Hands-on: The $300 Kano PC, a “build-it-yourself” Chromebook competitor

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/07/hands-on-the-300-kano-pc-a-build-it-yourself-chromebook-competitor/

by tomerbd • 6 years ago

50 49 6 years ago

gambiting• 6 years ago

This is what I've been saying about modular phones for years - "oh if only phones were modular people wouldn't have to buy a brand new one ever 2 years" - yes, maybe, but the phone would be 3x as heavy, to facilitate a functionality that realistically would be used once or twice. And people increasingly upgrade phones not because the old ones are too slow or lacking memory but because...they just want something new.

kennywinker• 6 years ago

The way we consume technology: unrepairable, disposable, and with a lifespan of 1-3 years, is completely environmentally unsustainable and relies on exploitative globalized labour.

In 2006, the era of the motorola razr, if you told me everyone would be carrying a phone that weighs 2-3x, is well over double the size, and has 1/5 the standby time... I would not have understood why. People's tastes, habits, and lifestyles can change dramatically. I don't believe for a second a robust, modular, user-repairable, and maybe even upgradable phone would not fit into people's lives in a way that made them happy... but I also don't believe for a second that market forces will produce said phone. Much more money to be made on fragile luxury items that we replace as often as possible.

alexnklein9• 6 years ago

In a third of cases, classrooms throw out, then replace computers rather than repairing them. Even if only one component is down.

More than 5 billion dollars is spent by US schools in this way.

While the original Kano focused on "make your own" as an experience, the new Kano PC is "click in and click out" for sustainability as well as see-through-ness.

As WIRED put it, "What's a learning experience for the kids becomes a sustainability experiment for the schools." https://www.wired.com/story/kano-pc-microsoft-partnership/

throwaway744678• 6 years ago

Google had an interesting project (Ara, IIRC) for a modular phone. But indeed, no-one solved the issue of the weight and thickness. Even if these were solved, the cost would probably be another issue.

alexnklein9• 6 years ago

Hence a laptop/tablet. People carry these in different ways. People are stronger than they think.

whywhywhywhy• 6 years ago

Ara was a really cool project, from what I've read about it by the end the only way to feasibly do it ended up being the CPU/Memory/Modem and even the storage ended up just being on a single unit.

Still love the Tardigrade module idea though, even if it's completely absurd.

http://midnightcommercial.com/project/tardigrade-biome/

Really wish more companies were working towards sustainable tech ideas, thinking about the pile of dead AirPods the average Apple customer will leave behind during their life fills me with anxiety.

turbinerneiter• 6 years ago

Just allow me to change the battery myself without having to unglue the display or some brittle glass back and I'm fine.

alexnklein9• 6 years ago

Exactly.

This is also the best battery life you'll find at under $300, per Ars Technica.

A little chunkiness goes a long way ;)

Alex Klein, Cofounder & CEO, Kano

slezyr2• 6 years ago

The problem is that the tablet is THICK and not that much more modular that any phone. You can replace battery/speaker on the most phones. And storage/memory/CPU and even audio jacks(first things to break off pcb) are soldered.

ajb6• 6 years ago

We've had good feedback about the degree of modularity from schools; it's about making it extremely easy to replace parts that often wear in a heavy use environment, where the thickness is also a net positive.

tonyedgecombe• 6 years ago

People replace their phones after two years because they have reached the end of their contract and they want something shiney and new. Having a modular phone sounds good but I doubt it would make any difference to this.

nanna• 6 years ago

I've got a modular phone. Fairphone 3. I hesitated before buying it because almost all the reviews said something along the lines of it being heavy and twice as expensive as a non-modular equivalent. In the end I bought it, and I couldn't be more satisfied.

There's a discrepancy between the criteria of most people who write reviews about phones (and, of course, hardware in general) and 'regular' users, of which when it comes to phones I very much am one.

