of simple microchips all performing basic tasks to power this device. Every PDA or computer has a number of chips that back up the main CPU to perform tasks. These are never mentioned, but at the same time, if your main CPU is only 20MHz, you certainly can't advertise that either. So, for $600, you are getting a device that, hardware-wise, competes with the $20 PDA's found next to the calculators at Wal-Mart. The only thing that this device has going for it is the 'no-stylus' marketing gimmick. Also, during the reading of the discussion at Brighthand about their news artice, Ed Hardy mentioned Roland Piquepaille's site. He had an interview with the maker's of the Jackito. Somewhat interesting, but didn't really touch on any of the issues I brought up here. It does have a video of the device. I would have to say the software doesn't look all that bad. But time will tell this devices fate. And I don't think time will play nicely.