A Mobile Home for the Wired Professional

mikael writes "The BBC is reporting that an Internet entrepeneur has given up on the high cost of housing in the city but has decided to merge his office/home lifestyles in the form of a luxury custom-built mobile home. Utilizing satellite technology, VoIP and a home cinema for video conferencing, the owner and his girlfriend are able to communicate with clients from anywhere. At the same time, the machine allows the occupants to remain self-sufficient in water, food, electricity and amenities for a whole week, allowing them to commute to the nearest national during the weekends." The price seems high even for all the amenities; a well-equipped Airstream can be had for enough less to pay for quite a few electronic upgrades.

Comments

250k is cheap for a vehicle like that

[Anonymous Coward]

go ask a F1 team, Mclaren have units that would make this chaps RV look rather silly

i wonder what the depreciation value is, if he bought bricks and mortar he would at least have an asset

RV's

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to work at an RV Dealership pumping LP. These machines are insane. Some times, old folks would come in and plunk down giant multi-million dollar checks, or even cash, to walk out the door with one of them a few hours later (we hated that).

My father, whom I worked with at the time, did all these sorts of upgrades - one time, I worked helping install a computer into one as the centre of a digital home hub. I did a lot of the work with that, and it was insane. And yes, they paid cash.

Re:RV's

[Anonymous Coward]

"walk out the door with one of them a few hours later (we hated that)."

I can imagine. The sight of a super-strong old guy with an RV on his back must be scary. When I'll buy a RV, I think I'll drive mine out the door.

Re:RV's

[nacturation]

Some times, old folks would come in and plunk down giant multi-million dollar checks, or even cash, to walk out the door with one of them a few hours later (we hated that).

Why would you hate this? The only reason I could think would be if the checks bounced or if you're concerned about the cash being laundered money from some drug runner. In any other case, I'd think cash would be much preferable.

Re:RV's

[Tony Hoyle]

Loans are much more profitable - the punter/mark/putz pays often 2-3 times the asking price for a loan.

Satellite Latency

[mpeg4codec]

To me, it would seem that the latency involved with satellite communications would really inhibit the use of VoIP. Either that or make it really, really difficult to use. Are there any /.'ers who can vouch on either side of this issue?

Re:Satellite Latency

[dougmc]

the latency involved with satellite communications would really inhibit the use of VoIP.

We've been making long distance phone calls via satellite for decades now. True, it's not over VoIP, but the cause of the latency (the long distance to the satellite) is still there, so the latency is there too.

Yes, it's a bit odd to hear an echo of what you say into the phone a signifigant fraction of a second later, but you got used to it. You were just happy to speak to grandma, even though she was 6000 miles away and this call was costing you $0.40/minute!

Re:Satellite Latency

[dsginter]

Geostationary satellite distance: 45,000 miles
Speed of light: 186,000 miles per second

To get to the satellite and back to earth:

(45,000 x 2)/186,000 = 484ms

This is on top of the normal internet delays. A response from the other end will take just as long to come back so your looking at one second delay. Not good for most any use.

Re:Satellite Latency

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not 45,000 MILES.

Its roughly 35,900 KILOMETERS above the earths surface, or 423,000 KILOMETERS from the earths core.

For TCP/IP over satellite, it is also common to fake the acks at either end which will help with the internet induced latency at the expense of error correction for errors induced over the satellite link. The errors & error correction caused by the satelitte link can be handled better (or rather - more appropriately) by the low level radio transmission protocol than TCP/IP.

Steve.

Re:Satellite Latency

[Lux]

Not true.

If you have enough bandwidth, you can use that to hide latency in some situations. Think of an RPC-style app: if you migrate the client to the other side of the world via a high-latency/high-bandwidth pipe, latency drops out of the time-to-completion for the rest of the computation.

That really starts to pay off after a few hundred queries (if you're going around the world, you're saving at least a quarter of a second per query).

My grad school research was in mobile agents. I think satellite networks are ideal for them.

Re:Satellite Latency

[Donny Smith]

>Latency was noticable, but did not prevent a 20+ min conversation from taking place. It can be done.

Precisely. Had you talked over a land line instead, you could have finished the conversation in under 15 minutes instead!

Seriously, such latency is annoying. I talked over Skype last night - WLAN at home and then Skype-out to the opposite side of the globe - we pretty much had to "sync" every minute and wait 1-2 seconds before one starts talking to make sure we don't start talking at the same time. I wouldn't want to use SkypeOut for business calls.

