The shrinking world of technology
Intel may be able to build a Handtop PC, but would such devices be too small to be useful?
The future of processor chips is in power efficiency, according to Intel. This was the main message at the firm’s developer forum in San Francisco last month, when it announced a new power-saving architecture that will appear in its chips from the second half of next year.
Expanding on the theme, chief executive Paul Otellini said he envisaged Intel’s low-power chips being used in a new category of client device, which he christened “Handtop PCs”. These will deliver a PC-like experience, but consume less than a watt of power and weigh less than one pound (450g in metric), according to Intel.
But who will actually use such devices? We have grown used to kit getting ever smaller while becoming more capable as time goes on. PDAs and mobile phone handsets have become lighter and more compact, and the technology needed to make a full-blown Windows PC can be squeezed into an ever-smaller space.
In a sense, the Handtop PC is already with us in the shape of OQO’s Model 01, which isn’t much larger than a pack of playing cards, but runs Windows XP on a 1GHz processor with 256MB memory and weighs about 400g.
But this system has drawn mixed reviews. While it can run standard Windows applications, some testers found its performance sluggish, and it seems the batteries won’t last beyond a couple of hours if you use the WLAN.
The OQO also has an odd screen resolution of 800x480 pixels, which means that many Windows applications won’t fit on its 5in screen. However, simply boosting the pixel count can result in text on the screen being too small to read, as I discovered when I tested Toshiba’s Libretto U100 miniature laptop. This is a perfectly capable system, but its 7.2in screen displays 1280x768 pixels, resulting in eyestrain for anyone without sharp vision.
The problem with ultra-compact PCs is that Windows developers always assume the application will be used on a system with ample resources and a large screen.
Consequently, tiny mobile PCs almost always feel underpowered, suffer from poor ergonomics, and yet still have too short a battery life for a full working day away from the mains power supply. This is why I find it difficult to understand where the market lies for a Handtop PC, beyond some sales executives who demand the lightest possible device from which to give a PowerPoint presentation, or perhaps IT managers who need to access Windows admin tools while roaming their corporate campus.
But perhaps the reports were misleading, and Intel’s Otellini didn’t paint Handtop PCs as shrunk-down laptops. Perhaps Intel instead envisages them as small devices that do without a hard disk and don’t run full-blown Windows, but can nevertheless be used on the move to run applications that link to back-end enterprise systems.
Oddly enough, I think I might have already heard of just such a device. I believe it’s called a PDA.