Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: giZmo350 on January 16, 2006, 06:35:00 PM
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What do you guys and gals make of Cybernet's NEW PC in a keyboard? Seems things have come full circle. ;-) WinUAE anyone?
Have a look..... (http://www.cybernetman.com/) includes views of the innards....
More........... (http://news.designtechnica.com/article9209.html)
(http://www.cybernetman.com/images/product_images/zpc_9000_homepage.jpg)
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gizmo350 wrote:
What do you guys and gals make of Cybernet's NEW PC in a keyboard? Seems things have come full circle. ;-) WinUAE anyone?
Have a look..... (http://www.cybernetman.com/) includes views of the innards....
More........... (http://news.designtechnica.com/article9209.html)
(http://www.cybernetman.com/images/product_images/zpc_9000_homepage.jpg)
I think it's ugly and the form factor is useless to me. It's portable, and yet it's not, as it requires a monitor. It's a big honkin keyboard with wires and crap sticking out the back. One would probably spend all day trying to orient it just right on the desk and not quite ever get there.
i'm pretty picky about my mouse and kb, chances i would hate that keyboard. I have a few of thoes apple keyboards that came with thoes b&w g3 systems. Small, curved just right. Stuff the machine under the desk.
Companies have been advertising thoes in kb model pc's for years, you can see the ads in the back of pc magazine. I'm guessing they dont sell well, as i have never actually seen one.
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I think it's ugly and the form factor is useless to me. It's portable, and yet it's not, as it requires a monitor
Ever heard about a notebook? :lol:
Well, I love this thing. I have been thinking alot lately about getting one.
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It doesn't do very much for me, though I can see why it would have some attraction where expandability is not a requirement.
To be honest, it covers the same sort of market as the iMac.I suppose it reminds many of us of the A1200, A500 and even the C64, but it wouldn't be what I'd want these days.
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Hmm, reminds me of this (http://www.amiga.org/gallery/index.php?n=633)
:-)
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I think it's ugly and the form factor is useless to me.
Agreed, I too am abit fusy about my keyboards and mice and this thing makes frankenstein look cute! I also can't stand touchpads, but at the end of the day its all about personal taste and I sure as hell wont be buying one of these even if it ran OS4 ;-)
expandability is not a requirement
LOL has there even been a windows machine that does'nt require expansion as standard :-?
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brianjax wrote:
Ever heard about a notebook? :lol:
Well, I love this thing. I have been thinking alot lately about getting one.
Yea, who hasnt they are everywhere. I even have a few myself. Theres not much of a comparison. A laptop has a builtin display, they are usually small and can run on their own battery power for a few hours. With that hulking pc in a kb plug in a few usb devices and a monitor and you are dragging a rats nets around your desk everytime you move the keyboard.
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I wouldn't fancy a big black slab with wires coming out of it on my desk. I hate wires.
As for another drawback of this formfactor; the end is too thick. Therefore the keyboard's angle gives me pain in the wrist. The old 8 bitters and the A500/600/1200 have this drawback aswell. But they get away with it because they are old computers ;-).
I've never seen one for real either.
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Yea, who hasnt they are everywhere. I even have a few myself. Theres not much of a comparison. A laptop has a builtin display, they are usually small and can run on their own battery power for a few hours. With that hulking pc in a kb plug in a few usb devices and a monitor and you are dragging a rats nets around your desk everytime you move the keyboard.
I am sorry....what?
So I guess back in the Amiga 500 days you keept disconnecting your computer or losing the videosignal?
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I was just thinking about this sort of thing recently. I was thinking that for Apple's 30th anniversary they should make a computer in a keyboard that connects to a HDTV (or any other monitor). Most people are have or are getting HDTV sets these days and I think it should be clear enough to use as a computer display (unlike regular TV).
If they made it small and sleek (not nearly as big as that PC thing) with DVD and a side trackball (Centipede sized, not puny) I'd get one for sure! It would be similar in price to the original A500, smaller than an A1200 and you could just take it out and plug it in any TV - just like the old days.
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It runs Windoze......and I don't like it either.
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brianjax wrote:
Yea, who hasnt they are everywhere. I even have a few myself. Theres not much of a comparison. A laptop has a builtin display, they are usually small and can run on their own battery power for a few hours. With that hulking pc in a kb plug in a few usb devices and a monitor and you are dragging a rats nets around your desk everytime you move the keyboard.
I am sorry....what?
So I guess back in the Amiga 500 days you keept disconnecting your computer or losing the videosignal?
Probably not. back then you didnt own your desk, the amiga owned the desk. Take a look at the setups in the image gallery. Lots of amigas with piles of crap slapped on the side, little stands for the monitor and drives. You didnt move the device around much, probably because there was no room to move it to! On my c64, heck yes, i went through an awful lot of video cables.