Re:Satellite Latency

[dougmc]

This is on top of the normal internet delays. A response from the other end will take just as long to come back so your looking at one second delay. Not good for most any use.

Aside from web, email, irc. Even a videophone is still acceptable with a one second delay.

_Most_ Internet application are usable with 1000 ms ping times. Web, email and IRC will barely even notice. Even interactive things like ssh will work, though you'll probably find the lag to be most annoying as you find yourself counting keystrokes to move your cursor around in your editor, for example.

Back before the Internet, email was sent via things like UUCP. The equivilent ping times would be hours or even days. I've IRCed when the ping times were 5-10 seconds -- it's annoying if you're trying to do more than talk, but as long as your client is local, it's perfectly usable.

Really, the main class of things that won't really work are first person shooters and similar games. Even something like Everquest ought to work, because it's not based on twitch reflexes.

sounds..

[Turn-X Alphonse]

Sounds great untill some little bastard steals it and goes for a joyride while he tests for wifi spots.

The next one

[Anonymous Coward]

if the new one will be called Pope John Paul III or use his real name

I think the next pope will remain as AC...

Motor Home, not Mobile Home...

[Kelmenson]

A mobile home is typically carried around on a flatbed truck then mounted to the ground... This is a motor home, more usually called an RV.

Re:Motor Home, not Mobile Home...

[tmasssey]

They *have* to come with their own wheels. They must have a single I-beam down the middle, they must have a hitch, the hitch must be included in the length measurements (just as the overhang must be counted in the width measurements), etc.

They're titled just like a car (or, more specifically, like a car trailer...). When you buy or sell one, you transfer a title just like transfering a title to a car.

I know all this because I now live in my second mobile home. 1800 ft^2, $40,000 in Rochester, Michigan. I put an offer on a *1200* ft^2 house at $175,000 and was turned down.

People complain that you don't gain equity in a mobile home like you do in a house. That's fine. I take the $1300 a month I would have put into a mortgage on a house significantly smaller, and put it all into an index mutual fund. 10% increase per year: at least as good as what I would have gotten from a home!

I have been reduced to saying, "And this is news?"

[kfg]

This was done by bicycle, http://www.microship.com/, 20 years ago (complete with a binary "keyboard" on the handlebars so that the rider could type while riding and satellite uplink) and my aunt gave up her house 10 years ago to go RVing and says she doesn't understand anymore why anyone would want to own a house in the first place.

Slashdot breaking news story: Sam's Club!

KFG

All well and good

[YrWrstNtmr]

...as long as you have no kids.

2 yuppies, cruising around in a motor home with no fixed address is fine, if a bit expensive (gas prices in UK?).

I don't see this as a real money saver. Yes, 1/4 million pounds is less than many (by far not all) homes in SE england. But depreciation and operating expenses will eat up any potential savings, and when they decide to give up this hobby, they'll be behind the real estate/money curve.

But, if money isn't a consideration (and it appears not to be in this case), why not do it for a couple of years? I'd get tired of it pretty quick, but he might not.

It's porn!

[tyroneking]

Internet entrepeneur? Video cameras? His girlfriend?
Sounds suspiciously like a mobile porn studio.

Can't do VOIP over satelite...

[Spoing]

If you need any interactivity, satilite connections won't cut it. Voice and video would need other communications methods.

Ahh

[metlin]

"It's a beautiful part of the country. We're keen rock climbers, so we can't complain about having well-known UK crags around the place."

Well, that's understandable.

As a fellow climber, I can completely understand where they're coming from - it really sucks having to carry 35 pounds on your back and set camp at a base from where you can climb.

While it is a little extreme, it does make sense.

Nothing really new

[0123456]

Steve Roberts has been doing this kind of thing (admittedly with bikes and boats rather than RVs) for about fifteen years now...

http://www.microship.org/

bubble-buster

[TheHawke]

Have you guys ever checked the insurance rates on a Class-A RV? My god, they approach the levels of owning a 2 bedroom house! That and maintaining the beast, where are you going to sleep when it's in the garage with a blown motor? Or worse, the bloody thing starts leaking around the seams? The service center most likely will not allow you to stay in the vehicle while it's in their garage overnight.

The air conditioning in the vehicles are not conducive to electronics while in a high humidity area, for they are glorified window AC units. All they do is cool the air and TRY to pull the moisture out of it, but not really succeeding.
Sure, they may look great but to be really a place to house your systems in, you actually have to increase your housing budget by a small factor to cover the extra things. Beefier wiring, more outlets, dehumidification, a better refrigerator than the slow and ice up like a ship in the north sea ammonia units.

