Slashdot Mirror
Thin Client PC Fits in Wall Socket
ukhackster writes "Last year, there was a lot of excitement about a cut-down PC that fitted into a wall socket. Next month, the Jack PC will go on sale in the UK for just £209 ($390)." From the article: "At a low price and using low power, MacLellan believes the device is 'one of the biggest developments in PCs that we have seen' and is one of the 'ever-growing range of thin clients, which are rapidly replacing PCs as a more effective desktop computing solution for modern businesses'. The Jack PC runs Windows CE, is designed to connect to 'any terminal server-based environment' and has Citrix ICA and Microsoft RDP clients built in. It runs Internet Explorer 6.0 to connect to Web-driven applications, and runs an 'up to 500MHz' AMD RISC processor, which the company says is equivalent to a 1.2GHz x86. It can come with up to 64MB of flash memory and 128MB RAM."
While the device itself consumes less power than a standard PC, users who want to run a range of applications will need to connect it to a server. This will raise the total power consumption.
... are we talking Solitaire? MS Office? World of Warcraft? A little vague if you ask me :-)
What is a "range of applications?"
Oh, the display is not included.
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
Until you need to do lots of floating point operations that is
...why do you have to plug in a DC 5v connector to the front?
turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie
This is an interesting device, but:
advantages:
disadvantages:
I can't quite figure where this product fits. I'm guessing it's more of a business solution, but if that's true, I can't imagine it in any of the business settings I've experienced.
It's kind of cool technology, but is it a solution in search of a problem?
Does it support VPN?
IOW, this is an interesting idea that will probably fail in all but a few niche applications - I wouldn't invest in the company. ;)
I wonder if it comes with built in homeplug support?
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of those on a power strip.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Presumably that's a MIPS chip. Hopefully someone will build something similar around the ARM Cortex when it comes out.
Price of JackPC to fit in wall socket, £209. Price of builder to make a hole the wall £200, Price of plasterer to seal the hole £200. Lol, but seriously isn't a ordinary small form factor pc, more capable and not much more money.
But you ever seen the size of those English sockets?
I'd love to move our office to thin clients however I really can't justify the cost. For £200 I can get a 2.4Ghz Celeron with 512MB of RAM, XP Pro, a keyboard, mouse and 17" flat panel monitor.
So for a little more, I can get a tiny little box instead... wohoo!
But hold on, that box doesn't include monitor, keyboard, mouse, or operating system. Add those on and for a typical organisation running windows, these devices work out around £200 more than a regular PC. And that's before you even look at the costs of the server you need to run all the software.
Hmm... so right now I can replace a £200 PC if I spend about £600 per user on a thin client solution... and that will save me money how exactly?
Until somebody takes a brave leap of coming up with a simple design and mass producing these the prices simply aren't even nearly competative.
So, thanks, but no thanks.
But will it understand voice commands?
"Jack, off." Hmm, why is it loading pr0n?
Surely the single biggest win with thin client solutions can be the ability to maintain a single boot image and just have the clients use the latest image. Unless I am missing something, that is not an option here. Given that I can get pretty compact second hand boxes for US$50 or so that work great with Linux Terminal Server, these wall socket devices seem cute but not very practical.
I can see this device finding a place in the home as a media centre. Having no moving parts, it would be completely silent. It would of course have to be linked to a server, but imagine being able to plug a display directly into a wall socket. It could also find a place in the kitchen - no danger of spilling liquids onto a wall socket, and no worktop space taken up.
I wonder whether it could be viable to add enough extra flash memory to make one of these into a web server based on Linux? It would be the idea low power and silent server. At only 5 watts power consumption, there would be little reason not to leave one of these switched on 24x7.
Here is what it says in their installation brochure:
"DC Power Jack for wall-mounted power supply, when no PoE is available and the device is to be powered externally"
They probably added this because the brochure shows how the Jack can be installed into furniture(desks), floors, or walls. It does seem funny at first glance though. Especially if you imagine patching together an outlet and a Jack that are next to eachother.
for just £209 ($390) ... too expensive, you can buy a full PC for this sort of money.
