May 6, 2011

The PC Bone

Filed under: Main — Tags: — admin @ 12:01 am

The monitor bone is connected to the console bone.
The keyboard bone is connected to the console bone.
The mouse bone is connected to the console bone.
The modem bone is connected to the console bone.
How many bones do you have laying around your house?

Here is more proof that the PC is a boring commodity: New PCs are being sold console-only. After all, there’s no point in buying a new monitor when you have a garage full of them.

Face it: Your monitor, keyboard, and mouse, are probably all in fine condition. They’re all pretty much standard hardware as well: All USB or DVI or some other common computer connector.

All you need for a new computer system any more is the console. In fact, that’s how I’ve updated my last few PCS: I unplug the keyboard, mouse, monitor, network cable, and the external backup drive. The old console is whisked away, the new one perches in its place.

After reconnecting all the cables, the hardware setup is done. You spend a few minutes reconfiguring your computer software, restoring files from the backup, or maybe migrating your programs with some migration tool. You’re done.

Years ago I predicted a similar type of setup to what we have today, though I was a little more extreme in what would be a peripheral and what would be in the console.

I’ve long predicted that the computer of the future would be a box about the size of a typical hardback book: It would have a power button and then loads of ports. You’d connect your hard drive, monitor, keyboard, mouse, network, and other cables to the teensy, book-sized console. Your computer was instantly set up.

Yeah, like the Mac Mini.

Similar to that configuration is the Motorola Atrix phone, which comes with the Lapdock.

Sure, the Lapdock is just a phone dock, but the it looks like a laptop computer and gives your phone’s hardware a good-sized keyboard and screen.

Lamentably, the Atrix isn’t taking off, probably because the Lapdock accessory itself is more expensive than your typical netbook PC. But that can change in the future.

As people move away from PCs, and toward phones and tablets as the center of their digital life, you’ll see the replaceable console get smaller and smaller. It may even turn into your phone. Seriously! Be honest: Do most people really need a full-sized computer any more?

4 Comments

  1. Dan- Two things need to happen to make what youre talking about come to pass. First people need to switch to light wieght OS’s. Win7 will gag on anything less than a Atom CPU and 2 gigs of RAM. If people started using mobile OS’s like Android, Symbian and Maemo, then people could do the second thing to make this happen which is use the ARM processor. The ARM CPU has very low power consumption, no more need for fans for the CPU, PSU or GPU, a computer would be nothing more than a very small mobo and HD that would fit inside the hard cover book sized case you describe. In fact the Maemo OS is nothing more than Debian Linux ported to the ARM CPU. There are even x86 distros like DSL that will run on rediculously low specs like 20mhz CPU and 16mb RAM. I recently checked newegg.com to see what their lowest priced CPU’s theyre selling, they are all in the 2ghz to 2.5ghz range, you can only imagine the kind of power they consume.

    Comment by BradC — May 6, 2011 @ 9:14 am

  2. How about this?

    http://www.geek.com/articles/games/game-developer-david-braben-creates-a-usb-stick-pc-for-25-2011055/

    Comment by admin — May 6, 2011 @ 9:32 am

  3. Wow!! $25??, flash memory drives can cost that much. I’ll take 10 to go.

    Comment by BradC — May 6, 2011 @ 9:50 am

  4. I’ve noticed the popularity of mini PC’s that are about the size of a hardback book. The one’s I have used are HP mini machines that simply clips onto the back of the monitor doing away with the big box on the desk or under it. These are great for office PC’ s the one I have used have Server 2008 on and the specs aren’t too bad, most have 2 or 4 gbs of RAM, the only thing they don’t have is a decent graphics card, mind you if it’s just for office use you don’t need it.

    Comment by chiefnoobie — May 7, 2011 @ 4:34 pm

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