A Kitchen Computer That's Actually Useful?

twilightzero writes: "I was at the Rochester Area Builders' Home Show (Rochester, MN) today and ran across what looks to be first actually useful and practical computer appliance I've ever seen. Called the iCEBOX, it mounts under your cupboard or sits on your countertop, but I found the under the cupboard model much more attractive. It includes an LCD display on a tilt/swivel mount that locks up out of the way to protect the screen, a DVD drive and with DVD software so you can watch movies or listen to cd's while cooking, cable ready 125 channel tv receiver, and the ability to act as a remote monitor for a camera (as in a baby's room or the front door), useful for all you X-10 owners. But the best touch, IMHO, is the spillproof, shockproof, greaseproof, and washable wireless keyboard that comes with it, an absolute necessity for the kitchen. It also includes a modem and NIC and says it's compatible with any dialup or broadband service that doesn't require the downloading of software (i.e. prodigy yes, AOL no). There's no mention on the website about the hardware or software that it's running but with its name I might assume it's running Windows CE or Pocket PC...not sure though, since it also says it's not compatible with MSN. I'm thinking about redoing my kitchen sometime soon, I might have to put one of these on the list for installation ..."

Comments

please don't buy this.

[perdida]

do we need to watch tv all the time? when we are working with hot things, etc?

I don't like TVs in cars, either. There are times when we shouldn't watch tv.

Yes, there is free enterprise. You have a right to buy this. However, the more people buy it, the more "ubiquitous" having every room wired becomes.

Think about it from your grandkids' perspective: They might have to have a computer in every room of the house for their 18 hour workdays.

Something even more space efficient...

[Magus311X]

1U essentially. would take up less room. has a DVI and DVD too. Exhaust is side mounted too so air can escape pretty easily. Mounts under the cupboard without a problem.

Sleekline 1260

These guys make absolutely bulletproof power supplies too. But take this, throw in a wireless/RF keyboard/mouse combo, and put in a 15" flat panel ($200 now?) and you have something for the kitchen or wherever.

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Re:Something even more space efficient...

[slashdot.org]

Exhaust is side mounted too so air can escape pretty easily

And steam and grease enters with the same amount of ease, I presume.

Re:Unnecessary

[Anonymous Coward]

You wouldn't have the waterproof greaseproof keyboard / remote control though would you?

However I agree with you, the prices are high.

Especially for the under-cabinet device. That is nearly $3000. For a fancy case with speakers and a strange rotatable display. An iMac2 would be a better option in my opinion, and you could watch that you kid does his homework on it whilst you are cooking/fetching beer.

And with all those phone cables, network cables, power cables and the like as well taking up space. Hmmm.

What I'd rather have

[Enry]

If I want to listen to a CD, I'll turn up my amp, or tune into Digitally Imported on my PC and be done with it. What I'd rather have in the kitchen is a recipe server. Something with...say...the Joy of Cooking built in, along with plugins for other recipe books, and the ability to input my own recipes.

So lessee, I'm in the mood for a chicken dish. What recipes have chicken in them?

is it just me?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or does the icebox look like an old 80's style Macintosh Classic?

Re:is it just me?

[DavidRavenMoon]

That was the first thing I thought... a color classic with speakers.

Re:Other Information on iCEBOX

[Anonymous Coward]

You've got to be kidding me. For roughly half the price, you can get an iMac with dvd-rom, 15 inch LCD, weighing 22 lbs, and with much more use in it.

I thought it looked really cool, until the price tag was WAY over what it's worth.

Re:Looks like an old Mac Classic

[HerrNewton]

More like a Color Classic actually....

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_classi c/ stats/mac_colorclassic.html

Another neato feature.

[edunbar93]

would be the option of letting it pick recipes randomly based on the ingredients in the fridge. I think this has already been done on some website or another, just that this would be that much more automatic. :)

Especially useful shortly before payday. :)

Re:What would be really useful in the kitchen

[LoudMusic]

That's an interesting site! Too bad that of the first five or six pages of movies (60 movies), I had only seen eight of them. That doesn't help the system tell me what movies I will like. And someone spent a lot of time putting those movies into a database and including information about them to build cross-referancable data.

It's close to what I was talking about. I live in a small town (population roughly 50,000), but there are three colleges (total of about 45,000 students) and a few large corperations that bring people in from neighboring cities (probably 15,000). So we have lots of resturants for lunch. Basically I thought it would be a cool idea for all the guys in our 'lunch group' to have a database that listed the resturants (in order) that we would like to eat at for lunch with the group. The server would keep track of where each of the individuals had eaten recently, and suggest where they should go next.

• Ordered list of resturants for each individual including last date/time they dined there
• Page to update information, including times the indivudual may have eaten there without the group
• Main page would include a list of everyone in the group with a checkbox next to each name. Before lunch, you check everyone's name that is in your group for the day. The server checks the database, and makes a few suggestions of where to eat that will make everyone happy. Then you tell it which one your group has chosen and it updates all the individuals in the database automagically.

If you have 15 to 20 people that usually group up to go to lunch, and everyone has 20 to 30 resturants in their 'personal favorites' list, I think the system would work quite well.

I thought it was cool, so did everyone else ... but they're too lazy to make such a cool idea happen. Oh well ... loosers.

~LoudMusic