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Nimble V5 - The OQO Killer?
prostoalex writes "OQO was supposed to be a big advance in the personal computing field, but, alas, made it quick to vaporware list. Now another company will try its luck with a mini-mini-PC. The Register, PC World and MSNBC are all running paragraph-long blurbs about pocket-size Nimble V5 from Nimble Microsystems. The specs are - VIA 733 MHz, 128 DDR266, 30 GB HDD, USB 2.0, PCMCIA, no display, $699, supposed to ship this fall. Full specification available from company's Web site."
the intended market seems to be people who want to do video conferencing on the go. though i'm not too sure how big the market for that is
YOU SUCK BALLS!
Getting rid of PCI/AGP slots only help with size, but it does nothing for less power required and less heat. By not having as much heat, your CPU can potentially run fanless, taking a lot of bulk out of the PC. Perhaps you can't think of a reason you need one, but that doesn't mean someone else doesn't.
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Simple. They want or need one. Supply and demand baby.
Where would you use one? For say, an entertainment centre... or in a studio (1 room apt) or other tight spaces. I don't like having 4 full size computers under my desk, PLUS my mac. Getting 4 of these would free up MUCHO space.
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"I'm not bright. Big words confuse me. But Wanda loves me and that should be enough for you." - Cosmo
How is this supposed to be an OQO killer? Granted, I can't get through to the site- it's 'dotted. However, I've seen the specs as posted here, and to me- as a person who really wants an OQO bad- it doesn't look like it'd replace the OQO.
Mostly, this thing doesn't have a display. Or touch screen. Making it a portable computer, but not a palmtop. The OQO is cool for a number of reasons, but one of them is that it is a real and quite fast machine in the form factor of a PDA. Yet, it can be "converted" into a real desktop or real laptop using docking stations. With an OQO, you can slip it into the docking station and expand it with a new AGP video card or new PCI cards. This is just a low-lower mini-ATX board. Nothing that special, although I'm sure there are some folks who would find the V5 useful.
I mean, this Nimble thing doesn't even run on a battery. It is very portable, in that it's small enough to take your office machine to and from home, keeping monitor, keyboard, etc at each location.
The only thing I've seen that comes close to being an OQO killer- but is just as much vaporware- is the MCC, or the Mobile Computer Core. Like the OQO, you can slip it into a number of "docks," making it a PDA, a notebook, or a desktop. I'd rather have the MCC's PDA over an OQO because it has a bigger screen but without being too big, but such dreaming is worthless when no one will make one of these...
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
I don't understand why everybody is obsessed with On-the-go everything. We need cell phones because we don't want to have to find a payphone. We need palmtops and laptops because we don't want to wait until we get to our office or our house to work. We need fast food because restaurants take too long.
We are surrounded by so much convenience... but are our lives really so bad that we couldn't live without these things, or are we just impatient?
Hush Tech makes a far better tiny computer that is also completely silent (except when using the DVD/CD drive). It looks allot nicer too, when used as a set-top box. The thing is powerful enough to be a DIVX/MP3 player, but it can also double as a TiVo or emulation based console gaming system.
If you just want a small, light, portable PC, I think something like the Hush PC is a better choice.
If you want something smaller, you can get systems that fit into a drive bay here.
Yellow dog Linux has had similarly sized Ultra small machines called the "briQ" for a long time now.
The only real difference here is that this "Nimble" thing is x86 compatible. whoop-tee doo.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
I'm in the market for a tiny computer, does anyone know how this compares to Cappuccino PCs?
[o]_O
It's okay, but unless you're talking about their 1GHz version, the performance is mediocre at best. The 733 MHz CPU compares favoribly on integer operations when compared to an equivalently clocked Celeron (About 1.25 times faster on average- mostly due to the higher FSB...) but is only about half as good as a Celeron on floating point operations. This is because the FPU is underclocked on all but the Nehemiah cores (1GHz and above...) by half the clock speed of the CPU.
The power consumption's great, but you need to be aware of the tradeoffs for that reduction in power- especially in the case of the earlier C3 cores. You want to use this as a set-top box machine or maybe as a home theatre PC if you're not planning on doing majorly strenuous things with it. As a business PC, it will do okay so long as you're doing something like worprocessing as your predominant task. Spreadsheets are going to drag miserably with this machine offering. A Nehemiah core machine would present itself well in the context of an office PC and while their price is MUCH higher than it ought to be for such a machine.
Fry's sells the 1GHz motherboards for about $140, the memory would set you back $60-120 depending on how much, a hard disk will set you back another $50-120 depending on what you bought, the special case for the new form factor motherboard will set you back $60-80.
So, doing the math, $310 is the base price for a better machine in a similar size factor.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
My gut sense is that it is just a mini-itx mb in a small case. There are plenty of tiny PCs available already that are powered off of 110. As far as being inovative or interesting, hardly, it's just another offshore vendor trying to tart up their badge engineered crap.
I was (am?) really looking forward to the OQO. As far as I'm concerned the perfect portable PC is about the size and weight of an eBook, has no keyboard but operates portably via touch screen kbd or sytus. Has no cdrom/floppy internal, but does have compact flash slot(s). And, has a very cheap dock that you can plug a kbd/mouse into.
Portably, you should be able to use it as an mp3 player with minimal need for the display/had drive to conserve power. I also want a couple of dedicated buttons ergonomically placed so I can use it easily as an eBook.
It must be able to run linux. That is, I would care if you could only use its portable features only with windows (xp/ce/whatever) so long as you could dual boot it into linux once it's in the cradle. When you set it in the dock you can either use it horizontally or vertically and the screen automatically flips its orientation.
As a student this seems about perfect. I can take notes in class using it like a tablet. I can plop it in the cradle at work and use it horizantally for most stuff, or pop it around vertically for word processing. You could limit resolution to 600x800, or 800x600 if it kept the cost down. I can throw the thing in my back pack and use it as an mp3 player when I'm on the go. I can pop it out and use it as a day planner/address book.
When I get home, I pop it in the cradle at home and it takes very little space on my desk.
The current crop of handhelds are too small. Their screens are too small and they don't have hard drives. Laptops are too big and fragile. I have an iBook but it's more screen than I really need in most situations where I need portablility, and, it weighs too much for my book bag.
It should be about 2.5 to 3 lbs at the most, about 5x7x1 to 6x8x1.5 inches and have something on the order of 4+ hours of battery life with the ideal goal being 12+ hours of mixed use life.
I'm willing to give up a lot of performance for this so one of the really low power chips running at a few hundred mghz is just fine.
It shouldn't cost much more than about $750 and I'd buy one right this second for $500.
I think that is the ideal consumer portable I don't want a shitload of gadgets. I don't want a too tiny handheld pretending to be a pc, I don't want a damn phone that computes, I want a small portable computer that has the necessary components for good portable document reading and music playing but does not lack the capability to behave as a reasonably usable pc.
that's my nickels worth