[Bluerise]

> A9 core rather than the virtualization-ready A15? (I'd rather have a 64-bit ARM but those are still a ways out)

There aren't really many choices. Samsung has A15 cores, but it's probably hard to get and there's _no_ documentation. The same for Nvidia Tegra. Not sure how easy it's to get OMAP5, and how expensive.

The i.MX6 SoC is probably the developer friendliest one, has very good documentation, and it has support for lots of stuff.

> 100 Mbit Ethernet in the Year Of Our Lord Two Thousand Fourteen?

Read carefully. One of those ports is 1Gbit (due to SoC limitations only 480Mbps though). The other one seems to be connected via USB 2.0. One could have put an Intel PCIe Gigabit Ethernet chip on the board, but the PCIe slot is probably better used for WiFi.

It's pricy, but I don't think they are able to produce them for fewer money, like HP/Samsung with their $400 Chromebooks.