By the time you get done, you'll have something like the emergency response vehicles that the larger metro poilce forces are using for mobile command posts. All electronics and few luxuries.

Re:bubble-buster

[PCM2]

That and maintaining the beast, where are you going to sleep when it's in the garage with a blown motor? Or worse, the bloody thing starts leaking around the seams? The service center most likely will not allow you to stay in the vehicle while it's in their garage overnight.

Fortunately, he's one of those computer geniuses. I'm sure he'll be able to think of something.

Re:bubble-buster

[timothy]

"Fortunately, he's one of those computer geniuses. [hotel links]I'm sure he'll be able to think of something[/hotel links]."

You're right that he can find a hotel (though they're scarce in some parts; I'm pretty inured to sleeping in my car when necessary, annoying as it can sometimes be -- however, I don't have an RV for which to find safe haven), but that additional cost adds up quickly, especially if the repairs are like those experienced by Phillip Greenspun. (The link was handy; this story had made me find it to post in an earlier comment, too ;)) As I warned in that earlier comment, be careful lest you are sucked into the world of interesting things Greenspun has written, which are addictive and time-sucking.

timothy

Not all that new

[SJasperson]

I was doing full-time computer consulting and living full-time in an RV back in 1997-2000 (in the US), and I was hardly the only one. Even then, it wasn't that hard to stay in touch; plenty of RV parks would let you plug in a wired modem somewhere, more and more had internet hookups right at every site, and you could have a satellite modem if you were willing to pay enough for it (around $2/minute for 9600 baud access, which was plenty good enough for email and shipping code back and forth in those less bloated days). It's fun when you get to camp in the boondocks next to a hot spring for a couple of weeks and still bill a good hourly rate for the hours you care to work on your laptop while recharging from the solar panels. It's not so fun when you're stuck in the client's parking lot in Schaumburg Illinois for a week in winter because they really need to see you on site and the propane heater barely keeps up with the chill.

Re:A question

[Eminence]

• I just can't figure out why I should respect this guy.

Because he meant so much to so many people. Because what he did was done out of his compassion for others. You can dispute his stand on certain issues, but you can't doubt his motives.

The Church ceased to be anti-science ages ago (around the turn of 19th and 20th centuries) - and certainly this Pope wasn't anti-scientific.

• Note: not posting anonymously.

I appreciate that.

Re:A question

[sribe]

He fought against birth control, represents an anti-science institution, and generally represented much that I hate.

Sure, I basically agree with you there. But he also played an important, perhaps critical, role in freeing tens of millions of people from oppressive totalitarian regimes, and in the end that is worth a bit of respect, don't you think?

Physical security

[Anonymous Cowdog]

I wonder what his strategy for physical security is. Now that he's announced the location where the vehicle is going to be parked every weekend while he himself is strapped to the side of a mountain at some altitude, I hope he's got all this stuff well secured against theft, fire, and vandalism, or better yet, attended by a gearsitter.

There's always insurance, but after the second hit or so the insurance companies get somewhat less enthusiastic about renewing the policy.

Yacht++

[cyb0rg]

Instead of a motor-home, I think I would prefer to get a Yacht and deck (no pun intended) it out with all the amenities. There's just so may more places you can go on the high-seas. /You insensitive landlubber.

Confidence Trick ?

[Jononon]

They've generated international publicity, but their website is barely more than a poorly designed placeholder and their businesses do not appear to have any products to sell.
Company regulations and council tax issues further the implausibility of this scheme
It's very easy to put out exciting press releases, but if this thing ever hits the road I'll be amazed.

Maui Van

[pensano]

I've been doing something similar for the past six months. I purchased a fifteen passenger van in Colorado -- refurnished the interior with bed, closet, kitchen, pullout laptop desk, girlfriend, and surfboard storage racks -- and shipped it to Maui. It's been great. Net access is pretty good over cell modem, or we can wardrive when we want to download a movie torrent. :) I've been working three hours a week teaching physics for food money, and windsurfing tons. Journal and pics here:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/mauitian/

not a mobile home

[JeremyALogan]

Ok, I'm sorry to bitch about semantics, but this is one of my pet peeves. This thing is not a mobile home, but a motor home or RV. A mobile home is what you see in "trailer parks" and a motor home is what you can drive around. There is a difference.

