SheevaPlug: The Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Computer

Computers are rapidly diminishing in size, but if you would have shown me this computer, I would have assumed that it's a power adapter. I would have been wrong, because it's a tiny computer masquerading as a power plug. There have been other small Linux computers out there, but the fact that it's available for $99 right now is also a marvel. That's good, because Marvell, the company who makes this thing, will soon announce a $50 price drop.

Marvell introduced this little gizmo yesterday. They call it the SheevaPlug. The idea is to make a very high-performance, ultra-compact, and green computer that users can just plug into a wall socket. SheevaPlug draws less than a tenth of the power of a typical PC, it could be used as a home server. The current model has a 1.2GHz processor, with 512MB of flash memory and 512MB of DRAM. It can directly connect to a network via its Gigabit Ethernet port. It also has a single USB 2.0 port.

What's really amazing is the size. It's been mentioned that this thing could be the perfect way to hack into networks, since people would just assume it's a power plug, but we think otherwise. It's insignificant form factor make it a step in the right direction for PCs. Naturally, this tiny computer doesn't support Windows, only Linux. [via CNet]