Litl Webbook hands-on impressions & engineering videos

Litl should be commended for trying to do something different in the mobile computing space. Their Litl Webbook launched last week, it is a 12-inch device that has a special hinge allowing the display to fold over into “easel mode”. It also has its own Litl operating system with a unique GUI.

Hands-on impressions were few and far between last week, but Crunchgear managed to sit down with CEO John Chuang for a thorough overview of the Webbook. The machine isn’t a netbook par se as it only comes with a 2GB flash drive, however this isn’t too much of an issue as Litl targets the Webbook as an Internet consumption device (hence the name). This involves viewing photos, videos or checking the weather etc.

Litl has created custom interfaces for some websites (Weather Channel, Flickr among tem) that are called “web cards”. Most current sites can be turned into these web cards and viewed in Easel mode. It’s an interesting device, however perhaps the biggest hurdle the Litl Webbook faces is the $699 price point. Although, the company is confident enough in its device to offer “a free two-year unconditional ‘satisfaction guaranteed or your money refunded’ warranty.”

Litl have also released a couple of videos that goes into the thoughts behind the engineering and design process of the device. It talks of how they used a larger slow moving fan, rather than smaller faster moving fan to keep ambient noise to a minimum. It also talks of their dilemmas in battery placement, given the hinge’s need to rotate around.