Technical reviewers - from Arts Technica to The Guardian - care about how speed, camera quality, form factor etc, compare to other such hardware of a similar price. A regular user who buys a phone every few years considers the device in itself, or at most to their old device. This seems fast, it takes nice photos, it fits in my hand. Plus whether they can afford it. This is not only a different set of criteria but a different kind: difference versus in-itself.

This problematises the supposed 'objectivity' of conventional technical reviews. It allows other criteria, ones which are difficult to quantify and therefore value, to become more important. For me: the value of never having to go through the stress of trying to pry a battery off the screen it's been glued to. The value of not having to order confusing parts from an ebay seller in China. The value of knowing that if something breaks, it'll be no problem to fix it myself. And also: the value of a supply chain which avoids exploitative practices.

I've come to think that tech reviews by speed wonks are inately problematic for this reason.

nicoburns• 6 years ago

I think the main problem with phones is software support. I have a Samsung S7 (released March 2016), which is perfectly fine hardware wise. But I'm going to need to upgrade it soon, because it's no longer getting security updates.

saagarjha• 6 years ago

Cute. Might be a good novelty thing you’d give a child, maybe with Linux installed.

ajb6• 6 years ago

Indeed, our main markets are parents and teachers.

slezyr2• 6 years ago

So much empty space on the pcb/closure, you can fit in few more ARM boards.

alexnklein9• 6 years ago

Looking at upgrades right now - lots of chip suppliers courting us.

Alex Klein, Cofounder & CEO

ajb6• 6 years ago

I work for kano, feel free to ask questions...

z_open• 6 years ago

Can I install Linux?

ajb6• 6 years ago

We've been racing to deliver it for windows; at this point I can't say that linux works, although the hardware should be capable (https://gadgetversus.com/processor/intel-celeron-n4000-geekb...). We are working to validate and make a simple tutorial for beginners.

ajb6• 6 years ago

Unofficially - it appears to work, at least on my sample. Didn't install on the disk as I can't risk bricking it right now, but I can boot Ubuntu 20.04 from a USB stick, connect to wifi, and view threejs.org examples. Can't make any claims as to the timeline on official support.

diminish• 6 years ago

Wish i could install linux.

illuminated• 6 years ago

Is the hardware linux compatible?

ajb6• 6 years ago

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23915085

oakesm9• 6 years ago

Kano originally was an education kit build around a Raspberry Pi [1].

I was a backer of that and the hardware and instruction book you received was great. I played with it for a bit, but I ended up gifting it to a friend who had two young kids. His daughter ended up using it to create same games in Scratch.

Interesting to see that they've moved onto Windows instead now. I wonder if it's so parents are more familiar and able to help with projects on it?

[1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/alexklein/kano-a-comput...

DoingIsLearning• 6 years ago

Interesting to see that they've moved onto Windows instead now. I wonder if it's so parents are more familiar and able to help with projects on it?

That is a possible reason, but the Kano PC kit also seems to be sold from the Microsoft store directly. So it is not unlikely that they made an agreement to sell with windows 10.

It probably is important for MS that Windows has some degree of penetration in this 'edutainment' sector (early user adoption etc.).

zrobotics• 6 years ago

I found it really surprising that, aside from color and what is printed on the key caps, the keyboard appears identical to the keyboard on my surface pro. Which would explain why the article raved about how impressive the keyboard connector is, I have been extremely impressed with mine and have had zero issues with it. My guess is they are sourcing the keyboard from the same supplier as Microsoft, which isn't a bad thing.

