Tuesday, February 24, 2009

freedom to compute

If there are two things that spark my imagination it is big power in small packages and small packages that run Linux. Laptops are the rage and soon to be the standard PC most people are buying these days. To have it all in one package you can take with you is so convenient, you'd have to be pretty old school to pass this up. And to top it all off, laptops are getting more and more powerful so that you don't have to buy many extra gadgets to fill it out. As a PC tech I think I need to get one...........but, I just saw in Computer Shopper the Shuttle X27 (drool, drool!). You can get it with Linux of some flavor!! Thats fully loaded hardware and software.

If you know anything about the Shuttle PC's, they are small form factor and are barebones or fully loaded. The X27 is a solid state machine (no moving parts). It's like a laptop in a tiny box, perfect for a geekologist like me and if you look around, you can fine a small price. Man that Shuttle web site is amazing. I would call these machines semi-portable. If you are wanting huge power in a little package this is the way to go.

But what I would like to see is a new desktop that is actually a laptop without a screen. I could use the LCD screens I already have. Or a LCD screen that is part of a dock extension unit that locks on the back edge of the laptop base unit. It would still be a portable but have a fully detachable screen. The idea is that if you already have a monitor and aren't looking for a laptop, just buying the bottom part cuts the cost. Those laptop LCD's can be expensive and are fragile.
This would be a good machine to drive a souped up digital picture frame (regular LCD monitor) and audio file player. Who knows what you could make this thing do. I am hoping someday for a big pile of computer stuff so that I can experiment with computers around the house. Don't get me wrong. I think consumer products are good, just not great. I never quite find what I have in mind. I think it is a good time to invent something.

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