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. "

Comments

Re:Can you imagine...

[JabberWokky]

It's solid A4 paper sized!! Do you put your laptop in your pocket????

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