However, the extremely thin typecover doesn't feel that out of place on the surface, but it looks kind of strange attached to this very chunky Kano computer.

nelsonic• 6 years ago

Microsoft must have made them an offer they couldn't refuse. The Raspberry Pi based Kano Kit was great and kids loved it!

alexnklein9• 6 years ago

Thank you so much.

squeezingswirls• 6 years ago

You might be interested in https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/745629624/cutiepi-raspb...

whoopdedo• 6 years ago

Why does Ars insist that this is a Chromebook competitor? I think it shows a blindspot and cultural gap that they appear to be unaware that low-end PCs exist. At Walmart.com right now I can filter for Windows laptops between $200-$399 and get models such as the Lenovo ideapad S145 with a i3-1005G1, or ASUS VivoBook with Ryzen 3 3200U, or the closest competitor to Kano, a HP Stream with the same Celeron and eMMC storage for only $219. They even benchmarked against a Dell 15-3573 but borrowed the performance measurements from Geekbench instead of running the test themselves.

alexnklein9• 6 years ago

Think it's a shame that such a privacy-last and openness-last machine as the Chromebook is the "standard" for kids and classrooms.

Windows isn't perfect, but it has the broadest ecosystem of applications in the world, and is far more manipulable than Chrome or iOS. Far more.

ChrisLTD• 6 years ago

The openness of Windows is why it’s not suitable for school environments or even many professional environments. ChromeOS is hard to break, and even if you did, it’s a 5 minute process to restore it to a workable state.

With that said, I hope that future tinkerers find a way to get their hands on Windows or Mac computers at home or in computer literacy labs.

heresie-dabord• 6 years ago

Think it's a shame that [...] the Chromebook is the "standard" for kids and classrooms.

Chromebooks are cheap to buy and maintain, that's why they are in classrooms.

Whatever the $OS, we don't #teach# privacy. In fact, privacy and critical thinking are the subjects that we teach #worse# than math.

Although Chromebooks are GOOGware, you can make them better by switching to dev mode and installing SeaBIOS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SeaBIOS). I boot Debian Linux on a CB with premium hardware. Cheapest "ultrabook" that you get, and with Firefox DoH and ESNI, you bleed less into the surveillance system.

trekrich2• 6 years ago

This is great for kids to learn about technology, one you have windows on it. They could then install scratch https://scratch.mit.edu/about then move onto Python. Linux would be a good alternative OS to go on it as well.

alexnklein9• 6 years ago

Check out the real reactions of kids opening it and using it, versus standard HP/Dell/Lenovo ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIXPEPu3Y6Y

trekrich2• 6 years ago

one of the comments is brutal if you are HP. Didnt Grandad have one of these? All the money that HP spends on marketing and they are the grandads laptop!

pbhjpbhj• 6 years ago

Although the process started out very fast indeed, a couple of minutes in, the disk's write performance fell off a cliff, which you can see in the radically decreased performance graph above. //

AIUI slow deletion is an MS Windows thing.

A partial solution is offered here, https://superuser.com/questions/76906/deleting-large-amount-... -- command line deletion of files with output to 'nul' followed by pruning of directory trees is reportedly 3x faster.

mrjin• 6 years ago

I would stay away from Kano as far as I can. Bought a Kano Pixel kit earlier which does not go with the description on official web site. Did some research my self, and it turned out I was not alone, obviously Kano changed the design after crowd-funding finished but with out changing the description. Obvious misleading, but that was not the end of the story. A couple of days later, I could not tell exactly but definitely less than 1 week, the battery slot came off the board. Whaaaaat? I decided to take a closer look at the board and I was amazed to find out: 1. The battery contacts and the battery slot case were two different component, and the battery slot case was glue to the board using some crappy glue which came off automatically. 2. The potentiometer which was supposed to be soldered on the board was standing on its feet and those anchor points meant to be soldered on the board were dangling there as they need it to be vertically mounted to the board. That's more than enough to say that Pixel kit was my very first and last Kano product. It simply too much cutting corners stuff.

alexnklein9• 6 years ago

I apologize on behalf of the company for this.

It sounds like you received a version that was manufactured by a bad supplier, one we've moved away from.

Let me know if we can offer you something new and fresh to make up for the fumble here. Happy to give you anything from our current line. You will be impressed and overjoyed.

Alex Klein, Cofounder & CEO, Kano

alexnklein9• 6 years ago

I'm Alex, the company's founder and CEO.

