CES 2006 - Day 1: Dell's 30" Display, Quad SLI, WUSB and more
by Anand Lal Shimpi on January 6, 2006 4:20 AM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
Dell's Mobile Concept PC
The final item of interest that Dell was showing off at the show was their Mobile Concept PC.
The premise behind the PC is a unique one; it is a Media Center PC, based on a Core Duo platform, with a built in 20.1" LCD monitor, that can be folded up and used as a transportable.
The system has a Bluetooth keyboard (that can charge on the system itself) and mouse as well as a Media Center remote. Internally it's basically a notebook with discrete graphics and support for up to two 2.5" hard drives running in RAID.
The back of the LCD is covered in a leatherette material and the system has a leather handle you can use to carry it around.
Dell has apparently been working on the system for a couple of years now and are mainly interested in whether or not you all would like to see something like this brought to market. We were quite skeptical of its usefulness when we saw it, but discuss amongst yourselves - would something like this be interesting to you?
If priced competitively enough, we figured it could be decent for college students to use in their dorm rooms since they could easily take it with them whenever they left school for the holidays.
Dell looked at it as a lifestyle sort of PC, almost in a very Apple-esque fashion, however in our opinion for Dell to pull that off the machine would have to look a lot more stylish.
The transportable aspects of the system are interesting, and Dell even promised that unteathered the system would have up to 3 hours of battery life. Dell also mentioned that the final system should be around 17 lbs, which isn't terrible to move from one location to another. Note that it isn't designed to be a notebook, just a portable desktop that you would occaisonally move from one location to the next.
We are still quite skeptical of the design, but once again, Dell wants to hear from you - so give them feedback by leaving your comments.
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Aerows - Saturday, February 4, 2006 - link
This design has a lot going for it. As one user suggested, kids going to college. BUT, I think that a strong argument could be made for it with small business owners.Why?
Considering that I went through Hurricane Katrina, and literally everything (including both of my cars, my father's brand new Avalanche, both PC's) was underwater, the one thing that saved all of our records was my mother's laptop.
No one expected it to be quite the monster that it was, and even though the PC's were put up high, and bagged, they were swamped. My mom's laptop of course, went home with her.
Had we had two of these mobile PC's, I *guarantee* they would have been taken out of the building and away from the storm, and we wouldn't have to deal with waiting for insurance to settle, the inevitable depreciation involved (even though the two PC's involved in the storm were perfectly okay for our needs), and lost productivity. Backups are great and all, but let's face it, they are fallible and it can take a lot of effort to recover from two lost PCs.
Personally, if these units were available in "value" flavors without the souped up video cards, I know several folks I would recommend them to right now.
Of course, I'd want a decked out screamer for my own personal use :)! ::drool::
estbear - Monday, January 9, 2006 - link
I think this is a verry intresting thing, but can it realy work like houres whit solar power. I mean thers almoust light everywhaer when this can work let's say 10 h I be impressed.Sry for bad englis :P
PeteRoy - Friday, January 6, 2006 - link
http://news.com.com/1606-2_3-6020675.html">Watch the videodev0lution - Friday, January 6, 2006 - link
Funny that everyone thinks of dell for low price/cheap computers and now that profit margins have slowed they drop a 30" LCD for 2 grand that takes a "limited edition" overclocked (Overclocked by Dell...hell must be cold!) quad GPU XPS just to eke out playable framerates on the newest games. What's next?!?! Water cooling and AMD brought to you by the dell duuuude? =XAnonymouseUser - Friday, January 6, 2006 - link
Who'd a thunk it?hoppa - Friday, January 6, 2006 - link
Does the flaming skull graphic on the Dell machine automatically change to a rusty snail over the next 3 years?ohnnyj - Friday, January 6, 2006 - link
Very true. Plop down an estimated 10 grand on a system like this today and it will be outdated next year or even by the end of this year (there is no way nVidia will leave Quad SLI as a Dell exclusive). People will stick them in an overclocked FX-57 (perhaps watercooled) they build themselves and save themselves a few thousand dollars (and have a higher performing system to boot).Griswold - Friday, January 6, 2006 - link
We'll leave you today with a picture of Toshiba's HD-DVD player that was sitting in Intel's booth. The player crashed when we took this picture, but other than that there was nothing particularly interesting to see here.Aww poor DVD player is shy. Dont take pictures please! Move along, give this DVD player some breathing roomm!
yuchai - Friday, January 6, 2006 - link
I don't think it's a good idea. I quote the article "Internally it's basically a notebook with discrete graphics and support for up to two 2.5" hard drives running in RAID."It offers nothing over a Desktop Replacement Laptop imo.
Nick5324 - Friday, January 6, 2006 - link
I was thinking the same thing, however I think it has potential. Assuming it's priced competitively, and we could dump the discrete graphics, I'd be interested.