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Hardware

The Answer to iMac Envy: NEC's Z1 230

Posted by CmdrTaco from the stuff-to-hack-on dept.
Unit3 writes "Finally a real competitor to the iMac from a Wintel manufacturer: NEC's Z1 appears to not only outpower the iMac, but includes some very nice design and expandbility ideas that most of the iMac ripoffs these days are missing. " At $2500 I'm not quite sure that its an iMac competitor, but it has several other features that are quite tasty. Course it has to run Linux... I still think I'd prefer a VAIO.
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The Answer to iMac Envy: NEC's Z1 More

The Answer to iMac Envy: NEC's Z1

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  • I'm not sure I agree there. Floppy disks *must* die, and they aren't going to die until companies kill them dead.

  • Don't forget (Score:3)

    by IntlHarvester ( 11985 ) on Thursday June 17, 1999 @12:50PM (#1845237) Journal

    "NEC" is just another word for "Packard Bell", at least in the USA.

    In my experience their stuff has to be near the bottom in terms of product quality. And their computer is a 20th Anniversary Macintosh ripoff (Which itself is a ripoff of a Bose? CD player).
    --

  • Re:Sigh (Score:1)

    by Altus ( 1034 )
    anyone who considers that horendous pile of bits on a windows machine to be a "telnet Client" should have their head examined...

    its terrible, it barely functions at all and its huge (ever taken a look at the size of the executable)

    built in indeed
  • Both it and the Z-1 are sexy, slim machines. I like the idea of not cluttering my desktop. I think it's going to be the trend if it isn't already. Our lives are cluttered and this small-footprint machine is a metaphor for the simpler live styles we need.

    CmdrTaco wrote that he'd rather have a VAIO. I suppose that I would, too, because I've had a VAIO PCG-505G, the first of the VAIO super thin laptops, for over a year and it's performed flawlessly. For most of that year, it's been running NetBSD. I'm inclined to buy another VAIO when I have the opportunity. Other people complain about Sony's support policies but I haven't needed support from Sony yet. My 505 just works.
  • I could be wrong but if the ports were all independent of each other then they would all have their own irq, which is just way too much. I am thinking they are all sharing resources.
  • The 20th aniv. mac has (as already noted) Bosre speakers. It looks, a bit, like several models of Bang&olufson CD players. A bit, however. To say it was a ripoff would be akin to calling the imac an sgi ripoff because they both use colored plastics. Sure, the same inventiveness in design exists (and a sort of parodic modern sleekness), but, beyond that, similarities end.

    --Andrew Grossman
    grossdog@dartmouth.edu
  • Bah... my Netwinder's still cooler than this or the Profile. It isn't made by Packard Bell, and it comes pre-installed with Linux :)
  • For the Winmodem bit - the early VAIO's had Winmodems; for some reason, Sony put in regular modems in most of the recent machines. My 505TX's modem works *perfectly* under Linux. them.

    For the weirdnesses and instabilities - I haven't had any of them (knock on wood). How long ago did you get that F150? I'm extremely happy with the 505TX's performance running Linux, and would clobber the Win98 partition if I didn't have to run some programs under it...

    --bdj

  • Buy an imac. duh.
    Reasons:
    1. They're cheap. My office just picked up a first generation one for $600 even. Not bad.
    2. If you're inclined, they run linux very well. Why force yourself to buy intel and pay MS taxes? PPCs run linux and, telnetting in, I'd bet $$$ that no one could tell the difference (though it might be a little faster).
    3. It runs MacOS. At the very least, it's no worse than windows and has the advantage of not ginving money to MS or boosting their market share. One could go so far as to claim that it's a great productivity OS, but, if that's not your cup of tea, see #3. Also, MacOS is somewhat more robust than in the past. I have a month of uptime on this computer. Not bad for an OS previously reknowned for some spectacular crashing.
    4. They're designed well. Little desktop realestate, easy to set up, and work well as smart terminals. Because they're so cheap, we bought one for everyone in the office. 10 mins of setup time each, and they work great.

    To summarize, if you're a linux geek and have imac envy, you're an idiot or 'platform bigot.'



    --Andrew Grossman
    grossdog@dartmouth.edu
  • Original?

    *snort*

    It looks like a 20th Anniversary Mac.

    And it's from Packaged Hell? No thanks.
  • The new MS Natural USB keyboard makes all my OS/2 Warp 4 machines have trap errors.

