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Incredible Shrinking PC
Lawrence_Bird writes "Reuters is reporting that IBM is set to announce next week a
prototype
PC called a 'metapad' 5"x3"x0.75". 128Mb Ram, 10GB, and an 800 Mhz cpu.
Understand this is a module that can be plugged into other devices,
such as a LCD screen or docking station. "
MetaSearch=Search a set of search engines
MetaModerate=Moderate a set of Moderations
MetaPad=Pad a set of Pads???!!
Can 'Meta' prefix a Noun, rather than a Verb?
With a little device like this, I could move my "Computer" from home to work, have the laptop be a "dock" for the computer.
Taking it one step further, an industry standard device could allow one to buy laptops as a chassis with engine. I could buy the Thinkpad X's chassis and plop in a transmeta computing module to get 2x the battery life.
Alex
Finally, a mainstream computer both small and fast enough to fit in a car.
I am looking forward to watching movies and listening to the music I want to in the car, and it is removable and can have (Maybe) a cdrom so I can watch even more movies!
This would be perfect for health care providers. I develop software for hospitals and using these devices will make doctors, nurses, patients level of care quicker and more reliable. My company is using iPaq's / Palm PDA's currently and looking into the Viewsonic SuperPDA for Tablet based entry.
So in short it will have viable use.
Actually, it's 3x5, i.e., the size of a small stack of 3x5 cards. It'll fit in a pocket, but more importantly, will fit in most organizers/office supply holders. It's a known format.
And to the person who said "imagine tryng to type on this thing?" - Well, imagine trying to type on a Pentium chip!!! Because that's what this basically is - only mugh higher level. It's the processor and storage in a modular block. Realistically, I'd love to see it become standardized and OSes support it - pop one into a "empty" laptop, and you have your data. Pop one into a "empty" desktop, and you have it there - or pop two in, and you've got twice the diskspace (or maybe just mirrored), and twice the processor power. Is your game too slow? Pop in two more.
As stupid as it is, the phrase: "Can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of these" almost makes sense. Well, not Beowulf, per se, but personal clustering on a shared bus.
HAHAHHAHA! I just realized - after 25 friggin years of moving towards PCs and peer to peer, we may be not only be going back to minis and mainframes storing data (accessable via a wireless, pervasive network), we *may* just go back to a neutral backplane - can you say "S-100 bus"? Hehehhee....
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Why the hell would you want to plug it into a base station? Haven't they heard of Bluetooth? Simply walk up to a screen/mouse/keyboard station, pair the device and of you go. This is the medium term future of computing, one small device that holds all that you currently have on your local machine with the ability to pick it up and walk away with it, just like todays PDA's. Of course it will be full featured when linked with the right I/O devices unlike todays PDA's.
Longer term it should all be networked but since the networks don't cover everywhere we need to be and are not fast enough yet this isn't fessible.
[Please type your sig here.]
This is *exactly* what I want for a wearable. Add a small HUD or something, and you've got:
* MP3 player
* media player for the living room
* toss it in my backpack and hook up to helmetcam for sweet footage of skiing through trees or mountain biking at Moab
* driving along, check GPS/map w/o having stupid laptop plugged into cigarette lighter sliding around the passenger seat
This is where it will be...IBM is leading the way...
I hope its running a lite version of XP. 1.25GB isn't too much space.
this would make a sweet little MP3/DVD player though if you could attach IDE/USB devices.
i just hope i don't have to take my work home with me every night.
THERE IS NO DATA. THERE IS O
The best thing would be a non-forgetting memory card with ca. 60GB of static RAM (which doesn't lose its data when power is cut off).
:-)
The computers would host this card (think of flat screens with slots in the side) plus the CPU and the peripherals (monitor, keyboard, mouse, printer, modem, whatever). So the bit-storage would be basically separate from the host unit and replaceable while the machine is running.
There would be no need for hard disks anymore. If you'd want new data for a program (create a new document, save it, whatever), all you'd do is malloc() it, no need for files or anything. The static memory would store it all. No file systems, just memory managers (associating "filenames" and "folders" with handles of allocated memory blocks)
The task states would be stored on the memory card, too, so if you'd just remove the card from the computer, all programs would be left as they were, if you'd insert it into other computer, the memory would be automatically appear in the address space of the CPU and all programs would continue where they were left off. (the host would provide the power to drive the bits on the storage
Hope I'll see this happen...