Sneak Peak: 3Com's New Audrey

neildogg writes "I had a second while 3Com's new Ergo site was up to save some of the images and screenshots from their new Web pad, the Audrey. I have put them up as a mirror at my site with features and specs as well, straight from the horse's mouth. Enjoy." Apparently the pics were up for just a couple of minutes, and then replaced with some boring "Coming Soon" graphics. So screw waiting, check it out.

Comments

Re:Why oh why

[killbill]

I do this now. I have an older sharp Actius (looks like a sony VAIO, less than an inch thick) that sports 64MB of ram and a 266 mmx CPU. Street price for a device like this is probably around $800.

I added a set of wireless ethernet cards (webgear aviator 2.4Ghz) for another $150, and dropped the second card in my basement Red Hat 6.2 server (a 233 AMD system with 64MB ram and 20 gigs or so of hard drive).

Because both run X, I can export whatever graphical apps (including the whole display) across the wireless link whenever I want. It is (as you describe) very usefull.

Here's the rub. Even though my laptop is reasonably modest in capabilities (you could not buy a machine today with this small a CPU), it still runs for $800 used, and still only displays 800x600 pixels. OK for a laptop, but embarrassing for a desktop. For an XGA laptop, we are talking some serious money. Even assuming you could drop some non-essentials (floppy drive, hard drive, etc), you are still looking at $300 or more just for LCD screen, not to mention keyboard, glidepad, cpu, memory, etc.

That's why all these cheap internet appliances have a custom dedicated UI, to keep them cheap. Any kind of usable generalized access device for a desktop system is either going to be more expensive then your desktop (because of the more expensive portable components), or so inferior in capability as to be useless.

The displays are really the rub right now... it is pretty darn cheap to produce a big glass tube, and pretty darn expensive to produce a small LCD. Maybe once the lighte emitting polymers hit the real world this will change, but don't expect it inside of the next two years.

IMHO :)

Why oh why

[OlympicSponsor]

Why can't someone create a webpad that isn't a User Experience? Why not just create a simple "remote display" pad? That way the user can use whatever programs (and processing power) they already have on their desktop (which they have already customized or at least gotten used to).

The only answer I can think of is: distance. If it's just a remote display, you can't tote it around outside the house. I have two responses:

1) So what? It would still be a useful product--wireless will get you pretty far (the yard and maybe even next door).

2) Ubiquitous wireless: People say how great it would be if they could be "always on" but never mention the problems of synching up your palm with your car with your phone with your desktop. So why not integrate all these things: Your house has a "computer center" (a regular desktop would do) and all your remote devices are just displays from that center. Now synchronization in time (when I switch devies) AND in space (when I'm using device A and wifey is using device B) is automatic.

Of course, given that only Linux (with it's multi-user, multi-processing, remote display-enabled X server) is well-placed to provide this need is just a plus...
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More info at palmstation

[killbill]

You can go to palmstation ( http://www.palmstation.com ) for more information, including more links to complete pages.

There has been discussion there about these links all week.