Designer breaks up trad PC design
Three pin plug and play
If a small form factor PC is still too large for your liking or offers more functionality than you need, then one designer has created a more manageable solution. Uni is a PC concept where operating units are designed as separate white-box units which can then be connected together via three-pin plugs, as and when required.
The main operating unit is called Think and, according to this report, performs most of the processing and data handling functions. However, in order to store data or play DVD discs, users must plug additional units into the core Think unit.
Uni turns PC design on its head
The report also claims the units communicate with each other through wireless USB, at up to 480Mbps, while digital signals can be transferred through standard household power lines at up to 200Mbps.
There's no explanation as to how the various units connect up to peripheral devices, such as monitors, keyboards or mice. However, the pictures do highlight the potential presence of USB ports and, possibly, memory card slots.
Unfortunately, Uni is still a concept at the moment, but we would be very interested to see it working, if it ever gets to that stage.
COMMENTS
Old idea indeed
I have an old Sun SparcClassic sitting in my closet. It takes up lots of space not to mention that it requires is own monitor which is another monster altogether. I fail to see the logic of breaking up the CPU from the HD other useful prefs. Mini Towers, the Mac Mini and Laptops come to mind if you want to have a small package. If you want to add to it then you can buy external perfs. This is a just another repackaged idea that people with money will buy for nostalgia purposes.
30x the packaging, TPC-bane, and sitting on it's even more disastrous than before!
Now, if the modules were labeled 'Breadth,' 'Inexhaustability,' 'Restfuless,' 'Character,' 'Affirmation,' 'Transformance,' 'Sensibility' and 'Fullness' rather than fake chintz terms for 'HD' 'Video' 'Drive I use only for the Adobe BluRay application media' etc. then it would be more worthwhile having a system which lends itself to prank rearrangements, inflatable fakes and self-virtualizing (hello inexpensive Flash and MRAM! Copyright aye.) components.
Also, it would hedge against the full brutal rage people would feel at the system operation using up the local free 2.5 and 5.1 GHz spectrum...badly. Certainly the term 'far-field communications' has been abused badly here. Perhaps his next solution will be to use 23-solar-mass nova events behind shaped baffles of dark matter to time tea; the merit is, the tea leaves are removed from the steeper's universe, which helps prevent bitterness. If your guest entertains bitter tea, unfortunately the host is imbued with 11 solar masses in her person for some period of time. Like most newfangled brewing systems, refills are oddly pricey.
What a lot of clutter!
If you want a really compact computer get an A9 Home.
A custom connector
would make a lot more sense: only one power supply and they could lose that piece of 19th century tech stuck to the front of your gleaming white 1970s, er 21st century, design.
More bounce to the ounce
It's reminiscent of the IBM PCJr, which had a base unit, and you could upgrade it by adding "sidecars" to the side. They were case-shaped upgrade modules:
http://oldcomputers.net/ibm-pcjr.html
I think the fundamental problem with this new design is that it is ugly. It is also pointless, but that is not a fundamental problem; lots of things are pointless but lucrative (e.g. the blue lights that people put underneath their cars). It also looks like an Apple concept design circa 1989, although without the ridges and angular lines of the LC.
