Litl Easel Shows Up On FCC

Tech bloggers at Engadget have dug up a new netbook that is about to make a splash on the market with a new fangled OS running on a cute looking portable. The company behind the device and the custom OS has been hitherto unknown and the promise they are making is quite daring indeed.

The Easel by Litl is a new netbook device that will run a custom OS that is also designed by the company. The company’s aim is to make the netbook as family-friendly as possible. By that they do not mean censorship a la child browsers. What they mean is that the device will be easy enough to be used by everybody in the family – from the youngest to the oldest members of the family.

The main focus is the OS here, which is designed like a pack of cards with color codes representing different categories. There are three colors working here – blue, white and black. The blue cards represent things that are permanent on the machine, like settings, network, security, etc. The white cards represent Internet things. So you have firefox, probably some instant messenger client, etc. The black cards are like widgets. So you can have diverse things like weather apps, calculators etc.

The focus is clearly on the basic use and getting online. Social networking and social media integration might also be there, although such features are not explicitly mentioned.

The netbooks looks nice and friendly with rounded edges and chunky buttons. The main concern is that it might turn into a vaporware. Many companies before Litl have promised to completely change the way you interact with your computer but no one has been able to deliver something that really made people take a break from the Windows or Mac OS routine and switch to the system. I am not mentioning Linux because it sounds like the OS is based on Linux and all Linux OS’ heavily borrow from both the major OS’ mentioned.

Update: Litl has release this netbook on the 4th of November and they are calling it the Webbook. Details in a separate post.