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Smallest Linux desktop PC, smaller than an apple (fruit)

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Re: Smallest Linux desktop PC, smaller than an apple (fruit)

#6
post #2

The image of the setup with the keyboard and the monitor gave me an idea: Open a coffee shop/internet cafe type place where people could bring tiny computers and/or cell phones in and plug them into a docking station attached to a keyboard and a monitor.

I'll bet that's the future of the desktop/notebook, when cell phones become a little more powerful.

Re: Smallest Linux desktop PC, smaller than an apple (fruit)

#8
post #2

The image of the setup with the keyboard and the monitor gave me an idea: Open a coffee shop/internet cafe type place where people could bring tiny computers and/or cell phones in and plug them into a docking station attached to a keyboard and a monitor.

I'm pretty sure the first such device will be a future iPhone.

It looks to me that the current mobile corporations (let's say Nokia) are so used with business as usual and the tight lockin they don't want to make this step.

iPAQ "blue dock" was somewhat similar but never caught on for some reason, perhaps too early ?

Technically it's been feasible since forever. My cellphone is way faster than my Cyrix CPU that ran Windows 98 just fine. Yet, there is no hardware and software support for this.

Add a bluetooth mouse, this keyboard dock[1] and either have an extra wire for the display or go entirely wireless. That would be something nice to see in the corner of Starbucks.

1. http://store.apple.com/us/product/IPAD_KBDOCK?mco=MTcyMTgwOT...

Re: Smallest Linux desktop PC, smaller than an apple (fruit)

#9
post #2

The image of the setup with the keyboard and the monitor gave me an idea: Open a coffee shop/internet cafe type place where people could bring tiny computers and/or cell phones in and plug them into a docking station attached to a keyboard and a monitor.

I'll bet that's the future of the desktop/notebook, when cell phones become a little more powerful.

The hard bit isn't even the hardware. It's the ui. Phone ui and desktop ui going are always going to be different, so how jarring is it going to be to have two different uis on the same machine?

Re: Smallest Linux desktop PC, smaller than an apple (fruit)

#10
post #4

desktop ? You know... You could hook up VGA and a couple USB ports to a microcontroller, run Linux and call it a desktop computer, but you would be lying.

Yeah, because how could anyone use a computer without wobbly windows!?

(Go back in time 20 years, and multiuser timesharing systems had lower specs than this. And a lot of good CS work was done on these systems; UNIX written, Emacs written, Vi written, gcc written, etc.)

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