Slashdot Mirror
Intel's 'Personal Server': The Handheld Killer?
markbaard writes "Intel is developing a wireless, pocket-sized personal server that may replace laptops and PDAs altogether. The 'personal server,' which is being developed at Intel Research by ubiquitous computing wizard Roy Want, is the size of a deck of cards, half the weight of an iPaq, and has no i/o, no screen, and no peripherals. The device never leaves its user's pocket or handbag. Pictures of the personal server and the story are at baard.com."
Good point. Maybe the user interface is separate from the device. Think of the device as being attatched to you like a watch, with a thinner client in your wallet or something.
Can someone explain how a "wireless harddrive" that you need a computer to access will replace PDAs? I mean, you can't sit on the train and organize your day with it?
it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
I fail to see how this replaces the functionality of my Zaurus. Sure, its a cool toy which has plenty of uses in its own right. But how am I going to be able to play kbill on the bus with this? I use my pda for far more than document storage. Its basically the next generation of those USB storage dongles isnt it?
For those of you who didn't RTFA: This is essentially a little hard drive which rides around in your backpack (note: I don't carry a backpack all the time; do you?) and can connect, wirelessly, to any machine you access which recognizes wireless devices. Basically, as far as I can tell, this has the same net effect as having a home directory on an NFS server someplace and using it to save your settings as you move from machine to machine.
Again: Bo-ring.
When I saw "personal server, no IO", I was hoping this would be a manifestation of the keystone portion of my idea for a personal wireless network Your devices would all notice one another, and the width of functionality of any given device would be dependant on what you were carrying. If you we out taking pictures with your digicam and were carrying a server, the images would be transfered to the (presumably very expansive) drive in the server. If you had your cell phone, the images would be sent off to your home computer, as well.
Repeat en masse. PDAs display and do I/O, headphones play music and the real work is taken care of automagically behind the scenes in some secure fashion. You'd effectively allow the elimination of multi-use devices which don't do any job very well by allowing your devices to play their strong points, and you could customize your loadout just in what you grab in the morning when you're loading your pockets.
Anyhow, this ain't it, and that's disappointing -- somebody must have hit my verbosity flag today...
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
I had another take on this...
I have broadband and ssh.
Leave the server at home. There is a thing called "the internet" that does this well already.
What's to stop someone from walking by with a laptop, and gaining access to all your data?
Even better, imagine if you could break into several of these things and then launch a series of DDoS attacks to nearby wireless devices and play hell with their communicationg >:)
:D ( Ack, I said too much :P )
Let the fun begin
Join the TWIT army now!
Build and INVENTED by Steve Mann at the University of Toronto.
It is a companion to the wearable computer. Built on a dimm pc and used a laptop hard drive to far surpass this things sotrage capacity, and used 802.11 PCMCIA card for wireless access.
Oh and it ran linux too so you aren't stuck with some crap that they dish out.
Intel seems to have a good idea with this; however, I don't think it will cost effective to implement it. It will be like alternative fuel source cars - they will have to built a system to use it. Assuming they use WiFi to connect it to a computer so it "is your computer," that would mean that most computers could not connect to it without an purchase seems how a majority of the population don't even have their computers networked, much less wirelessly. Furthermore, it can't replace a PDA, atleast not yet, because you have to have a computer to use it; you can't use it while you are walking down the street. I think it would work great if they integrated some sort of display, even if it is crude, so you can use it like a PDA and still maintain the personal server aspect of it so it can be used to make any pc or laptop your own
Basically it's a hard drive and a processor in your pocket. It connects wirelessly to "normal" computers. So I can carry my mp3s, my videos, my schedule, and all that crap around with me in a little box. But if I want to get at it I have to connect to the little box from a "real" computer.
You know what's better than that? Just set up a "real" computer at home. Then use VNC, ssh, a web server, sftp, or any of that type of stuff. Then, wa-la you have the same exact thing. Only now, you don't have to carry anything around with you. It just sits on your desk at home, where it always is.
The problem isn't that you can't get to your stuff when you're out of the house. The problem is that you can't get to a computer. What I'd like to see is a super super thin super small laptop. Screen, keyboard, small processor, bit of ram, sound output of some kind, pointing device and network connectivity through wire or not. The device would pretty much be a vnc box. Turn it in, connect securely to your machine at home. Use your computer from anywhere on earth.
There's a problem with this. If you are on a plane, suck. But vnc uses mad bandwith. So if you don't have broadband it should have a command line only mode, or at least a low bandwith mode, like lbx or something. So that you can make it work by plugging it into the bottom of your cell phone and raising the little antenna.
We don't need the services. Those can be anywhere. The problem is lack of io. Give me just the io devices and a means to connect, and I'll have just one computer. I'm asking for something like viewsonic's wireless monitor, only 10 times better.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Think of the webpad my microsoft thats supposed to kill laptops....
Now think about it. People need a computer they can carry and use. It better have a monitor, drives, keyboard.. and you got a laptop. Can a PDA replace it? No too small a screen and keyboard. Increase the screen and keyboard size and youve got a picturebook. Similar to a laptop but that harddisk needs an upgrade..
So a webpad is something more expensive. People dont need it. Some might buy it. Just like the some who buy PDAs and use it for maybe 2 minutes each day for nothing really important, except maybe games, for which the laptops still the best tool.