Things are a little different today, the design is more refined. With the LCD's and small keyboards and devices, theres more room on my desk now than ive ever had before. I use that extra 50cm of space between my keyboard and monitor for stuff. I can lay out an open book, store a dozen empty cans of soda, etc.
About that machine, as i said before its not for me. If you are the kind of guy who likes a good rats nest on the desktop, or think it's fun to loose all your data because you accidentally spilled a soda, then by all means, go out and buy one. :roll:
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It runs Windoze......and I don't like it either.
If it runs Windoze - it can be killed.
(er, with WinUAE)
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nasty wrote:
LOL has there even been a windows machine that does'nt require expansion as standard :-?
I don't think we're in a position to comment, really. Selling underpowered and underspecced machines was Commodore standard marketing policy, as was making it as expensive as possible to exapnd those machines.
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About that machine, as i said before its not for me. If you are the kind of guy who likes a good rats nest on the desktop, or think it's fun to loose all your data because you accidentally spilled a soda, then by all means, go out and buy one
I don't drink soda or eat food near my computer.
My computer desk has a round whole in the middle. With a little plastic ring. I guess it is made for something like this. So I could picture my self with a clean desk, no wires. To me this computer is perfect.
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bhoggett wrote:
To be honest, it covers the same sort of market as the iMac.
At least with the iMac all the cables plug into the monitor, which is probably tidier and safer. But then the downside is you can't upgrade to a bigger monitor later on.
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Perhaps they should use VIA EDEN / Geode etc and create Power Over Ethernet Plus Thin Client/Terminal (30 watts).
The diskless PC will be great in classroom, labs, centralized computing, call center/reservation etc.
http://www.elecdesign.com/Articles/ArticleID/9807/ehg.hitbox.com
"The two-pair option prevents the cost and current balance problems, requiring only minor modifications to the circuitry already in place in today's 802.3af designs. The cost for two-pair designs is the power lost when the cable gets long, because only half as many wires carry current compared to the four-pair case. This lost power heats the cable (especially when many cables are bundled together), and it adds to the stress on connector fingers and patch panel traces. Above 30 W, these factors can become significant. Higher current levels also aggravate ringing due to parasitic inductance during plug and unplug events, increasing the risk of damage to PD or PSE circuitry"
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I've seen an A1200 somewhere online with the floppy drive DF0: replaced with a CD-ROM drive (probably a micro-thin laptop drive) and it had been sprayed metallic red with lacquer added!
I wonder how many drives you could poke out of an A600/A1200... if you had a Spider-USB you could make holes for the USB ports, maybe some card reader ports in the vents; a ZiP drive instead of a floppy even...
Personally I think it'd be neat to have a CD32/SX32 combo... a compact games console/computer with a silent, top-loading CD-ROM drive.
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Tripitaka wrote:
It runs Windoze......and I don't like it either.
You can install linux on it though :-)
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now thats a company amiga could sue, as this happend in the early 90s and they where sued by commodor. Hummm amiga then would have 2 knickels to rub together .Then I could sue them for using my name. hate wait a tick... Intel has those rights.
WEll I will wait then. Oh bother. :-D
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I dont mind it even if it isnt very practical.
Funny how many of you dont like it for the same criticisms that apply to an A500/A600/A1200.
The A500 was the worst desk-space hog of all!
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coldfish wrote:
I dont mind it even if it isnt very practical.
Funny how many of you dont like it for the same criticisms that apply to an A500/A600/A1200.
The A500 was the worst desk-space hog of all!
I didnt mind the c64 or a500's physical interface much back then for 2 reasons. One it's all i had ever used, and 2 it was totally worth it back then. Compare the a500 to a pc back then for games, no comparison.
These days though, PC's are cheap and boreing. I spend more money on nice displays and keyboards/ mice than i do on the actual machine it's self. I'm pickey about stuff like this, ive got 4 monitors on one box, and i move the kb around all day. The mouse is wireless, and it's convienent, not a big fan of trackpads.
If i had a desk like brianjax id probably want one of these things, but i like having folding tables for desks, very cheap and 6' long. I jam two together in a lshape, an all in one unit would drive me nuts. Back in the day with the c64 and a500 type machines, the computer always sat on the floor in front of the tv, i'm just not using my computer that way anymore.
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WOWOW! they look absolutley discusting!!!
Sorry but noone will EVER beat the super sexy design of the amiga 1200. sorry but if i had my current p4 setup inside the A1200 original casing i would probably jerk off over it.
kind regards
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mikrucio wrote:
sorry but if i had my current p4 setup inside the A1200 original casing i would probably jerk off over it.
Delightful.
--
moto
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I dont' like it either, it really looks ugly. wonder whats the temperature inside BTW.