I plain old PC is always more valuable than a crippled "thin client". It uses easy to service commodity parts, can be easily found for $390 or less, and performs a lot more tasks than a thin client can.
So you can fit it in a wall socket. Is this what will make your "data driven business" highly efficient, as they claim?
I can already see businesses running, tripping over themselves to go buy it, and put it in their wall sockets.
Cute toy -- but it doesn't seem practical... yet. While this seems like a decent thin-client (some of the ones I've seen come with horrid built-in displays and they still are a box -- if I'm going to have a box on my desk either way, I'd rather have it be a fast one) it's still a little too expensive. As the price comes down I can expect these to be a little more popular -- these are not the right kind of machine for everyone (or probably even most people)... but for a business I can see this working if the price came down enough.
Thin clients can definitely be useful -- if you have a powerful server you can still run high-end programs while saving costs (it is usually more cost efficient to invest in beefy servers that will serve everyone's computing needs than to buy every user a super powerful desktop [or laptop] especially from a support stance).
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
IE6 runs on MIPS/ARM?
Flash memory only? The only way I'd run one of these is as a thin server client. And in terms of saving space (which is the only reason to do this), I'm still dealing with a monitor, keyboard, other peripherals, so the marginal space saved by the box being in the wall is near zero.
Though, if I'm using it to process video being run to my 54" wall-mount LCD TV (Yes, I'm dreaming), I could see the point... Of course, I don't see jacks for any media lines on the plate shown in TFA. Toss those in, plus native wireless capability for input devices, and I (well, my wife) might be finally willing to have a PC in the living room.
Not that all that will fit in the same space, but that's where I'd see the biggest utility for a small form factor in retail.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
why CE?
Why not PXE or whatever so that you not limited to M$ crap!
This could be very usefull for automating a household with ltsp. (ltsp.org)
B-)
A friend will come and bail you out of jail, a true friend will be sitting next to you saying, "damn that was fun!"
BTW, IMO the TC mentioned is a bit pricey (but could be a great solution for the right need, is very cool and the wireless support is a serious bonus) since a standard (and still quite small) TC can be had on ebay for less then $50USD. As for CPU speed, rdp requires very, very little. Think Puppy Linux and rdesktop on a PI works fine. Thin clients are a blast to play with.
If they could just get the price below $200USD it would be great but for what it offers their price is somewhat reasonable.
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity but they've always worked for me" - HST
If you want to run a cluster, you will need to rip out the wall to install the plug boxes before installing each computer. Of course, you may want to do that on an interior wall with air conditioning. The police with a thermal imager outside might get suspicious if your exterior wall is glowing bright hot.
It just needs voice-controlled power supply, so you can say "jack on" , and of course, "jack off"! There are just so many ways to work that phrase in if you're using these computers.
stuff |
Sorry, had to get that out of the way. It's the coffee talking, really.
More and more I find that I want a bunch of dumb terminals around the house. Maybe my daughter wants to play the Barbie Princess games on the web, my son wants to listen to music, or my wife wants to check e-mail. This sort of device would be great for that sort of simple stuff.
The catch, of course, is that you can buy a normal PC for much less. I picked up a nice little Dell Laptop for $400 the other day. It's wireless, has a display, and can be taken on trips. Plus there's other older computers laying around my house that are equally powerful.
Perhaps the key is to emphasize "low power". Hook it up to a battery and solar panels and deploy it as a remote monitoring device. Put it in a motor home or use it as a carputer. Still, I think you're right to think that until they find the proper niche for this hardware, it's going to be tricky selling them by the truckload.
Unless I'm missing something, you had better not put this inside a well-insulated wall. If you surround a tiny 5-W heat source with foam insulation, say.
Let's guess some numbers:
0.04 m^2 surface area (62 in^2 for the SI-challenged)
RSI = 2 (about R=11 in US)
Insulating plastic cover similar to foam
I get a 250 C rise. It must depend on either a clear wall cavity, or a lot of heat conduction through the cables.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
"Thinclient PC" is a contradiction in terms.