    "Designed for MS " Its proprietary shit so I personally won't buy one. (We use them for ergonomically challenged people where I work)

    Amazingly enough, this never happened with the old MS Natural keyboards... this is a new "feature".
  • That keyboard is shaped identically to my Logitech Cordless. The mouse is a wired one. Too bad they didn't go with the entire Logitech Cordless Desktop--one of my favorite purchases. Just sit back with the keyboard on my lap and code to my heart's content. Mouse is on small table at perfect height near my right knee. No wires.

    For the money, I'd buy separates and get Linux hardware compatibility, more memory, more hard drive and not have to pay Microsoft for all that software. If it's PC technology anyway, why not make it the standard platform, expandability and non-monopoly support. Assemble it yourself. You might even save a few sheckles.

    If you want cool looking, proprietary and Linux compatibility, there's the NetWinder or Cobalt Qube. That way you are supporting companies which support the Linux effort, too. IMHO.

  • eeuurkk !
    I don't want that !


    Think Big STI ! (Elvis Graton 2)
  • I can't remember the last time I used a floppy. Can you? I don't see a lack of floppy as a mistake; I see it as a company trying to put a tired old technology to rest, where it belongs.
  • Another one, almost the same, but it's not from Packard Bell. (Which is an obvious plus.)

    http://www.gateway.com/promotion /profile/index.shtml [gateway.com]

    --

  • In a year, we'll be seeing systems like these with rear-projection 21" displays for under $1500.

    --

  • Who's Zed?

    Zed's dead, baby.

    I hope I'm not misquoting this.

    --
    http://www.wholepop.com/ [wholepop.com]
    Whole Pop Magazine Online - Pop Culture
  • I'm on one of the blue PowerMacs. The box on the QuickCam Pro said it'd work with USB macs and PC's, so I thought I'd plunk down the dough for it (My brother had an older serial QuickCam which worked great).

    It sucked big nuts. The video would show up way too bright even after I tried to adjust it manually. Also, the camera itself would get REALLY warm before the video signal would die. I tried testing it on a PC to see if it was a driver problem. On Windows, it worked a little better, but would still crap out after a couple minutes.

    What I'm wondering now is... was it just an isolated defect of this one QuickCam, or is it a design flaw that affects all USB QuickCams? I'm gonna experiment some more after I get my USB hub from Outpost.com, and then decide whether to get my money back or exchange it for a new one...
  • true, i think it will go the way of the 20th anniversary mac, just being a collector's piece. compaq and monorail tried some inovative desigans and they FAILED. i think that the imac worked b/c it is a mac and people expect it to be different

  • anyone who considers that horendous pile of bits on a windows machine to be a "telnet Client" should have their head examined...

    its terrible, it barely functions at all and its huge (ever taken a look at the size of the executable)

    Hmm...I'll admit that it's kinda bare-bones, but check the following (the first is from the retail Win98 upgrade, the second is from Slackware 3.6):

    C:\WINDOWS>dir telnet.exe

    Volume in drive C is BOOT
    Volume Serial Number is 1D75-07E2
    Directory of C:\WINDOWS

    TELNET EXE 77,824 05-11-98 8:01p TELNET.EXE
    1 file(s) 77,824 bytes
    0 dir(s) 1,890.10 MB free
    -------------------------------------------------- ----------
    chakotay:~> ls -l /bin/telnet
    -rwxr-xr-x 1 root bin 73456 Jan 27 20:19 /bin/telnet

    There's not that much of a difference between them in size or functionality. (For a better telnet client for Win9x, you can download HyperTerminal Private Edition for free...I use it to log into the Linux box with an 80x50 window so I can read news with trn, sanity-check my web site with lynx, etc.)

    (BTW, /. really ought to support the plaintext tag. It'd make the inclusion of stuff such as text-screen captures turn out properly. tt (a synonym for code) just doesn't cut it.)

  • Look at the bottom of the page. "©1999 Packard Bell NEC, Inc. All rights reserved." Packard Bell and NEC are one company now :-).

    So NEC == PB.
  • Four USB ports- now there's a decent idea. It might actually take more than a day to outgrow that and have to spring for a hub. Of course, we'll have to wait for the new kernel to really get it going, but...
  • Posted by The Incredible Mr. Limpett:

    Does anyone remember those Monorail "all in one" systems that came out a few years ago? (I think it was called Monorail...)

    Looked JUST like this. I even saw one in use a couple of places (including a hardware store/UHaul center).


