Ladies in red – ALIX & iPod Nano

I recently bought an ALIX 2C0 that goes very well to my iPod Nano. ALIX is an embedded hardware platform that can run a number of operating systems – many quite simple to work with. It is made by a Swiss company. Their previous models were called WRAP and I had one of those. The first impressions of this computer is that it is significantly faster than the model it replaces. The system is powered by a 433MHz AMD Geode processor and comes with 128MB RAM and a compact flash slot for storage. If that is not enough for you, there are 500MHz/256 models available. And despite the red colour it is quite friendly on the environment, drawing less than 5W.

Before you rush out and get this with the idea that it could replace your current desktop – hold your horses. The connector on the left is a serial port, not a display connector. This kind of computer is used to make routers or access points, not something you would run a desktop operating system on.

I haven’t fully figured out what I am going to use it for but I have some thoughts. I will get back to that, as well as a walk-through of installing a Linux distribution on it.