Keyboard PC design recalls Amiga era
All-in-one
Fashion often repeats itself, with dated products reborn into popular products. Just think of VolksWagen’s Beetle or BMW's Mini. And now we can add the Commodore Amiga to the list, sort of, thanks to a new all-in-one PC with a look rather reminiscent of the home computer.
Cybernet's Zero-footprint PC (ZPC), as it's curiously called since it has a non-zero footprint, integrates a standard PC's internals under the keyboard. There's room in there for up to 750GB of hard drive storage, 4GB of 667MHz DDR 2 memory, an optical drive and an Intel Core 2 Quad processor.
A DVD burner's built into the side
The optical drive sits in the side, just like the floppy drive did in the Commodore machine. If you’d rather surf the web than watch films though, then an extra $100 (£50/€65) gets you internal 802.11g Wi-Fi. An Ethernet port comes as standard
Many, many ports
Four USB ports come as standard too, and although slots for memory cards aren’t stated as an option, pictures of the PC do show several built into the front of the unit. You can also see serial and parallel ports, long with VGA and DVI for monitor connections.
Another picture also shows a swipe reader for credit cards added onto the PC, which is sure to come in handy for a bit of cyber-squandering.
The ZPC is available now from online retailer Cybernet, with prices starting at around $630 (£315/€350).
COMMENTS
Does it come with a genlock?
It wasn't the awkward shape of the Amiga 1200 that made it great, it was the video capabilities of a modestly priced computer that made it the thing of fond memories. None of my PC friends had a genlock and the crappy videos I made back in the early 90's were way cooler than my PC owning buddies could do.
Re: Amiga vs ST
DaveK: "Heh, so there are still some people out there who won't admit the ST was a pile of poo compared to the Amiga?"
*sigh*
Some things never change.
C64 owners -> Amiga owners -> Mac owners.
All smug c*nts, who never miss a opportunity for a dig at the 'proles' who own Spectrums/STs/PCs.
Thanks for your contribution 'Udik'.
@DaveK
As an Amiga fan & a musician, the lack of MIDI ports on the Amiga was the second-worst design decision in the history of computers (after IBM not going with the 68k).
"Cracked by MCA" under AmigaOS? Jesus! it would've been legend.
Amiga vs ST
Heh, so there are still some people out there who won't admit the ST was a pile of poo compared to the Amiga? I remember the old "ST has a MIDI interface" argument from way back when, it goes something like:
"Sure... your Amiga has a higher resolution display, more colours, four channels of sampled sound, a display coprocessor, sprites, a blitter, DMA engines....... but my ST has a serial port! Yes, I know the Amiga has a serial port too, but my ST's serial port comes on a midi DIN connector instead of a db9".
So yes, you lucky ST owners, you did indeed save yourselves the three or four quid that a DB9 <-> DIN level adapter would have cost you. Well worth sacrificing 90% of the multimedia functionality of the machine for, eh?
Um, no, actually.
You chose wrong, you got burned - it's twenty years later now, it's time you faced up to it.
- DaveK a.k.a "Ubik".
It's not an Amiga...
...it looks more like a Sam Coupe to me.
