Japanese Pocket-Size PC Cube Demonstrated

rocketjam writes "The Japanese company, Personal Media Corporation, has demonstrated a prototype of a cube-shaped pocket-sized computer called the T-Cube (tentative name). The T-Cube runs the T-Engine OS, an operating system apparently being developed by a consortium of Asian companies for embedded devices and networked computers. The machine is about the size of an orange, uses a CPU made by NEC and sports a desktop written for the Chinese Market supporting Multi- and Super-Chinese Character sets. It is scheduled to ship in Q1 of 2004."

Comments

So what?

[rjstanford]

Honestly, I don't think that the size of a (not-very-powerful) computer matters beyond thresholds. Ie:

Can it easily slip into my pocket?
Yes: iPod, etc
No: cube the size of an orange

Can I carry it around easily?
Yes: cube, laptop
No: server

Does it need reinforced flooring?
Yes: mainframe
No: server

So, basically, I'm not seeing much of a reason to go minimalistic on computers. If portability is a concern, that's already solved with modern laptops - which this isn't meaningfully smaller than (I mean, can't be treated much differently than). If it isn't a concern, then you don't need the extreme small size. And if density is a concern, you're better off with more powerful systems (per cubic whatever) than smaller ones.

Just MHO, of course.

Potential Form Factors...Geekbook?

[hirschma]

The "motherboard" on this must be super tiny. I'm guessing that it uses very little electricity, too.

I'd love to see it in a clamshell handheld configuration - 800x480, wide format screen, perhaps 7" diagonal, minimal psion like keyboard, and a big old battery, something off the shelf, perhaps a pair of cell phone batteries. Trackpad eraser would be nice, too.

Offer it with no memory (but with a SO-DIMM slot), cf slot (two better), ethernet, serial.

Hardware only warranty, and let the user or vars populate the memory, storage device (flash or CF hard drive), memory. That way, it could be offered as cheaply as possible. Use a standard boot method, too.

Then let the community decide on what OS to port to it - NetBSD, Linux, whatever. You'd end up with one device that spans from a very stripped PDA like config (minimal flash, memory), to something that could be a mini-notebook (lots of memory and up to 4 gigs of rotating storage), and everything in between.

It could be a portable serial terminal for sysadmins, a mobile web/internet platform, a portable media player, or a total notebook replacement. Whatever you want it to be.

I'd love one, and would pay near-notebook prices to get one. At under $600, it'd be a killer. Anyone else?

Jonathan

Tron, The Most Popular OS in the World

[fuck_this_shit]

It's running tron judging by the screenshots.

What is the world's most widely used operating system? It's not Windows , Unix or Linux, but ITRON, a Japanese real-time kernel for small-scale embedded systems. ITRON runs on mobile phones , digital cameras, CD players and countless other electronic devices.

ITRON emerged as an ambitious Japanese initiative known as The Real-time Operating system Nucleus (TRON). Launched in 1984, TRON was designed to replace disparate computer systems with a unified, open architecture for a "total computer environment."

[...]

The ITRON specification is a standard real-time OS kernel that can be tailored to any embedded system. ITRON already has been ported to a wide range of microprocessor architectures and has quickly become Japan's de facto standard for embedded systems. Today, the specification is used in an estimated 3 billion microprocessors.

http://www.linuxinsider.com/perl/story/31855.html

Not really an orange.

[infinite9]

Actually, it's not sitting next to oranges. They're mikans, sort of like tangerines. These things are somewhere between the size of a golf ball and a tennis ball. Very tasty too.

And that price tag is not really abnormal in Japan. When I was there, 10,000 yen was about $40. They were selling cantaloupes for that price. They would cut the vine nicely and gift wrap them in little window boxes. Now, that's about $100. Oddly enough, honeydew melons were only about 500 yen at the time, maybe $2.