I was contemplating on phasing out my old desktop and was searching for good replacements. That's when I stuck upon the new fad in desktop computing - all in one's. The official definition for an all-in-one desktop from the wiki says that its a combination of a monitor and CPU. Just googling for all-in-ones gave me tons of pages and products from well known PC manufacturers like Sony, Lenovo, HP, Gateway, Acer, Apple (iMac), Asus, etc.
The Youtube videos link gives you an insight into what kind of features each one has and a comparison is also given. Now, I came to know that the PC also works as a TV (no TV tuner card required?). Also acts like a home theater, including some stunning graphics, audio and so on.
Also, the Lenovo ideacentre A600 features a 4-in-1 remote which can act as a VoIP phone handset, motion drive game controller or as an air mouse.
Next thing we have is the all-in-one printers. These have been around for some time now and the functionalities of these include printing, scanning, copying and faxing as well.
What next can we expect, hmm let me think, how about all-in-one PC including all-in-one printer in one box. Did anyone think about that already. Not sure!
The remote could not only double up as a VoIP phone but could also include functionalities like - working as a watch, calculator, your mobile phone, your key to the house, your gadget to control home devices (this idea is not mine but from a friend of mine) like Refrigerator, Microwave. Also, Kitchen utilities like Mixer, Grinder, Gas Stoves probably using protocols and/or technologies like UPnP, WiFi, Bluetooth and using 3GPP standards like FemtoCells, or Piconets.
The functionalities can be extended to include opening your gate to your home (in case of gated communities), opening your car garage, working as a key for your car, bike, etc.
There is no limit to our imagination. One thing the real all-in-ones could bring about is decreasing our carbon footprint and also make things hassle-free? (Rather contentious issue may be, also do we need more than one of these for all the family members - hmm, in that case, we may also need to add priority to the all-in-ones. The head of the family having the highest priority and so on and so forth).
If you have more ideas or comments to add to the list, kindly post them on the comments page. I would definitely want to hear some comments from everyday users instead of the geeks :-)
Cheers to the all-in-ones!!!
One down side I see with this approach is that the you are converging the point of failure to this one device and it has to have enough security around it to be sure that is is not easily tampered with.
ReplyDeleteAll in ones are great, but if one feature is broken? The advantage with discrete components was that if one part of broken, you can easily replace that. This has been the challenge all along - flexibility vs ease of use don't go along :-).
My personal opinion, I would like to see some consolidation but not too much either.
Cheers.
Thanks very much for the excellent comments.
ReplyDelete1. The single point of failure is taken care by adding redundancy (multiple family members have their own version of the gadget as posted in the article).
2. Security was, is and always will be an issue, don't you agree?
3. Breaking of a feature means your design or software is faulty. (The design of all electronic gadgets is always evolving, like, we had CRT TVs, then LCDs, now LEDs and God knows what next).
There are many gadgets coming into the market which can be repaired/replaced at authorized service centers.
4. Good point about flexibility vs ease of use, this needs to be addressed.
I liked this post about all-in-one's a lot. It makes sense about having a domestic all-in-one gadget.It sounds like a miracle or magic but if it malfunctions all those operations that a single device provides come to an halt.
ReplyDeleteSo it has it benefits and also problems.
This is a good concept.
ReplyDeleteCloud computing is another good concept if you havent thought about wrapping your ideas around.