Comment Re:why get one of these when (Score 2, Informative) 246
there are so many other low-powered devices that will do so much more.
The important part of this work isn't that there is another device to do your downloading. Yes, there are better devices for that.
What these guys have done is design one way to keep your PC in low power mode as long as possible. One reason that people keep their computers on is that they want network services to be available. (Some keep their computer on because it's downloading torrents. I keep my computer on because I might want to SSH in or access my files remotely.)
This device is one way to keep a computer network-accessible while it's in a low-power sleep. (Hence the name "Somniloquy": talking in one's sleep.) They do this by putting a proxy between the computer and the network. The computer can go to sleep and have the proxy take over network functions for it.
This turns out to be a very general approach. For some types of network access, this device can get away with ignoring the data. For other accesses (like when I try to SSH in), it can wake the computer from sleep to process the request. For some trivial protocols like ping, it's easy to let the proxy just respond.
They show that it's still possible to get some power saving in complex protocols. As an illustration of its generality, they were able to implement BitTorrent within this design. Other protocols may give similar benefits. But they aren't about to implement everything out there.