The Modular PC: OQO-Licious or Delicious?

[gry]

Yeah, but bring your antibacterial wipes with you. 8O

Why no modular core with a notebook shell, Keyboard?

The tablet only solution is not practical for most people.

[gry]

Yeah, but bring your antibacterial wipes with you. 8O

Why no modular core with a notebook shell, Keyboard?

The tablet only solution is not practical for most people.

[jimski]

Well I am glad someone finally overheard me in an airport lounge. If I had a couple million bucks four or five years ago I would have developed a shell with interchangable adapters to handle any type of PDA. Maybe an 8" diagonal (touch) screen, laptop (or slightly smaller) keyboard, ethernet and modem connections, PCMCIA slots (now more likely memory card slots), a parallel printer port (now USB ports) and maybe a built-in hard drive to store drivers and other practical tools. PDA would have had something like Word Light and shell would have had Word Deluxe so you might have had more formatting capability when docked. Basically just about everything you would need to be functional, but not quite a laptop. You would attach the adapter to the end of your PDA and just slide it in to the receiving slot (spring loaded on one side to take up space for varying sizes).

Business users could have set these up at multiple sites so guests or employees could have moved around between sites and just plugged in to get mail, type, print, etc. Schools could have used them to connect any PDA device or students could have traveled from class to class and plugged in where appropriate. Airports, rest stops and Internet Cafes (oh yeah, somebody already thought of that) could have setup kiosks for users to plug in to get business done. Hey even McDonalds could have had a couple setup for users to connect.

Everyone would have owned or wanted to own a PDA and my company would have dictated to PDA manufacturers how devices would need to be designed because of the shell's overwhelming popularity. Developing an incompatible device would have meant certain failure, sort of like making toilet tissue too wide for the dispenser.

I never got past the sketch stage but I sure did talk about this concept to anyone who would listen (I wanted someone else to build it so I could buy it). Unfortunatly I think this concepts best days are behind us, but it could have been some ride. Come to think of it, I could have just had the concept (as vague as possible) patented, waited for someone to make a load of money on the idea, and then sued the hell out of them. Ah, the American way to success!

[xoiph]

The OQO is cheaper (and sexier). Is it still vaporware BTW? Or has it condensed into an actual shipping product? It looks like it from their site.

[frankenbike]

Yeah, if I'm gonna want something I can't afford, the OQO looks a lot tastier.

Essentially the size of the modular pack, it has a touch screen, keyboard and IO. You can plug a monitor, full size keyboard and mouse into it.

Though it would be cool if OQO made a folding plasma screen/keyboard and big battery docking station for it.

BTW, OQO is taking orders, but it says "Ships in 3-4 weeks".

[davea0511]

If this device had a built-in touchscreen and was only 0.5" thick, had built-in bluetooth and cost only $2000, and was just 50% faster then it would be there. It would be huge and it would revolutionize the whole handheld world.

Not quite there yet though.

[frankenbike]

Originally Posted by davea0511

If this device had a built-in touchscreen and was only 0.5" thick, had built-in bluetooth and cost only $2000, and was just 50% faster then it would be there. It would be huge and it would revolutionize the whole handheld world.

Not quite there yet though.

But it will be. And when it's there, and it will probably be well under $1000, it will mean an end to Pocket PCs.

[Jason Lee]

Originally Posted by frankenbike

But it will be. And when it's there, and it will probably be well under $1000, it will mean an end to Pocket PCs.

Not if it doesn't turn on/off instantly, have no moving parts inside, have a phone built in, and run for 10+ hours on one battery charge.

[frankenbike]

PPCs don't turn on and off instantly. They don't turn off at all. Essentially, they go into a sort of standby mode.

Even laptops can do that, and are instant on when you put them in standby mode only. Battery life of the OQO is pretty comparable to PPCs at 3 hours, and that's with an 800x600 display.

As for no moving parts...PPCs have 2/525 the storage of the OQO. Expanded to the current max 1 gb on SD only models, that's 1/20th the storage. To 2 gb, 1/10th.

The OQO also has 4 times the average RAM capacity.

It has a 1 ghz processor vs around 612 mhz in the faster PPCs.

It's not quite an apple vs. orange comparison. For a first generation device, the OQO is much closer to PPC specs than a PPC is to its specs.

The true startup time for a PPC can be seen when you soft reset.

[gibson042]

Originally Posted by davea0511

If this device had a built-in touchscreen and was only 0.5" thick, had built-in bluetooth and cost only $2000, and was just 50% faster then it would be there.

Not to ask too much of it... :devilboy:

[gibson042]

Originally Posted by frankenbike

PPCs don't turn on and off instantly. They don't turn off at all. Essentially, they go into a sort of standby mode.

You have a point.

Originally Posted by frankenbike

Even laptops can do that, and are instant on when you put them in standby mode only. Battery life of the OQO is pretty comparable to PPCs at 3 hours, and that's with an 800x600 display.

The laptops I've worked with take considerably longer than a PPC to come out of standby, and any decent PPC has twice the battery life of the OQO.

Originally Posted by frankenbike

As for no moving parts...PPCs have 2/525 the storage of the OQO. Expanded to the current max 1 gb on SD only models, that's 1/20th the storage. To 2 gb, 1/10th.

The OQO also has 4 times the average RAM capacity.

It has a 1 ghz processor vs around 612 mhz in the faster PPCs.

It's not quite an apple vs. orange comparison. For a first generation device, the OQO is much closer to PPC specs than a PPC is to its specs.

The storage and RAM comparisons are spot on, but the processor one is completely irrelevant as they use totally different instruction sets.

Originally Posted by frankenbike

The true startup time for a PPC can be seen when you soft reset.

I disagree. The expected use of a PPC is to put it in standby when you're done with it, leaving it in a low power mode but not truly off. Therefore, that should be the standard by which you judge it. It's not a race to see who can warm boot faster, it's how long will you have to wait before you can accomplish your task. Also, it looks like WM2005 devices might actually turn off for real, the way smartphones do with RAM reserved solely for program execution (and even if they don't, that's obviously where Microsoft wants to take the platform).

I really like these tiny and/or modular PCs, but personally I don't think they're for me. They'll never be as powerful or have as much storage capacity as your primary desktop or laptop, which means they'll never replace it. And that places them squarely in competition with Pocket PCs. The problem is, the Pocket PC would still be better even if they had the exact same hardware, because of the difference in OS. Windows XP (and Longhorn, and whatever comes next...) is big and clunky and slow. It is not designed for small screens or small devices, and would be less than pleasant to use in the palm of your hand. Windows Mobile, on the other hand, is designed for such usage and generally does a good job of helping you quickly accomplish what you wanted. When the products do eventually merge and the modular PCs are "there," I expect that they'll be running Windows Mobile (although they might also have a full-fledged computing OS as well, for the keyboard/mouse/monitor usage scenarios).