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

Larger photo

[Karamchand]

Get it here.
Looks quite nice to me. Even an integrated ethernet port, audio... - nice, where can I get it? ;-)

Strange that they call it a "pocket computer"...

[wrinkledshirt]

The machine is about the size of an orange...

That's some pocket computer. Excuse me, but is that a PMC T-Cube in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

is that an orange in your pocket?

[garcia]

While it might be the size of a small orange it isn't exactly flat and I don't consider it to be conducive to fitting in my pocket. The other PDA to the left of the screen shot, while being quite a bit taller, is far thinner and would probably fit into a pocket easier than this.

So the OS is some non-standard thing w/probably little or no support, the shape is not really good for "pocket PCs", there is no screen, and everything is in yen and Japanese ;)

No thanks. I'll stick to my rarely stable PocketPC for now.

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.

What's the big deal?

[TWX]

We've had PDAs for years, since the days of the Apple Newtons and early US Robotics Palms. We've had handhelds like the Casio handheld computer with the 200MHz MediaGX processor from Cyrix in it. We've had HP and Compaq handhelds that are powerful enough to play mp3s for about three years.

Another small computer is cool, but is it really especially newsworthy?

A little scary...

[mr_mischief]

I know that it's a pain for the Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Russian, et cetera speaking people in the world to use systems mainly built by and for people who speak English, French, and German.

It's a little scary, though, that the east Asian countries are developing their own track of OSes with which we in the west may have to learn to deal. It's also a scary thought that having a group of OSes for one set of people and another set of OSes for another set of people may slow or even reverse the growing commonality of international communication.

Of course, this is coming from an American spoiled by the fact that most of the world is willing to learn my native language. I know enough of two other languages to make do, and enough of a fourth to find a taxi, hospital, restaurant, toilet, and hotel -- enough to travel in a pinch I guess. So I'm not the average Anglophonic snob. But still, it's a bit scary.

Hopefully all the multi-byte character support and such built into the systems such as this can improve the same on other OSes. It' be a shame if we were to be separated by both language and platform from a substantial part of the world.

All things considered

[Joe the Lesser]

Right now I'd rather have an orange.

alternatively

[Bram Stolk]

Alternatively, you could get a cerfcube,
which *does* run linux, and is smaller.

see:
http://www.intrinsyc.com/products/cerfcube /

tcube site is slashdotted, but I suspect
that the cerfcube consumes less power as
well.

Japan is working on that

[SweetAndSourJesus]

They're almost there.

Watermelons

[The_Rippa]

Now if the Japanese could only make cube-shaped watermelons...

oh wait.

Re:Watermelons

[Kenja]

Not only can they make it, they have the market cornered.

Exactly how big?

[SlowDancing]

Is that an African or a European orange?

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

Actual size of the T-Cube

[base_chakra]

The T-Cube's dimensions are 52x52x45mm. That's pretty damn small!

For those outside Asia, comparing the T-Cube's size to an orange may be a little misleading, although it's apparent from the photo that the oranges are smaller than navel oranges. To further clarify the point of reference, djqed is right in that the oranges in the photos are mikan. 'Mikan' is the Japanese word for mandarin oranges, of which tangerines are one type (but the oranges in the photos aren't tangerines).

Re:Strange that they call it a "pocket computer"..

[iminplaya]

If it's going to be a pocket computer, why can't they shape it like a bratwurst?

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.