The A9home is officially on sale to the public with the first orders expected to ship by next month. The pint-sized ARM 9 powered computer was previously sold about this time last year to a small army of selected beta testers, who then spent 12 months test driving the machine.Produced by Advantage Six and Simtec, the A9home will be sold and distributed by CJE Micros. In an email to punters who registered an interest in buying a unit, CJE Micros said they are now taking orders and described the A9home as "an exciting new computer".
CJE's Chris Evans said: "We are pleased to tell you the A9home is now going through its final quality assurance testing, and we can now accept orders for delivery within 28 days. They may even be available at the Wakefield Show next Saturday."
The published specification says the A9home is just 168 mm by 103 mm by 53 mm (roughly 6 x 4 x 2 inches) in size. Inside its blue aluminum case is a 400MHz Samsung ARM9 processor with a Silicon Motion chipset, a 40GB hard disc, 128MB of SDRAM and 8MB of video RAM. The operating system is 32bit RISC OS Adjust, and the box runs off a 5 volt 20W power supply. It features four USB 1.1 ports, 2 PS/2 sockets, an ethernet network port, and an audio out socket.
The final price, including VAT, stands at the round number of 603 quid - up from the beta version's price tag of 586 quid (inc VAT). It's believed CJE Micros wanted to charge slightly more for the product, but Ad6 were keen to keep the price well below the 1000 pound mark. Since the introduction of the A9home, Castle have gradually brought down the price of their RISC OS computer offering, the XScale powered Iyonix.
AdvantageSix have tried to make the A9home as portable as possible, making use of ARM-based embedded technologies to pull it off. The A9home forms part of Ad6's A9 range - a group of ARM powered computers Ad6 are designing for various undisclosed clients.
One interesting aspect is that it has no floppy or CD drive built in - users will have to either install software and copy files from a network or plug in a USB connected drive. A version of Aemulor is also available for punters wishing to use 26bit RISC OS applications on their new 32bit machine.
The A9home is due to be demonstrated at next week's Wakefield show.
• Got an A9home? Tell us about it.
Update at 21:32 8/5/2006
CJE Micros's Chris Evans has clarified the pricing of the A9home, and denied that he wanted to price the product higher.
He said: "The price is not higher it has always been 499+15 delivery + VAT. The email price was inclusive of Delivery and VAT. I don't know were you got the idea I wanted a higher price, I have never mentioned that."
Links
A9 website