A PC is a personal computer - emphasis on computer. A thin client is a dumb terminal.
They even admitted that it's not a PC near the end of the article: "While the device itself consumes less power than a standard PC, users who want to run a range of applications will need to connect it to a server. This will raise the total power consumption."
And trust me, you do not want to work on a thinclient. I had to for a year while doing defense contracting. Every minute of it sucked ass. Not only was the responsiveness of the terminal dependent on the thinclient, but also on the resources available on the host terminal server but ALSO on the network connection between the two. Displaying an image, or scrolling up to and past one would bring the whole thing to an almost standstill. And god forbid you can't use firefox & flashblock. Any animated flash ad brought the whole thing completely to its knees - to the point that I had to kill the browser process.
Anyone who recommends a thinclient is probably trying to sell you one.
Question everything
Parent is right to question this.
It turns out it's not a 'standard' wallbox but a proprietary wallbox system, which should, I'd have thought, had a AC/DC bus of some decent capacity (not POE) built in!
Where the S-Video output jack?
http://www.chippc.com/resources/JackPC_Booklet.pdf
Great, now we can hide a PC in a wall socket, I have read some crazy people managed to put a webserver in a big ethernet connector.
[offtopic]
And they want me to trust them when they bring an electronic voting machine, hopefully show me some code, maybe show me the inners of the machine and tell me "this is the code we run, trust us even if we have a past of lies and deception".
[/offtopic]
I would like to know one time for sure that I am just a paranoiac guy that tend to apply network security practices to real life too much...
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
so you get a glorified PDA that can act as a dumb terminal for about $400, or you buy a mac mini for about $550
what about dell optiplexes? I'm absolutely sure businesses, even small ones, will get a better rate on those than for a mac mini, so doesn't this put the machine in the realm of gimmick?
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Cue the jokes about slashdotted server running on the reported on hardware...
(It was slow for me, anyway)
All this system needs is a USB enabled display plus USB keyboard and USB mouse.
The USB display would be a LCD or CRT with an embedded system that drives the display.
Apple will create a wall socket Mac and say they reinvented the PC. It will be the finest looking wall socket you have every seen.
Seriously though, what should be a goal for this type of device is to allow for distributed computing through them. If you could connect the processing of all the thin clients together and have them aid the server by contributing free CPU cycles, then I think they could be a real hit. Every new thin client you add to your office boosts performance of your networked apps.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
I always thought it was a shame the the study carels in the college library had big Windows boxes taking up about 1/3 of the space under the desktop. It also seems like it would be a good bet for a library or other location where you want to provide Web access without the hassle of a full-blown PC.
I agree though that the price is a little steep.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
I've alway believed this was the plan for the cell processor. Still this is a great idea, though I would only be interested in the hardware. Having something like this plugged into LCD TV's with XDMC on a Server in the closet would be a nice setup. I wish they would have given specifics on the graphics chip, my guess is ATI.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Well done to the people who designed this gadget. It's very neat, but more importantly, it points the way ahead for 'commodity' computing, I think.
I imagine soon, everyday computing for most people will revolve around one or more I/O devices they have access to (mobile phones, TV's, terms in public spaces and cafes etc.)
CPU power, memory, bandwidth, storage and usage of applications will be provided by large network suppliers.
Nobody's going to stop you running and maintaining your own box, but most people will just buy the I/O device (display, cam, audio, keyboard, mouse 'unit' etc.) packaged in whatever form they prefer - much as they buy cellphones now.
Too bad it's based on Windows CE. If it could boot Linux from a USB hard disk, or better yet, directly from a network, I could put it to work right away.
So, basically, it is like cheap PDA mounted into the socket.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
You can get a monitor, much more memory, harddrive, dvd writer, much more powerful CPU for a same amount of money. All these thin client then is just a snap of open source software on top of it.
Another good intention, stupid attempt at this.
