Well…. the Raspberry Pi Spawns Competitors, so says the article on OSNews. I have been looking at the ArchLinuxARM website for a while, and I have noticed the number of supported boards to rise. One particular SoC that drew my attention was the Allwinner A10. The specs of this SoC seem nice, and so I was considering buying a device based on this SoC. An example of this was the Mele A1000. Another variant of this is the Mele A2000. Another interesting fact these devices have a SATA HD dock. The Mele A1000 is cheaper on DX.com. Also note the shipping on AliExpress appears to be pretty expensive, while DX.com has free shipping.
This device is sold as a media player, but are advertised as “hackable device”, so it seem cool to play around with. Interesting fact is this media player has a VGA output, something which both the BeagleBoard and the Raspberry Pi lack. Then I read the OSNews article, mentioned above. In one of the comments, a link to the Cubieboard. So, it’s sold as just a board, like the BeagleBoard and the Raspberry Pi. Interesting fact is this board has 1 GB of RAM, compared to 512 MB of the Mele A1000/A2000. There is no VGA connector on the Cubieboard, but on the I/O header there is a VGA output. It also offers a SATA port. Sooo… it looks like an interesting board. Also note this board is funded though crowd funding.
Another chip I have my interest in is the Loongson. This is not an ARM chip, but a MIPS chip. I just have my love for exotic hardware. Lemote sells laptops and PC’s based on their CPU. I know only about one webshop selling them, the earlier mentioned AliExpress. However, it mentions only one model, while their sites mentions four models of the Mini-pc.