Modular PC Handtop Review

captainJam writes "The Modular PC (MPC) is a device with a simple concept centering around one 'core' that can be used in a variety of 'shells'. While the use of any laptop, tablet or desktop is immediately limited by the design of its components, the MPC can expand on its functionality with the introduction of new shells to house the core which contains the CPU, GPU, etc. Handtops.com has a review of the device and touches on its strengths and weaknesses. Overall, it is a great concept and decently executed, but the price will be prohibitive for most."

Comments

Early adopters only, at this point

[14erCleaner]

This thing is crushingly expensive at the moment; the core costs $1990, and the shells to make it a laptop-compatible are almost another $1000. That makes for a $3000 1Ghz laptop running Windows XP. No thanks, I'll wait...

Open Source Patent Giveaway !!!!

[Timtimes]

Call to hackers, crackers and modifiers..not necessarily in that order. Who's gonna be the first one to design the same thing around a Mac-mini? Seems to me that if you had a touchscreen/battery combo that mated nicely to the Mac-mini you'd have a built in market. And the 'core' would only cost $500. Am I genius crazy or just crazy? ! Enjoy.

A cool stopgap measure maybe,,,,,

[empty drum]

This is definitely interesting, but I have a feeling that advances in wearable computing and Personal Area Networking are going to render this concept moot...

The days of (consciously) lugging around your computer are numbered. But then I'm an incurable optimist ;-)

Panda Computers all over again

[SysKoll]

A defunct company named Panda used to propose something pretty much like this to change modules without replacing the whole computer.

The custom connectors they developped alone were horribly expensive. And with the price of motherboards and peripherals constantly dropping, there was little point in replacing just the CPU of a machine.

Unless the prices come down dramatically, I see little incentive in adopting this technology.

OQO?

[eobanb]

This seems almost exactly like the OQO, only they tacked on this 'shells' idea. Really this doesn't seem that different than much older ideas, like Apple's PowerBook Duo.

Nothing to see here, move along.

What are they shooting for?

[MythoBeast]

I've always envisioned the ultimate end of personally portable computing to have a device about the size of a deck of cards which I can plug into any office or public terminal and have that terminal immediately bring up my desktop and run all of my programs. When designing this kind of system, you have to decide which of the pieces you want to replicate vs. which of the pieces you want to lug around.

At one end of the spectrum is the laptop, where you lug around darn near everything. You have to replicate some things, like printers and wall sockets, and often wind up replicating other things like a big monitor and comfortable keyboard, but for the most part it's an entirely integrated unit.

On the other end of the scale is the thumb drive. Nothing more than a highly portable storage device for all of those things you can't replicate. You can jack one of these babies into any full system that has an adequate set of tools and be on your way. It's small enough that you can attach it to your keychain and forget it exists.

This product seems to be somewhere in the limbo between those two. For any concept like this to work, you have to be fairly certain that you can find the components that you don't carry around with you wherever you go. With a laptop, this is easy because you need so little. Portable storage in the form of floppies and CD's have made the other end quite available.

As it stands, there doesn't exist adequate infrastructure to make this device useful. Oh, and did I mention that it's preposterously expensive for what it provides?

Performance

[Jozer99]