Presently the company I work for is moving to a terminal services infrastructure. I used to think that the Mainframe/Terminal architecture had had its day. In the process of deciding which way to go I built a small linux terminal server based system. The whole server/client terminology juxtaposition is wierd. The reason we decided on a windows terminal server solution instead was becasue we need a particular app that is windows based. I tried to convice them to have our own application developed on linux, but that seemed more risky to them than buying some one elses product (never mind that this product is less than 5 years old and was developed by some on in our exact position). The good thing about linux terminal services, is that you can connect to it with practically anything and with the NX cleint from nomachine.net it is pretty damn fast even over a remote VPN.
"It's because they're stupid, that's why. That's why everybody does everything." -Homer Simpson
I'd just prefer a device like this:
- 80mm x 20mm x 6.3mm
- Intel XScale® PXA255 200MHz or 400MHz
- Linux 2.6 + gcc 3.4
- sshd, boa(webserver), wget (webclient) and more
- bluetooth, usb, ppp
- and much more
Starting from $99.00.
And yes, you can make a Beowoulf of these!
Check out the details: http://www.gumstix.org/
For truly ubiquitous computing you need the supository form factor with methane powered fuel cell.
The biggest benefit of something like this is that now the only footprint needed on the desk is keyboard and the smallest LCD flatpanel you can buy.
Time for office designers to realize that the 2 inches of wall between cubicles is low-hanging-fruit in the search for space.
Hope you like your coworkers, because you're going to be literally rubbing elbows with them from now on.
I spent some time recently researching in-wall audio solutions for a kitchen.
The "whole-house audio" stuff is extremely pricey, and usually depends on remote power (remember power for speakers is going to take more power than an itty-bitty WinCE device).
I can see devices like this serving as Media Connector boxes to serve music throughout my house... but it still needs an audio amp.
I ended up buying a SpeakerCraft SoundSource, a 50w CD player that sits in the wall... and needs a brick power supply plugged in somewhere outside of the wall (it's going in my crawl space) for under $400. It's got 2 aux inputs, so an external media thing (whether portable or counter mountable like the Roku) can be plugged into it via a wall socket next to it.
Design for Use, not Construction!
With the right IT infrastructure - a lot of time and money.
With PCs, you've got N disks that can fail or get corrupted with viruses, spyware, etc. These are spread out all over. Want to install / upgrade software (or disk space)? With PCs, you can (try to) install or upgrade apps with AD, SMS, Altiris, etc, or bug the users to do it themselves -- or fire up your sneaker net.
With thin clients, it's all done from *your* desk or server room baby. Yes, the upfront and back-end costs may be higher, depending on your usage, but there are long-term saving to be had with thin clients.
Billy Ray: Once you make it with a man with no legs, you'll never go back!
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Found this site... http://www.jackpc.co.uk/
A lot of people's questions seem to be answered in the FAQ bit...
john
...unless, of course, you actually want to use it for something, in which case you'll need to find a monitor that runs on POE...
D'oh! POE is a great idea for powering network & telephony gear - especially WAPS in out-of-the-way places - but, for the forseeable future, desks are probably going to need power as well. The firms other products - POE switches and WAPS that fit into wall sockets - make more sense
The other missing piece is a monitor connector that carries power, sound and USB (*cough* Apple Display Connector *cough*) and removes the need for 4-5 wires to the desktop.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
you would be much better off buying dell axim x51v pocket pc, built in touch screen bluetooth, wifi, VGA screen, a buttload of software, and can terminal server to any windows desktop, up to 8GB memory. oh ya, and if you really want you can tape it to a wall socket for god knows what reason.
This product is named for exactly what it can do... JACK!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
thats pretty jacked up!
They SHOULD have just made them home-plug compliant. Then you could just plug them in anywhere and not have to run cat5 to them. No special wallboxes, cable runs, etc.... Just plug and play.
How long before a PC outlet costs less than a power outlet? Today, an USB embedded CPU chip costs less than a USB mechanical connector.
I will create a sig when innovation restarts in the U.S.
Did Slashdot suddenly become a British publication? IIRC, the past tense of "fit" in American English is "fit," not "fitted."
// This is not a sig.
The only way I'd run one of these is as a thin server client.
Did you even read the title of the story? That's what it's designed for!