Houseboats are good for this too

[billstewart]

I've had a couple of coworkers who've lived on houseboats in the San Francicsco Bay. Normally this class of boat is an overpriced luxury, e.g. $100-200K for a toy, plus dock rental, etc., but since housing of any kind in the Bay Area is an overpriced luxury, it wasn't really that bad a deal financially, and the lifestyle was cool. Some of them were single (aka divorced - so the boat's also a great midlife-crisis getaway and a fun way to impress babes), some were married couples living on the boat. I've also had a few friends who were techie RV commuters doing what you did, but that's a much lower-cost lifestyle.

For either of those approaches, you need to be really good at getting by without accumulating lots of stuff (so it wouldn't work well for me), and at least for the boats you need to be good at keeping your place neat as well (again, not me :-)

Don't get the motorhome

[bluGill]

If anyone is considering getting something like this, don't make the mistake of getting something with a built in motor. Get a trailer with a separate tow vehicle. I prefer 5Th wheels (they tow nice), but make your own choice.

With the built in motor you have to drive the whole house to a store, and fitting an RV into a standard parking spot is an exercise in frustration. Worse if you want to park near downtown sometime. Much easier to leave the house behind and just take the tow vehicle.

And there is the problem of what if it breaks? With the separate tow vehicle you just drop it off at the dealer and drive a loaner car. You will be hard pressed to find a town that doesn't have a dealer who can fix your truck, while someone willing to touch a RV is harder to find. Or just trade the truck in on a new one (only rich people live in an RV, it is too expensive for normal folks, so this is reasonable). Of course you could trade the RV in when it breaks, but good luck finding one you like in a random town, while truck dealers are all over.

Oh, and if you are doing this, please don't get a gas engine! Diesel is much more efficient, meaning it won't burn what gas my generation wants to live with for the rest of our life.

Re:Don't get the motorhome

[Anonymous Coward]

What your are referring to is a 'Diesel Pusher' and yes they are more powerful and efficient than a Gas engine (ten times the torque of an equivalent Gas moter at the same horse power). Most of them also have enough power to tow a small car behind so you can park the elephant in a park and drive the car for errands and such..(Mini Coopers and Ford Focus' are a fav with the RV set).
Plus Diesel engines, with proper maintenance, can last over 1 million miles. Ask any 18wheel truck driver. The only real drawback is the oil change is very expensive.
The most poplular engines are Catepillar and Cummins, though Ford is making a move on the lower end of the scale.

btw, taking this concept further is an RV called the 'Fun Mover' a 39 footer powered by a front engined Ford V10 diesel. It's a 26 foot moterhome with a 13' long garage attached that can be used for anything including turning it into an office.
Just google funmover and rv. The most expensive one is under 200k and includes an onboard 7K watt diesel powered generator.

if you get an onboard AC current generator, make sure it uses the same fuel as your truck engine for obvious reasons. The newer ones are really quiet too.

Lastly by going with Deisel, you can take advantage of the increasing availability of BioDiesel. And the resulting lower sulpher content.

Re:Don't get the motorhome

[llefler]

Like most things in life, there are trade-offs. With a 5th wheel you need to buy a suitable truck. To pull all but the smallest trailer, you really need a 1 ton truck. My uncle tried with a 3/4 ton, but found it under powered on hills and required sacrificing air conditioning frequently. And you can still have parking problems with a full size truck if they haven't restriped the lots to account for larger SUVs. I used to own a full size ford van, turning radius and small parking places were annoying. And then there were two issues my Mom brought up; you have to get out of the tow vehicle and get in the trailer to sleep. For some people that will rule out using free reststops at night. And she wasn't interested in having the additional steps for the bedroom. Every 5th wheel I have seen has the bed over the hitch.

OTOH, with a motorhome you could always spring for a dolly and a used Geo.

A 5th wheel will make it easier to go diesel though. Diesel 1 tons are easy to find, but a diesel motorhome that is less than a class A is practically non-existent. I have asked dealers about diesel class Cs and have either been told that A) people don't want them, or B) the demand for diesel trucks is so high that the motorhome manufacturers can't get diesel chassis. So they come with gas V10s.

Big deal

[Fapestniegd]

I've been doing this for over a Year.

And for about $14k. And $5k for the pickup truck.
I'm posting this from the pod right now.
Most RV parks have WiFi, well the good ones anyway, so latency isn't a problem.