Sexy Intel Computer Design Worth Big Bucks

An anonymous reader writes From a BBC article, "Intel is offering $1m in prizes to designers and manufacturers who can come up with sexier alternatives to the "big beige box". The competition is open to PC designers and manufacturers worldwide and each company may submit up to five different designs. The grand prize winner will receive $300,000 (£159,000) to enable the mass production of the system and $400,000 (£212,000) to co-market the design with Intel. The runner-up will receive up to $300,000 to help with manufacturing costs."

Limiting Factor

[Kotukunui]

Just remember, unless the sexy new design can be stamped out in a factory in taiwan for the same cost as a biege box, it will be consigned to a niche of "interesting" designs and ignored as an oddity. Why do you think off-white is such a popular interior paint colour? Because its cheap and it doesn't clash with any other colour.

There are already cool, sexy pc case designs out there, but the biege box still rules. I suppose that Intel are trying to force this design into being a "success" due to their company-marketing-mass. Good luck. They are doomeed, dooooomed I tell you.

The biege box will just be tinted a shade or two, squished in shape a bit and then touted as a "breakthrough" in PC design. Leave the innovation to niche manufacturers like Apple.

Re:No.

[Ucklak]

Really. Haven't there been these design challenges before. I seem to remember one from Microsoft when Win98SE came out. Same time of the Hot Wheels and Barbie PC.
What always happens is that some Alienware looking crap gets the attention but the Mac still wins for design.

Re:Apple?

[)parenthesis(]

The system has to be VIIV compatible, and (sadly) Apple's machines are not part of that branding strategy. The main missing component? Windows Media Center Edition. It's one of the integral components of the VIIV brand. (another thing that is missing is the Matrix Storage Technology from Intel.... but nobody really cares about that)

Re:I like beige boxes

[47Ronin]

Instead of trying to innovate the outside which everyone has tried (and many fail to do), why don't people work on getting the INSIDE fixed?

I've seen many so-called "pretty" ATX cases that look fancy but the moment you open them up its like staring at the devastation of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Cables snaking and twisting everywhere, sharp metal edges and plastic tabs, screws... its a geek nightmare.

Some may deride Apple for the design of the Mac Pro case, but if you open it, you will immediately notice [apple.com] that they REALLY spent some time designing the layout of the interior parts. Heck even the the old Sawtooth generation G3/G4 towers (circa 1999) had that nifty side-handle design where the motherboard sat on a hinged door.

Re:No.

[NMerriam]

I simply don't get why dell can't just produce machines with clean lines and subdued colors. Minimalism is the easiest school of art to imitate.

Minimalism is the hardest aesthetic to do well. Minimalism means every millimeter has to be exactly right. The corner radius has to be just right, every curve has to be smooth, every surface has to be flawless, every edge has to fit perfectly.

Re:Far too many negative or...

[Jeff DeMaagd]

The 17" MacBook pro is no lightweight system either.

I think that unit weighs about 7lb.

If weight is a concern for a semi-mobile system, keep an eye on the tech specs. The Dell 2010 weighs nearly 19 pounds. That's getting pretty close to the weight of standard desktop, even though it is only using notebook chips - the T-series C2D Merom. So really, it's more competition for the iMac, not a Mac Book Pro. Dell sells far cheaper notebooks, I don't see the point in paying 2x-3x for a Dell desktop as a large Dell notebook.

bus evolution

[cybpunks3]

I think the problem may have to do with the fundamental concept of a computer being an exposed motherboard with a series of slots that house exposed cards. This goes all the way back 30 years to the first micro bus standard (S-100) through most subsequent computers.

http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lakes/6757/ images/chassistop.jpg [geocities.com]

http://www.oldcomputers.arcula.co.uk/files/images/ intl103t.jpg [arcula.co.uk]

http://www.infodip.com/pages/axiom/bus-passif/imag es/ATX60206.jpg [infodip.com]

http://www.infodip.com/pages/axiom/bus-passif/imag es/ATX6021_4.jpg [infodip.com]

http://www.ixbt.com/mainboard/epox/8npa-sli/board. jpg [ixbt.com]

This is indeed a practical and economical solution to the idea of putting together and updating your computer. It's really a holdover from the hobbyist days and people have gotten used to it, but it's not really consumer-friendly.

The cartridge approach as used with videogame consoles is better.

I think Atari had the right idea with how it implemented expansion on the 800.

http://oldcomputers.net/pics/cartports3.JPG [oldcomputers.net]

The only exposed surfaces were the card edges and the slot. Then you just close the lid.

You see this kind of design approach applied currently to flash memory. If you follow the evolution of the MMC card up through SD and into MINI SD and MICRO SD adapters, imagine the same approach taken with bus specifications. Older cards could be used with newer bus specifications via adapter sleeves. But you'd standardize on a singular form-factor. When you open up your PC, all of the guts would be hidden behind the casing except for the mating surfaces for the cards. All cards would be enclosed.

I don't see this happening because computer technology is by definition transient, disposeable. So nobody wastes money on ergonomics like this. Bus standards change so frequently that you can't even keep your motherboard that long anymore let alone your cards. So you might not even swap cards that much for the lifecycle of the PC beyond the initial system setup.

What I'd really like to see is more effort spent on coming up with a universal backplane that would be more future-proof, maybe something more passive where the glue that binds everything together was itself a module you could swap out. That way maybe the underlying frame could last much longer before becoming obsolete.