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
209 pounds? Isn't that like $400 dollars? Can't you get a full fledge PC for this (probably with a monitor)? And with more choice of OS rather than the limited CE?
Sounds like it's kind of missing the mark.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
From what I am reading most of us dont know what a thin client is. There is no reason a thin client actually needs an OS, and that is even contrary to what a thin client is designed to do.
Some of the later posts mention that Windows CE is a great viable option and one even went to say PXE was jsut a boot method, nothing more (what is that suposed to mean?) PXE is a great idea for thin clients, not only does it lower the required number of periphials, but it also allows for easy administration, because the thin clients would not store any settings etc, they would jsut conect to one central server.
I fear the Y2038 bug
Its a little box running Windows CE on low power. In most respects then, its more like a PDA or cell phone than a PC.
Now, if it ran embedded linux in a way that let you update the firmware, it might be the basis for a really interesting brick computer.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
I've just read the link that was posted earlier - http://www.jackpc.co.uk/ Have you guys totally missed the point or what? It seems to be part of a system where you just give thin client users jack pc's and power users can have a normal lan jack. It's totally interchangable. There's even a wireless access point! Where I work this will make a MASSIVE difference. OK they're about the same price as a PC but the management costs will be halved! No more viruses. No more noisy, unreliably PCs. No more hard drives to back up 'cause users are too stupid to save files to the network. And they're only 5W?? Are we sure that's correct??? WOW!! Where and WHEN can I get one???
STuIE
- Single Button Logon (main advantage)
Much smaller than XPe (loads faster)
XPe is actually much harder to lockdown to just a kiosk and an RDP connection (as I've found out)
"It can come with up to 64MB of flash memory and 128MB RAM."
That means that the entry level system includes less than 64MB of flash or less than 128MB of RAM or less of both. Given the price, this looks like a PC for suckers.
They have an interesting table for embedded OS comparison.
Among other things, they rate
Virus vulnerability> WinCE: low; Linux: high
Stability/reliability> WinCE: high; Linux: medium
License Price> WinCE:$12; Linux: $12-16 + 3rd party fees
Other interesting remarks there as well.
No one seems to have mentioned this yet, so I'll toss in my 2 cents:
With these WinCE thin clients that only run ICA/RDP, you can still make use of them without having a Windows server kicking around. Nice little project called XRDP has been working on an RDP server for Linux (and other *NIX) machines. It works pretty well, although currently it's just a pass-through to a VNC session (they're working on a full RDP server). Makes for some fun issues with Ubuntu as the VNC server sources are configured a bit... oddly... however with a bit of manual tweaking it's a quick (and free!) way to take advantage of these things.
I got into this because I picked up a small, fanless, low power WinCE terminal for a couple of dollars recently - but the same method applies for these new-fangled thin clients.
Why the industry is so obsessed with WinCE and RDP is another matter. Just use PXE, please! The extra couple of MB to download the client software really doesn't make for a slow boot in this day of 100/1000BT ethernet.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Why would someone buy this jack pc that runs Windows CE when they can buy Mac Mini for $209 or $409 more?
Mac Mini is small and can fit inside the wall easily.
$799 model has a drive big enough for Dual Boot of XP and OSX.
\
it turns out it's not a 'standard' wallbox but a proprietary wallbox system
Looks like it'll fit a standard UK 13A single pattress to me. Probably a 35mm, and I wouldn't mount it into a metal one.
I assume that the MS tax is significant.
"1.2GHz x86. It can come with up to 64MB of flash memory and 128MB RAM."
Crap. This thing's specs are better than my home desktop!
