[MeeGo-community] Community Device Program - Intel contribution

[Foster, Dawn M]

On Mar 3, 2011, at 8:54 AM, Mark Constable wrote:

> On 04/03/11, Andrew Flegg wrote:
>>> My main point is that I hope you, or anyone, could include the
>>> option or suggestion to upstream manufacurers that they could
>>> also offer devel devices to anyone prepared to pay for one sooner
>>> than waiting for retail devices. Next year won't matter because
>>> there will be a ton of devices to chose from (I guess) but right
>>> now it does matter.
>> 
>> So, to be clear, are you asking for a discount programme or an
>> ability to get retail(ish) quality hardware at retail(ish) prices?
> 
> More the former because whatever hardware will be given away as some
> kind of devel encouragement program will have some combined support,
> mostly unofficial, where a bunch of devs will have the same hardware
> facing the same problems and probably communicating via a common
> mail-list/forum. I'd like to be part of that stream of effort even
> if I have to buy my way in.

The community device program will have details about the device 
specifications, and because this is a community program, most
or all of these devices are also available for purchase, so
anyone could go out and purchase the same devices that are being
donated to community members to get the benefit of shared support
while still purchasing the device.

> 
>> If the latter, the WeTab, the ExoPC[1] and the Lenovo IdeaPad S3-10t
>> might be suitable? Probably teaching you to suck eggs, but still...
> 
> Certainly worth considering but isolated products lack the focus I
> outlined above.
> 
Right now, you can get this benefit from the Lenovo IdeaPad S3-10t.
Since we distributed 750+ of these already to community members, 
there are many people using them (as evidenced by the vast numbers
of questions in the forum).

The tablet we will be distributing as part of the community device
program is the ExoPC, which is also available for purchase, so I 
expect for that device to be getting some focused use in the community 
over the next couple of months. Intel also distributed a number of ExoPCs
to people at Mobile World Congress, and it's the platform that many of 
us here at Intel are using now for tablet testing, so lots of people are
already using it for MeeGo development.

I think you'd get the benefit you described with either of these 2
devices.

Dawn