$170 Insignia Infocast Photo And App Viewer Turned Into A Tablet

You might not have heard of the Insignia Infocast before, but the latest hack will probably bring it to your attention. The device is originally touted as a photo and app viewer that can view Chumby apps and share photos. Despite its limited capabilities out of the box, the device actually packs an 800MHz processor, 2GB of memory, 8-inch LCD touchscreen, Wi-Fi, two USB ports and can run the Chumby Linux 2.6 operating system. The hackers out there have managed to tweak it to run a WebKit-based browser, giving it much more functionality. Of course, these little tweaks won’t bring it to challenge Apple’s iPad or Samsung’s Galaxy Tab anytime soon, but at $170; it’s probably cheaper than trying to build your own tablet from scratch. The major downside of this hack is that the Infocast doesn’t have a built-in battery, so you’ll have to keep it plugged to a power point in order to keep it juiced. Perhaps the next hack will involve a battery, eh?

Matthew Chung
Categories: Gadgets
Tags: linux, Tablet