According to http://www.chippc.com/resources/JackPC_Booklet.pdf it does run off of POE. It also looks like the box size is a standard double wide electric box. But they have a proprietary box that has some sort of modular release system so you don't have to screw with wires when you install it.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
I would buy this if it cost less than $250 and if it had
a dedicated graphics processor, 1280 x 1024
at least 64 MB RAM, 8 MB Flash Memory (Optional 128 MB RAM, 32 MB Flash)
Linux Kernel 2.6.12 or better
Debian Arm File system
firmware upgradeable over the network
X11 R7 with touchscreen drivers installed
Dual USB 2.0 (12Mbit) Host ports
Single USB 2.0 (12Mbit) mini Device Port
RS-232 / RS-422 / RS-485
Compact Flash slot Type I/II
4-Bit SD/MMC socket
Audio via USB and/or Bluetooth Headset
10/100 Ethernet and optional wireless LAN via CF slot
XVGA DB15 CRT socket
Power via 12V Plugpack and runs on 1 Watt
quick mount bracket for rear side of LCD
and if it were no bigger than the palm of my hand
Oh, wait, that would be the ThinLinX Hot-E.
This should of course also be possible with Windows CE. given that there are versions of the Office apps for this OS. I prefer to use something more open but even using the default OS these things should be capable of running more than just some remote desktop app...
--frank[at]unternet.org
Granted, there are certain applications for which this is not suited, but no one in their right mind is buying these boxes to play Oblivion via Terminal Server. Also, if you are doing drafting or non-linear video editing, you probably have dedicated workstations. For the average office, three main applications tend to do the trick (Web, Word, E-mail), and a properly-configured thin client does that quite well.
I am not selling thin clients.
Wow that SunRay 2 is a good deal. I've often considered getting a SunRay but gave up on it. The SunRay 2FS is need, *dual* DVI output. It costs twice as much too. (but that's okay).
I was going to get one of those Hot-e thinclients for $250. But the SunRay 2 seems like a better deal to me. Thanks for the head's up.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
To understand the whole system, you should understand the concept of the "flex-jack". The Flex Jack is intended to be installed anywhere where a normal Power over Ethernet jack (which is basically a normal ethernet jack) would go. The flex jack is basically a very large socket. So if you use PoE you replace your normal jacks with these. Then you have a selection of inserts for the jack, which include a plastic cover for unused jacks, a simple Ethernet Jack, a quadruple ethernet jack that contains a tiny Ethernet Switch, a 802.11g insert that creates an instant wifi hotspot, or the Jack PC, which is intended as only a thin client. Employees that need more than a thin client would be using one of the ethernet choices.
Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
This is a thin client, not ultra-thin. It still has an OS, and a bad one too. And is more expensive than the ultra-thin stateless client from SUN. The server side software runs on Solaris and Linux and the ultrathin goes for $249, you can find used for around $100.
http://www.sun.com/sunray/sunray2/
The specs are serious overkill for a think client. You don't need anywhere near a 1.2GHz x86 CPU to run RDP/Citrix/VNC/X11. You can use a 20MHz x386 most of the time.
Still, the specs for the power and size are impressive, and it leads me to wonder... Why are they making stationary devices, and not handhelds, sub-sub notebooks with serious battery life, etc.? Portable computers seem a much better fit for this product's specs.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
a thin client system like this would require a VERY fast server(s)! imagine the processing required to run 1000 office/ie sessions (and an obligatory symantec). only recommended for the brave hearted.
slightly less brave souls may want to have a fileserver tftp booting remote diskless clients with linux images. the diskless clients would mount their filesystem over NFS and you're done with it. people can run mplayer/staroffice/your-favorite-app-here all they want without overloading the server
* lon3st4r *
i would want some company to power thin clients using poe switches (with around 5 watts usage as not all switches are able to implement full 15watts power at all ports.) it will be very good for us it people managing an entire company as we can control the network port and easily avoid problems from the end side. not to mention, easier to provide uninterrupted power.
from the power, the cost should be very very cheap. something like $50 (if possible.) the barrier to entry is expensive since price is like a desktop pc and having the actual server itself - 2x total cost. (of course this is not tco but your actual cash outlay affects your ability to implement such situation.) you know, wii is to ps3 and xbox360.
for hardware, why not have an xt processor, 8mb ram, video, and io (i believe all of these can be built in a single die for very cheap manufacturing and integration.) you don't even need the flash memory as i would want to do network boot. with all the remote processing, do you really need that much speed?
my 2 cents.
Live your life each day as if it was your last.
Your home desktop system is crap.