  • I don't see why this is an Imac competitor...
    It may have the similar features and a cool look, but cool looking boxes have been available for a while from many sources.

    Besides, of course it outpowers the iMac...it comes out months after!!!
  • yep. the CDROM standard has a extension whereby you can boot most machines from the CD drive or write a bootable floppy to a CD writable disk.
  • you obviously havent come across the zip drives famed Click of Death. if your ZIP CLOD's youre toast.
  • the 20th Anniversary Macintosh! I always wondered what Apple did with the ones they couldn't sell...
  • I discussed some of this with the guy that works at a local computer store, and he got the motherboard to run by connecting a battery (via wires) to the outside of the Real Time Clock. The problem is that you can't cut away the plastic case to get to the battery, because you'd be cutting away the RTC, since the battery is inside the RTC. As for leaving it permanently connected to the outside of the RTC, he said that it would be possible for the battery to explode.
  • Yeah, and even with a lot of RAM and some nice cheap, fast CPU, Netscape is still known to CRAWL and suck memory like.. well.. I'll avoid the Lewinsky jokes (Damn those VoodooExtreme fools, they get to make ALL the Lewinksky cracks). Anyway, the point is that the program itself is bloatware. A cure COULD be a hideous amount of CPU/RAM but why the hell should I have to crank my system for one single program? This isn't Windows folks! Cheap/Old/GOOD Hardware forever!
  • i let netscape try to load it for rather a long while and finally decided screw it. when i hit stop, i just got a grey page saying transfer interrupted. so being curious, i go to "view page source" and the page's html had loaded in its entirety. now call me old-fashioned, but i think if netscape was able to load all of the page source, it should be able to draw the page, maybe with a few graphix missing...

    but nope, netscape was unable to draw even a small semblance of a page. grrr... and i'm on ethernet connected to a T3...

  • Z1 (Score:1)

    by geophile ( 16995 )
    Did you catch the slogan? "The Evolution of the Computer Ends With Z". Dopey.
  • easy. at 3 am:
    make all

    go to sleep.

    --Andrew Grossman
    grossdog@dartmouth.edu

  • iMac envy (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Move along, there's nothing to see here...

  • - Built in Winmodem

    I also have a VAIO, but the modem that comes with it works perfectly under Linux.

    It might be that they have different cards in Europe, but I was even surprised that it worked without any setup under COL.

  • Gateway's been offering a cool "slim" computer like this in Japan for a while already and is getting ready to introduce it in the US. Here's the C|Net News article [news.com] for more information. Prices will range from $1999 to $2299, which is a little cheaper than the NEC and I think overall, it's probably a better computer coming from Gateway. Personally, I like how they fit the stuff in the side. "Cool" computers come and go and the NEC one doesn't seem to solve too many problems that exist.

    My US$.02
  • Seriously, baby, me son just wanted the groovy thing, so I plopped down the bucks for the 333 Blueberry and bob's your uncle!

    Dreamy case, 96MB RAM, USB till the cows stop shagging.

    Not bad.


    Will in Seattle
  • Duh, how many new systems do you think come out with ISA slots anymore? I would bet this one would almost certainly not.

    Anyway, there is nothing wrong with PCI modems if that's all you have. There isn't any benefit, but not really a downside (AFAIK) either.

    Tom Byrum
    (Still using his Creative Labs 28.8 Modem...)
  • They are using IIS 4.0:

    "HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request
    Server: Microsoft-IIS/4.0
    Date: Thu, 17 Jun 1999 23:07:56 GMT
    Content-Type: text/html
    Content-Length: 87"


    I wonder when corporations will get it through their skulls that IIS simply doesn't cut it.
  • Seriously, everyone is doing CD-RW or at least Zip.

    If you're going to go for cool toy, then a floppy is just so 20th Century.


    Will in Seattle
    yes, my son's iMac is Blueberry, but he's 8, ok?
  • So far the only responses seem to be:

    1) The iMac is better

    2) The iMac sucks

    3) Who needs a beautiful machine anyway?

    I think /. readers need to become more attuned to machine beauty. Your box doesn't have to be an ugly piece of crap.

    What the iMac (and even more profoundly, the 20th Century Mac, which as one reader pointed out is the obvious inspiration for the Z1) did is break out of the mold for consumer boxes, for the first time making the machine something you wouldn't necessarily want to hide under the desk.

