Hi Folks, we know a blog is long overdue. 2012 has been a busy and interesting year for Genesi.

In the next couple of weeks we will announce our first genesiamericas.com license agreement. It did take us some time to perfect the package and attract the kind of interest we needed to make that business model successful. It is a new approach, but we knew we needed to do something different. The first board prototypes were produced last week. There is no way we could go head to head with products like the recent Chromebooks, but we were doing that with the Efika MX Smartbook at the same price points two years ago. We have a different focus than a Samsung, Acer or Google. That needs to be remembered. The new "smartbook" is based on the imx53 and targets the education market. It will be produced in the country for which it was licensed and our licensee received the first Government orders last week. We are going to have a whole new community to support through this site and we are excited about it.

In the mean time, over the last year we designed and produced an imx6 board (the latest of which has the v1.2 of the SoC) for Raytheon/DARPA. We are planning the commercialization of this new technology by the end of 2013. It has been great to work on this project and the Genesi Team has played an elemental role in the process. In the next couple of years, you will see the results of the efforts come to the security, disaster relief and automotive markets. There will be many other areas to apply the new technology which will work better and cost less than the current market provides.

Stay tuned. More information soon...

R&B :-)

P.S. And we are working on the spam problem!

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http://bbrv.blogspot.com

Thank you for the update! Sounds really excitiing.
This is great! I love when new technology helps the education, especially when it's in emerging countries. ARM-based devices surely are very appropriiate for that task.
Congratulations!
As much as I'd like to see more consumer-oriented devices like a new notebook, I realize that it's a very difficult task in the current market and it's much wiser to focus on other, more opened markets before going to that one.

So well... It's great to know that everything goes fine with you guys.

Great to hear that things are moving forward for Genesi. :) I really like the sound of the education-related iMX53 notebooks! The world needs more such initiatives. I've been involved (a bit) in groups working on bringing educational techniques and tools to parts of the world that have so far lacked them and it's really inspiring to see everything that is being done. Congrats on that success! With all the upcoming users, we should really get that wiki full of useful info (and translated as necessary), for user and developer alike...

One question about the iMX51-based products: approximately how long does Genesi plan to officially support them? I'm thinking in particular about Linux kernel updates.

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http://www.brandoninvergo.com

Great news, I'm glad things are moving ahead for genesi.

I have to say the smartbook is going into the top 5 of all time computing devices for me (the others being PSION Organiser II, Commodore 64, PSION netbook and of course the AMIGA).

I've really enjoyed the hackability of the device, you've really treated the device as a platform rather than an appliance. I think we need more companies as you, since I think we could use a new platform revolution based on ARM.
I hope you will reconsider making a "netbook" and or settop device in the future for consumers again in the future.

I wish you all the best.

PS:
Would it be possible to get an xorg-abi-13 compatible driver? - I've installed ubuntu 12.10 on it, and the driver doesn't work because of a new xorg abi.

+1 for this. I would really enjoy having an ARM based netbook with a little more of the oomph more recent ARM SoC's provide. That said, I do realize the market for netbooks in general is rapidly shrinking, and the desktop is going nowhere fast.

Great news, though, keep it up!

BBRV,

I'm not sure how much you can say about this but in some of the BBRV Flickr account images the i.MX53 board is refered to as 'i.MX53 and i.MX6'. Are the two boards so similar in general layout that the board can represent to both designs? If so, are the two boards connector compatible so that an i.MX53 smartbook can be upgraded with an i.MX6 board or would there be significant redesign required for an i.MX6 smartbook?

All the best,
Freak132