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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."
The cost is not prohibitive in that many wont be able to afford it but prohibitive in that it just does not make sense. You don't gain anything but you pay a lot more. The core is around $2000. Then the docking station is another $200. The laptop shell is $800. The tablet shell is another grand. So you are paying 3 grand for a laptop, tablet and a docking station. (and you've still got to pay for a monitor and input devices for the desktop part) For that I can buy a laptop, a tablet and probably a touch more for a desktop.
Portable storage is dirt cheap and convenient. So I'm not sure what I would gain. If it were difficult to move data between those types of devices I could really see the appeal. But it's not hard to do anymore. I'd rather just buy the full blown version of each component for quite a bit less (if you got the same processor, etc.).
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
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...
Have you read my blog lately?
When using your Modular PC Handtop device at the campgrounds, always practice safety. Surround your Modular PC with rocks to keep the fire from spreading. Be sure when you're done with your MPC to put it out with a bucket of water and make sure it has stopped smoking before you leave the area.
Remember what Smokey the Bear says. Only you can prevent your Modular PC Handtop from starting a forest fire.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
I saw the $1990 pricetag, and I'm not suprized, most of these types of PCs are not attempting to get a deep market saturization, so the price reflects the lack of demand. they need to recoup the initial development costs, and thus it seems pricy. there are some critical applications I could see it used for, such as occupations with a high amount of movement between desktops (IE a person who travels alot for the company) they could have the desktop at the office, and also have a laptop so their workstation goes where they go. also I can see it in the medical field where doctors can walk around and access charts digitally, then dock at a PC to do research. it certainly is not designed with common AOLer use in mind, though I could even see it being really useful on a college campus...
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Did I hear somebody say:
BEST. BIGGEST. MULTI-FUNCTION. REMOTE. EVER.
Dashboard Widgets
I can understand why a gadget site might want to post about this device, they have articles on all kinds of crazy, overpriced stuff. Why give something with such a ridiculous price valuable attention on Slashdot?
Better to accept an Ask Slashdot question such as "The MPC is an interesting idea with a stupid pricing scheme. How might one construct something like this on their own?"
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.
This ain't no upwardly mobile freeway This is the road to hell
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.
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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.
Take off every sig. For great justice.
...modular game console with easily upgradable parts.
I'd like to be able to replace crap like the DVD player when it acts up, or allow developers to
throw in some cutting edge games without buying a whole new machine
I've heard of such a device. I think it's called a PC. Can't find any info on it, though. Anyone know anything about "PC's"?
Take off every sig. For great justice.
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?
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
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.
I tested this device for a couple weeks as a candidate for running some software I was developing. This was last summer, mind you. The results were awful. The MCC (modular computing core) can run in one of two "shells". One is a hand-held, passively cooled device (TFA calls it a "Micro Tablet") with a touch-screen LCD and a couple USB ports. It has a velcro strap that lets you easily carry it in one hand by strapping it around your palm. The other "shell" is a desktop docking-station with a fan for cooling and keyboard/mouse and VGA connectors. TFA calls this one the "Desktop Dock".
/.), it was still unbearably slow.
Let me tell you that this thing ran *hot*. After working with it for a few minutes in the handheld, my hands became so sweaty that I worried it was going to slip out of them. Also, since it's sensitive to heat, it would throttle the CPU back to 300MHz, and Windows XP would slow to a crawl. I found that I could lock the CPU in a 1000MHz frequency, but then it just got even hotter.
The desktop docking station was no better. I tried playing a DivX movie in both modes, and the playback ran at about 1 frame per second. I would expect a 1000MHz CPU to do better. Obviously, this thing has other bottlenecks.
Even for regular productivity applications, like MS Word and friends (err, enemies, this *is*
In short, this thing is a great idea in concept, but failed to pan out in reality for me.
How about this:
And then - price the basic box at under $500. Make it the Soekris of portable and desktop computing.