Balthazar - a Personal Computing Device
One laptop for the new internet.
Secure, fast, inexpensive and sustainable. Pick all three.
BPCD - Balthazar Personal Computing Device is a 13.3" laptop based on RISC-V processor(s) that contains all the hardware and software features and precautions to prevent data-theft and any unwanted 3rd party intrusion into the system.
While being versatile and robust it also strictly follows CC, GNU-GPL, FOSS and EOMA guidelines.
What is all that FOSS and CC and ..? → Glossary
Why yet another laptop?
It is very expensive to buy an “advanced” or a secure laptop and it comes with usually "customised" and mostly proprietary software that bounds a user to a manufacturer, this is where BPCD comes in at the most possible lowest price that should be affordable to everyone - from an individual up to a large institution.
But we have already have inexpensive netbooks, picturebooks, tablets, Chromebooks and alike!
Google, Samsung, Acer, Asus, Dell and the other respective manufacturers already make inexpensive and a lightweight laptops, however they are locked in a certain software and hardware ecosystems and actually offer not too many security features. Also those devices do not work without the internet, so the reputation of such devices is often seen as a "personal data collecting devices", so that doesn't help to create a positive image towards such products.
It is the fact that such devices also appear less flexible towards full FOSS, GNU-GPL and EOMA guidelines that we want to use and set up as another standard for the new internet age.
That ethical standard is not based on a profit, but on protecting and also educating population on how not to engage in a voluntary dissemination of their private data all over the internet, often being used as a bait for large companies that take an advantage and make amazing profits because of such illiterate, unconsciousness and irresponsible behaviour.
BPCD is aimed to inexpensively enable end-user to control all the inputs via physical hardware switches and security dongles, preventing even a remote possibility to have system invaded or spied on by any 3rd party.
I have nothing to hide. Who should be your target group than?
Here are some use cases personas to which such device just might appeal:
1. An average basic internet user that requires some default security and develops a certain awareness on its own data privacy and is friendly-forced upon using the security and encryption through the default usage of the device.
2. Advanced computer users, governmental and public workers that need hardware and software features to prevent an intrusion and are skilled and aware enough, so they can use all the built in hardware and software features and use additional encryption for the prevention of official and personal data-theft protection through secure productivity apps and tools.
3. Educational institutions that will teach online security, privacy and safety. Also that will make use of a device’s connections versatility as in hardware connectivity, as well as in software User Interface and User Experience utilising age-adoptive “Aperture Operating System” and featured secure online in-the-browser Workbench and added to it to find the value in overall physical sturdiness and upgradeability of BPCD.
TLDR; For the children age 9-99.
Ohh, so yet another OLPC thingy I can see upcoming, or what...?
OLPC is dead. As a duck. It was slow, underpowered, overdesigned and pretentious.
Also it was not available to everyone and it was a non-intentional neo-colonial tool to be used and abused by one and only - Microsoft™ at the end. Cudos to all people who made it and maintained it so long and out of love for reaching out with otherwise good intention on educating children, but they missed to recognise that target is to be worldwide and all of them, not just patronising African and other developing nations, as they did at the beginning, so...no cigar.
We want to enable to use and support low-income individuals and communities all over the planet, while carefully partnering with “humaine” and ethical corporations that will buy Balthazars from us first and then give away, rent or borrow them to those who are unable to afford it.
Or, alternatively they can build their own curriculum around Balthazar ecosystem.
We loosely partner with LEGO® Education, Google Education, various charities, foundations and EU initiatives, so we hope they can deliver expected behaviour and a practice.
So, Balthazar is NOT OLPC-alike, but it does follow some of OLPC product design innovations and features, adopted and improved for today’s performance requirements focusing on privacy, safety and personal data protection and encrypted shared data or a retention of the same in its own “cloud”.
But... A "Cloud" is free, cool, useful and hype.
Remember - a “Cloud” is just other people’s or corporations’ computers that store your data when you do "share" your stuff with them.
You do not really read small text, do you?
So, why should my child want one?
Education being a very important issue today all over the planet is yet another field where BPCD could make an impact. New generations need to learn and understand the importance of being secure and how to care about their personal data, moreover additional connectors and IO’s also enable them to tinker and create their own devices or program LEGO sensors and actuators while retractable GPIO module, enables them in controlling, testing and programming sensors, actuators and other electronic devices and gadgets from literally every other manufacturer. (Matrix, VeX, Arduino etc.)
Want to know more?
Please read the specifications and features.
