That's pretty amazing, considering a decent laptop with a screen as large as 15 inches, more memory than in an Atrix 4G phone, a hard drive with much more hard disk storage than the phone's internal/external flash, and a faster processor could be bought new for that price. That doesn't include $800+ (assuming new) for an unlocked Atrix 4G or similar phone (or over $2,600 on a typical 24-month minimum smart-phone up-front subsidized purchase plan) needed to make the lapdock work. I suspect most lapdocks were purchased by business users who could care less what the price was, since their enterprise was paying for them and writing off the cost, and it was the toy to have.
I haven't personally seen an Atrix lapdock and I understand it has an embedded Linux that runs Firefox 3.6 in addition to displaying the phone's screen content via HDMI output (I have no idea what the internal hardware is supporting it). However, Firefox is reportedly only accessible when an Android phone is connected - i.e., the embedded Linux isn't able to (or is crippled from) operating the lapdock independently (e.g., running Firefox without a phone connected). Since the Pi obviously can access the USB ports, keyboard, and trackpad, it's curious (but, fortunate) that there isn't any interference between the Pi and the lapdock's Linux instance. I suppose I need to go look for technical teardown/hack pages to find out how the lapdock actually works and what, if anything, might be possible to do with the Linux instance vis-a-vis the Pi.
For now, yet-another waiting game ensues, but, for less than a week, thankfully, in this case!
).
