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Low power laptops are a dime a dozen these days (OK, not quite, but you can pick up a refurbished HP Mini 311 for just $170). But looking for something even lower power, one developer decided to take an Amazon Kindle and a Raspberry Pi on a recent trip.

And he used them together like a mobile computer.

The Kindle has an E Ink display which only uses power when the screen is refreshed. The Raspberry Pi is a tiny, inexpensive computer with a 700 MHz ARM Cortex-A8 processor.

In order to use the two together, you need to jailbreak the Kindle, install a terminal emulator, and remotely login to the Raspberry Pi. Things get a bit trickier if you want to hook up an external keyboard rather than using the thumb keyboard built into the Kindle.

The whole setup may not be the most useful — it involves running a bunch of cables from device to device, having a power source handy, and relying on a screen with a slow refresh hell.

But it’s geeky as heck, and it’s pretty cool that it’s even possible.

You can find more details at ponnuki.net.

via Hacker News