@bhoggett underspecced?? I don't think so, most Amigas were high spec machines at the time they came out.
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hmm, I think this product is meant for the japanese market. people don't want to keep huge cases here and this gives them the flexibility of choosing your own monitor (laptop monitors tend to be small). It's quite adequate for some one who uses the pc for only browsing&internet and wants to have a big screen. design is horrible though.
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They should use heatpipes to make it thinner. Putting the touchpad on there doesn't look too bright, either. I'd wipe my palm over it constantly.
Also, I don't know why PC companies insist on wasting space by still supporting parellel and serial ports. They're only used by hobbiests, given that every printer made within the last 6+ years has been USB. Most BIOSes disable these ports by default!
"Excuse me, how do I get my EpsonQ dot-matrix to work with my P4?"
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@bhoggett
I don't think we're in a position to comment, really. Selling underpowered and underspecced machines was Commodore standard marketing policy, as was making it as expensive as possible to exapnd those machines.
I really dont know why people keep compairing this machine to an old amiga, the problem amiga had was Technology in the 90s and even then the Amiga was very expanable,so in short the amiga design worked this machines design does'nt. but as I said its personal taste and if you want one of these then go buy one. I'd rather have a nice looking A1200 or even a A600 over this machine any day. This machine has two memory stick as standard and it features a PCI slot(One 32-bit PCI expansion slot supports a single half-length (5.25"), low profile PCI card) which in itself is completely usless and outdated due to the newer pci express port. they could of atleast fitted a AGP slot to gain abit more speed rather than running at X2 and if memory servers me right then even the Amigaone has support for AGP ;-) and another thing with this machine is you have to choose weather you want to run a cd-rom or a pci card?
*Supports one optional slim type Optical Drive, CD-ROM, CDRW-DVD, or DVD+/-RW.
*Use of the optical drive will eliminate the ability to install a PCI card.
So before you even buy this machine you need to expand it with an external cd-rom unless you happy enough by using the onboard graphic's. wonder if the people behind this machine will try and sell us an atari 2800 as the next gaming machine :lol:
well i guess thats my 2 pennys
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this is a niche market machine. it isnt cutting edge it fills a need that some people may have for a small footprint computer. and as such it does pretty well i think. it is socket 478 so you can have a p4 at over 3ghz. it has two ram sockets, a 3.5 hd lan built it and 4 usb sockets.
i can easily see how this would fill many peoples needs for years at a time. say you wanted an internet machine that you could write papers on and stuff, that would completely fit on the keyboard tray of your computer desk. i think this would do it pretty well.
if you are a power gamer, need huge expansion your out of luck although the intel extreem graphics chipset is a good entry level setup its definitely no ati or nvidia setup
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I think this strikes a nerve in the C= community because the form factor so closely resembles our classic genre of computers, and that the same marketers who aggressively pursued Amiga's demise are now trying to capitalize on the C= product line. Shameful.
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i really dont think that commodore or amiga or any of the 8bit computers figure into many marketers minds nowadays when they are designing or marketing a new computer.
this really is a logical form factor excluding wires and expansion concerns.
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orange wrote:
@bhoggett underspecced?? I don't think so, most Amigas were high spec machines at the time they came out.
A1200, A600, A1500, even the A4000? High spec? I don't think so. They could - and most commentators agreed they should have been released with better specs as standard, but the suits at Commodore thought differently and the rest is history.
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I want one for my A1 (well whatever I can get when an OS4 compatable machine is available).
I am fed up of having a huge tower with 6 pci slots and all I use is one AGP slot for the GFX card. All that space and I am not using any of them.
An A1200 type machine would be sooo cool :-) (even if it is running windows)
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Err I prefer a computer in a monitor (like iMac) or in a very small box. I have a traumatic experience from my A500 with the At once card upon the cpu and the 2 roms switcher, that crashed when the pressure on the keyboard was a little bit stronger than the usual. Fortunately I got an A4000 later ;-)
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@Waccoon
you are wrong about serial and parallel, those things are used in sooo many devices.
for an example an hightech "sweeper" (osciloscope) made by Acterna costs some 10000$ or more and no it has no USB but improved version of RS232! (RS484 or similar, I forgot).
I've also seen many scanners in shops using RS232..
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@orange
This was the case in video 'til a couple of years ago. Now firewire rules. Having said that, some devices (such as an MNR10 noise filter/colour corrector) do a set job and if it ain't broke.... :roll:
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Zero footprint my ass.
The last pc keyboard I bought was less than half that size.
Besides, I could buy a similarly specced laptop for the same price, so what's the point?
You can connect an external display to a laptop just as easily as you can to this abomination, and if you really hate having a built in screen, you could always just take it off.