Nobody has mentioned performance. The modular PC has a 1 GHz Transmetia Processor, 256MB of RAM, and a 16MB Graphics Acclerator. Do those specs sound like something you would want to pay $2000 for? A 1GHZ Transmetia doesn't beat a 650 MHz PIII in some measures of performance, 256 MB of RAM is barely enough to run XP smoothly, let alone multitask, and the 16 MB graphics adapter is a relic from another age, probably not even DirectX 7.0 compliant. That is one slow system, especially for big bucks. Now, if you plan to only use the Handheld PC Shell, the specs are about what you would find on similar products, but in a desktop or laptop configuration, the thing is just not powerful enough to justify it. Plus, because of the modular nature of the device, the handheld shell is bigger than its competitors. This may be the first modular design on the market, but it seems horribly impracticle to me. What we need is a nice P4 in there, that will underclock to 600MHz in a handheld, 2.0 Ghz in a laptop, and run at a full 3.6 GHz in a desktop. Heat wouldn't be a problem in any of them, because the underclocked processor would run cool enough to work with the heating solution in each of the docks. Make the graphics adapter part of the dock, so that a handheld could include a low power, low performace adapter for its SVGA screen, and the desktop dock could have a PCI-E 16X slot for a GeForce 6xxx or ATi X8xx. Why not have a flash drive for the OS and some important files on the modular device, and have full harddrives on the docks. That way a handheld could have full flash shock resistance, and laptop could have a small slow 2.5" 60 GB drive for work files and music, and the desktop could have a 400 GB SATA disk for storage of recorded TV shows. I guess everyone will eventually figure out that putting everything but the monitor and input devices in the modular piece justs doesn't make much sense.

Re:Not Just Prohibitive - Foolish

[nine-times]

I don't think "foolish" is the right word, they're just doing something that the technology isn't ready to be cost effective-- but it doesn't get to be cost-effective until someone works on some over-expensive version for a while first.

But think ahead, after a few years of R&D, the general idea is you get a nice little PDA that you dock and have a full-blown computer. You work in your home you have all your apps/files/etc, you get on the train and you have all the same apps/files/etc, and you get to work and you still have all the same apps/files/etc. No syncing, no crappy-PDA-versions of your apps that don't work properly-- you're computer just goes with you. If the idea/design is finessed a bit, it might actually end up being cheaper than buying a laptop, PDA, and desktop, because of bunch of the components are only purchased once (hard drive, processor, RAM, etc.). You'd just be buying keyboards/mice/monitors.

Or they could also modularize the laptop "shell" itself. I remember IBM was working on something recently (I don't know if it was ever released). It was a Thinkpad where the screen and full-sized keyboard detached from each other somehow, and the screen could be elevated.... I don't remember exactly how it worked, but the idea was that you could separate the laptop out to be like a desktop PC.

Or how about this: have something like a PDA/iPod, where is carries one limited OS/interface for portable purposes, but hard-drive-based. The hard drive doesn't have the OS and the device doesn't have all the GPU/ports/whatever, but it has your /home folder and applications. So you plop this device into whatever computer, and you get all the same apps/documents/whatever.

So you would achieve something similar, except the device, by itself, would have limited capabilities until it was put into a "shell". However, it seems like you need a specialized OS/interface for small devices anyway, so it might not be such a downside. Plus, it'd be easier to engineer an effective and small device this way.

So what I'm talking about in general is, the more people play with these ideas, the more likely someone will make a device that is practical, so it's not "foolish" to make an attempt. Imagine 5 years from now, and imagine Apple keeps shrinking the mini to the point that it'll fit in an iPod. Wouldn't you want someone working on these things?

nice idea, bad execution...

[hitmark]

i have had the same idea floating around in my head for about 6 months now. but to make it worth the money every part of it have to add value.

rather then having the base unit just being a dumb box it should be a pda on top of a HD. but when plugged into laptop or desktop config the config should bring with it more cpu ram and so on so that the "pda" turns into a storage device.

so if you need to take notes, break out the laptop and plug in the pda (maybe allow the laptop to fold into tablet form). just need to add a meeting? no need to bring out the entire laptop.

need some graphical or other horsepower, plug it into the desktop config and get to work.

maybe allow the laptop and desktop configs to work as thin clients (bootable over a network connection) if the pda isnt docked.

one should allso be able to dock more then one pda so that one can access files on all of them at the same time. therefor the dock should basicly be usb or firewire, maybe even wifi. i may be streching the term docking here tho...

the thing is, no part of the setup should be dead weight without any other part.

Re:What would really be nice

[coopex]

Try this for a 50mb Linux USB drive guide http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=171224 3&lastnode_id=124

Ultraportables

[ultrapcs]

Here is a nice web site that discusses ultraportables computers: http://ultraportables.net/