So we will continue to see things that their makers will claim will kill the laptop and picturebook and pda and webpad and intel thingy.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Can you stream a DVD quality video from your home box to any place in the world and get a nice picture over VNC? At a reasonable price for the bandwidth? No. This type of device should appeal to the same kind of people who like to have an iPod. Which are, I'm told, a lot.
Of course it's inconvenient if you have to use 'another big machine' to access the device, but that's not a limitation of this device, it's a limitation of other devices if they can't access this server. Imagine having a bluetooth-enabled phone; this already has a little screen and keyboard (or touchscreen). You'll be able to attach a headset and control an MP3-player with voice commands. You'll be able to put a part of your MP3 collection in a 'shared folder', so other people on your bus can also check out your collection, while you listen to theirs and swap some files. And this is not restricted to music...
Oh dear, we'll see more people wanking in the last row of busses again, eek...
but what do i know, i'm just a model.
I read about this on /. a few years ago and I've thought about it ever since. Imagine this, you have a collection of electronic devices (digital watch, a cell phone, a digital camera, gps etc) Each of these has certain services that the other devices could use if they had a simple network (bluetooth) and a simple language to talk with.
You take a photo of something and your camera gets the date/time from your watch and your location from your GPS. Your camera's batteries are low so it uses your cell phone to notify you. You want to change the channel on the TV but can't find the remote so you grab your cell phone.
There is a lot of redunancy in your devices (keypads, displays, speakers, etc) that could removed if you devices talked to each other. Also, there are lots of "dumb" devices that could be made smarter by using your other devices. Your smoke detector could send your phone a message when it's batteries are low.
I see this personal server as the first step towards this. You have a device with a lot of storage and processing capability but no interface. Then you buy other devices, like a digital camera or MP3 player , that have an interface but had limited storage.
The best part is that every device you buy adds value to your network of devices and the devices should be cheaper because you can eliminate lots of redundant parts.
"I have broadband and ssh.
Leave the server at home. There is a thing called "the internet" that does this well already. "
And for the handful of us that like graphics, we have Intel's product..
"Derp de derp."
Once you get home, you pop it into your computer and bam, you've got the same info.
With the wifi you wouldn't even need to pop it into your computer. Leave it in your bag/briefcase, like you do at work, and it'll be accessible through your home network.
People still have a hard time thinking about the possibilities of this technology. Think about how easily data that could be swapped while sitting on a bus, or even stuck in traffic? What about having all your mp3s available to play off your wifi enable car stereo, or even home stereo. All of these are beautiful, but the nicest part is that you never have to interact with it, no cables, no synchronizing (the biggest dissadvantage of current PDAs), just access it like as a networked drive from whatever computer you happen to be around.
It's only a matter of time.
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
..but the world needs pedants..
If this thing had no i/o, as the article claims, it'd be a high tech brick.
Despite the fact that it has no screen, speakers, keyboard, sockets, etc, it DOES have i/o - the wireless connection.
Just being picky.
Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
In and of itself, this device is worthless. Combined with devices you already use, it becomes much, much more useful. Though at the same time, this device is far from revolutionary, it's more evolutionary. A terapin mine does most of this already, albeit with a bigger form factor. Intel's goal is to make this as small as possible, so that it suddenly becomes worthwhile to work with digital media makers to develop single use, efficient devices that make transferring data easier.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
If I were using this to replace my laptop I'd want to connect to it through terminals at my clients' sites as well as public terminals. That's basically why I carry around my laptop now, the PCs on sites where I work never have all the tools and data that I need. It's a great idea, after all I don't need to carry my own monitor and keyboard around and frankly I'm sick of digging around under random desks looking for a free drop.
But the problem here is, do you trust every place that you plug your laptop in currently? Right now you don't have to since the act of plugging in doesn't give anyone access to your data. But I could imagine a situation where an unscrupulous customer or public terminal stole data from this personal server. All they'd need to do is see how you authenticate to it (say, use a keysniffer) and then they're free to grab your data whenever you're in range. I think a simple solution would be to have a button on the device that you would have to press in order to authorize access to it - the password is not enough. It's not foolproof, but it's better than just a password. Until there is some additional security you really wouldn't want to use these things at an untrusted location.
Wow. This sounds awesome. You could run all of your applications on this personal server so that the device with your user interface can be really lightweight... I mean, do we really need a huge hard-drive in every terminal? It just makes sense. You could even let others use your server to run their applications. I can see it now. You'd probably want to run Java on it, and then you could upgrade the low-speed wireless link so that you could connect multiple of these servers together via high-speed wired links. It's almost like the network IS the computer.
Why didn't someone think of this before?
...Which has almost zero security issues, or power issues, will link up with damn near anything, and is a good $100-200 cheaper at the same storage size.
Or, for about 25 cents, burn a CD.
Jon Acheson.
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
That's a great point, except for a few little details that kill it.
1) Where is this data stored online? Microsoft? Slashdot? Geocities? I dunno about you, but I have quite a lot of personal stuff that I might like to access away from home, and so far nobody I trust is offering free gigs of bandwidth and storage.
2) I'm on dialup. Where I live there's not going to be broadband for sometime, if ever. I could travel a few miles to the library and make use of their bandwidth, but that just means carrying along CDs to upload to someplace when I could just as easily carry a "brick" and not have to upload anything at all.
3) Even on dialup I'm behind a personal firewall. Even if you wee dumb enough to trust geocities or Microsoft with your personal info, are you gonna trust them to keep it safe from crackers, hackers and spammers?