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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."
Permalink here: http://www.baard.com/archives/2003_05.html#000071
It's tightly integrated, I carry it around with me all the time, I never lose it and it's never crashed yet. It doesn't cost a thing and it comes as standard.
It's called a "brain".
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
This already exists, more or less, in the form of the Toshiba HopBit. And I think that Toshiba's smarter than Intel in positioning their personal server as an accessory for PDA's rather than as a replacement for them. A box with no screen doesn't have very much sex appeal, and people like to be able to access information on the go, so people will probably buy these things mostly to serve as video storage for their Tungsten T's and iPaqs.
According to the article, this "box" has both Bluetooth and 802.11 interfaces. You walk up to any PC that supports these technologies and can access your box.
I imagine that, alternatively, you could use a Bluetooth keyboard, speakers, etc. and display? to use this.
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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.
This is typical /. misreading of the article. It's designed as a server... something that provides background services to the user.
Now combined with various IO devices it may match the functionality of a handheld. Here is the ubicomp 2002 paper about it.
Intel is too late. People have been serving themselves with their hands in their pockets for AGES!
I see this more like addition, or update (if it's done right, if it's NOT done right I see it as paperweight), than replacement.
Sure, it would come handy to automatically have your portable computing device wirelessly "hijack" vastly superior input and output capabilities of bigger computer whenever you're in position to use one, but I'm not convinced web server is good enough for GUI of such device.
And it would be neat for it to still have screen and input device of its own (they would be turned off for power saving most of the time), for use where there just are no desktop systems for borrowing, in such situation, this system is 100% useless.
Intel is developing wireless, pocket-sized personal server that may replace laptops and PDAs altogether.
The personal server mounts on any PC that can recognize wireless devices: "Any computer becomes your computer," said Want.
Ok, I'm a little confused, are they saying that this will replace laptops and PDAs altogether or are they saying that this is merely a more flexible means of storage that can be accessed from other PCs or PDAs?
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Sounds like fun!!!!!
3) Killer of that which is held in the hand.
As a male, I find this interpretation somewhat frightening.
In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
since the link is horribly /.'d already, this has a lot of detailed info:
Intel persional server PDF
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.
What's to stop someone from walking by with a laptop, and gaining access to all your data?
What kind of security features/ecryption would be implemented on this device? There have been enough flaws oncovered with WEP that this sounds like a bad idea to me. ANY computer with 802.11 access being able to connect to my portable hard drive? And how would I know since there isn't even a display?
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
She definitely has some I/O capabilities, though :p
In what way exactly is wireless communication not I/O?
I read "no i/o" and thought, well, bricks don't have i/o either... so what?
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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.
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Looks like a pen. Writes like a pen.
But it's not a pen. It contains 256 MB (or so) of flash, which is shared via bluetooth. A 10cm high gain antenna is hidden within the length of the pen itself, and powered by a single AAA battery. Walk by an enabled PC, optionally type in a password, and all your documents, your keyring, etc. are available.
Finally, as an added bonus, when you write on paper (or anything for that matter), you can choose to record your scribbles on the flash drive. Tiny gyroscopic sensors determine the motion of the pen across the page, and a pressure sensor determines whether the pen is against a writing surface. Each time you expose the ball point head it creates a new file, and when you retract it, it closes it. You can tell which file is which by the timestamps.
THAT would kick ass. And as embedded logic gets more powerful, you could have a personal web/email/jabber server running in there too.
A wireless iPod sounds nifty, but where's the innovation people?
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
Except you set it up once and can use it anywhere.
ANYWHERE.
Desktop, mobile, PDA, Cell phone, you name it. You're customized and ready to go, your OS and programs follow you ( The simpler ones run on the Xscale processor, the wireless link is just for shared data and I0 / screen updates, the more complex platforms get streamed boot data then program data, like your desktop )
We've been bitching at Intel for years for not making things portable enough, instead concentrating on bigger, hotter power hungry desktop chips.
Now Intel looks to be making a move to make everyone's standard data server run on a capable but not overkill Xscale.
Sure, there are some specialized things it can't process. Want to play a game? Mosey over to the desktop, your Xscale will stream the game files over in a few seconds, and while you play, fully configured with your key. Want to crunch a new movie into Divx or your favorite video codec? Your desktop will encode it and download it to the server in real time. Your desktop probably won't even have a hard disk, everything including the OS should be streamed from your handheld server.
* The key point here is this can be used as a seamless virtual session device ( ala Citrix ) plus fileserver plus desktop companion. Remote GUI sessions have always had problems catching on because the software is expensive and they require solid bandwidth. This has neither problem, and does more, so it's not dedicated hardware you're plunking down for. The battery life could be better, true, but for first generation >4 hours is impressive.
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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.
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.
Makes for a whole bunch of interesting possibilites...
How long before someone develops a piece of software that lets you swap files with other such devices in the area automatically, maybe even search for specific files on other's shares?
Turn up to a lecture and just by being there you get a copy of the audio and notes streamed to your personal server.
Add an access mechanism to a television/home entertainment system. Boom, instant portable TIVO!
What's wrong with this picture? Why do I need to carry around this box? Why do I want to carry around data? That's what the Internet is for.
Remember Java-enabled jewelry with onboard crypto? The RSA "fob" ID device? Dallas Semiconductor buttons? Same functional capabilities, less to carry. All you really need is an ID device.
Ubiquitous computing looks more like "hurry up and find something that wastes compute power before we have to have another layoff". They need some better ideas over there.
Bullshit. English came by way of the people living roughly what is now western Germany and the northeastern part of the Netherlands. The French influence came by the Norman invasion of England, which formed Middle English (the Normans spoke an old French variant). Modern English was then further influenced by incorporating Latin and Greek during the industrial revolution.
American English is a further derivative of EARLY Modern English influenced heavily by Spanish, Native American, and to a much lesser extent French.
So do you actually know some Etruscan or are you a hypocrite?
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