Here's us talking about the product and the Microsoft partnership on TV: https://www.instagram.com/stories/alexnklein/235848341696754...

You can reach out to me directly at alex at kano dot me

Alex

rmrfstar• 6 years ago

What's the deal with the firmware? Will it run coreboot without a hassle?

monkeycantype2• 6 years ago

I bought three of these as gifts we had a pretty good experience with the hardware, but the social features integrated into the operating system disappointed me. my 6 year old daughter was getting harassed by another user. Everything she was saving was getting posted to a social forum, a user was sending her messages about everything she did, there was no way to block the messages, except to disconnect from all the online features that included all the educational content.

The Kano teams response at the time was was: 'The design of Kano world sort of mimics Twitter, which means that shares are open to comment by the Kano World community. ... comment deleting is disabled on it is because there have been cases where a lot of users were excluded and bullied by having their comments deleted' I think this is an unsatisfactory unsophisticated response for a product aimed at children

Perhaps this is now improved?

Kano redesigned their online features several times, and my kids lost all their work and lost interest. But not until they had completed the learn to use the terminal adventure, which led to us playing zork.

mkatx• 6 years ago

Are they Children's Online Privacy Protection Act compliant? And if they are compliant, are you saying their product is unusable if you refuse consent?

I would think their design mimicking Twitter would put them under COPPA.

monkeycantype2• 6 years ago

I have no idea if they are compliant, I was a fairly early user and I don't know how much their software has evolved. At the time the education content they curated was online, and you needed to be logged in to progress and unlock content.

This content is a key part of their product, the whole point of the Kano is that it is a carefully prepared experience from the moment you hold the box, until you're writing bash scripts.

The interface would prompt you to post your work, and the way that choice was integrated, even if it wasn't mandatory, it seemed as if was the only way to save your work.

Once it was posted it was publicly available, and anyone with a Kano login could comment. If my daughter was logged in using the Kano she would be notified of the message. There did not seem to be any way to set any privacy controls, given that I asked Kano specifically about this I'm sure they would have let me know.

I confess I have a low tolerance for hype, and as a result my communication with the Kano team was a little bumpy. I was genuinely disappointed with aspects of their product. I think a more thoughtful self critical culture would have addressed what I believe were glaring problems. Overall I appreciate what they do and I bought three.

tlear• 6 years ago

I have given the Raspberry Pi versions to my niece and nephew. They like it. Social features are mostly annoying but actual system and messing around in mine craft was a blast.

I hope they keep doing stuff with P and Linux, so once my kids are older I will get them one

jshaqaw• 6 years ago

We got a Kano touchscreen Pi model last holiday season. It lasted maybe 3-4 months before totally falling apart and the power system dying. I wanted to like this company and their vision so I hope they have fixed the build quality.

intpx• 6 years ago

As a former k-12 edtech practitioner-- these are terrible as a CB replacement. There are 6 reasons the CB has market dominance 1. dirt cheap 2. cattle not pets 3. manageable 4. google apps integration 5. available in pretty rugged form factors 6. pretty boring, not an attractive nuisance for poking and prodding

these things run windows, which in and of itself gives substantially more nooks and crannies to poke at. the hardware is all modular and accessible and losable

from a technology education perspective, these look amazing. but the majority of technology in education is and should be about as interesting as a pencil.

teleforce• 6 years ago

Another similar concept is by CrowPi initiative but it is based on ARM not Intel [1].

Their second version CrowPi 2 allows the use of any Raspberry Pi in a more laptop like hardware shell with 11.6" display. They also offering many sensors for additional IoT and hardware interfacing exercises. Currently they are on Kickstarter and more than 1600% funded [2][3].

[1]http://linuxgizmos.com/hackable-crowpi2-steam-education-lapt... [2]https://www.elecrow.com/ [3]https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/elecrow/crowpi2-steam-e...

Hands-on: The $300 Kano PC, a “build-it-yourself” Chromebook competitor

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