    Other machines, like the sony VAIO slimline and my personal favorite the stunning Rock City [rockcity.net], have made similar design efforts, but with the iMac, Apple made it commercially viable.

    The only downside I can see is really crappy upgradeability on this box. It (and the VAIO) use PC card slots. No TNT-2's (or -3's...) to upgrade the damn thing's Q3 performance.

    For that reason, the Rock City, which takes standard ATX motherboards, still has to take the cake...

  • There are two major questions left unanswered by the website.

    1. Keyboard. They don't show the keyboard in any closeup pictures, so you can't tell if it's any good on layout. They're not descriptive at all about the tactile feedback on the keyboard, so chances are good (with today's keyboard market) that it's crap.

      Additionally, they don't mention a PS/2 keyboard port, which implies to me that any replacement keyboard you put on the thing has to be a USB jobbie. I've never seen a good USB keyboard. If anyone's seen one, I'd like to hear about it.

    2. DVD decoding. They don't say anything about hardware MPEG decoding for the DVD-ROM drive. I recently got an IBM laptop with a DVD-ROM drive and I didn't know to look for MPEG decoding. So I got an unpleasant surprise when I went to play a DVD movie and it was... not too great an image. I suppose this is irrelevant to people who run Linux and choose not to show DVDs at all.
    Basically, this looks like a relatively cheap laptop packaged as a desktop PC. It's been tried before (remember the "PS/2e"?) and it comes nowhere near touching the iMac for what it's good for. They should have just used a CRT.

  • A bold announcement. Mac user comes out of the closet as an AC.

    I'm typing this on a rev. A iMac. I feel cleansed.
  • Now instead of a crappy integrated all in one thing, why don't people just make standard cases that look nice. Doesn't have to be cute, just cool. The SGI visual PC cases are elegant, and much nicer looking than the iMac which looks kinda cheaply built. Secondly many tests have been made and power PCs are markedly slower for floating point than PCs. Its a fact of life, the PPC 750 (AKA G3) is based on the old PPC 603. The 603 had good integer performance but crappy floating point. the G4 will be based 604 which has much better floating point. Lastly, MacOS is worse than windows. Bad memory management, bad multitasking, annoying interface (an app should not take over the whole screen! ie. The menubar at the top), bad performance, late OpenGL implementation.
  • From what I hear the problem that the QC Pro's draw too much voltage. That or they're on the absolute borderline of the USB spec. Depends on who you talk to, obviously.

    Either way the result is that some USB root hubs may not provide enough power for the QC Pro. But through the miracle of electronics still manages to operate for a short time (similar to how some US appliances have trouble operating in Japan, which is 110v).

    Those already providing power to other devices will obviously be harder hit, which definately includes the new Mac line - evidently the built-in hub in the keyboard draws enough voltage to cause trouble in this instance.

    Basically I caution you to be careful when buying a hub. Most of the cheap hubs out there are low-power (aka they don't provide power to USB devices), which obviously will not solve your problem.

    FWIW, I paid $40 for an Interex USBView 4-port hub from Buy.com last week (minus $10 thanks to an online coupon), it has realtime indicators for both bandwidth and power. And besides, it's got a cool blue LED! ;)
  • Sorta off-topic, but...
    try:
    http://www.vmac.org
    to emulate an OLD macintosh. Requires ROM images which, acquired legally, can cost $40. Haven't used it in a couple versions, but, at the time, it was pretty bad.

    http://www.ardi.com
    A clean room implementation of the MacOS, circa system 7. No extensions, massive incompatibilities, pretty fast. It's still under active development by a team of monkeys, but their progress is somewhat slow.

    http://www.emulators.com
    The have a hw/sw emulator called the Gemulator. Never tried it.

    Good luck.

    --Andrew Grossman
    grossdog@dartmouth.edu
  • The 20th Annies were sold out as of about three years ago. My brother got one of the last handful, at about $2000 (original price was a preposterous $7000)

    Can't be that they sold out. I just saw one last week for sale (still new and still rocking--damn, that Bose sound is awesome) at the local Apple dealer in Hannover, Frings & Kuschnerus. Them folks be at http://www.fundk.de/ [fundk.de] if ya wanna try and get it.

    Didn't see a price, tho.

    click and be happy [surf.to]

  • I would suspect that a lot of the new USB products have been brought about by the iMac. Although, I'm not saying that they wouldn't have come out, but the peripheral makers were given a group of users that the only way that they could upgrade was with USB. I don't think many PC users would buy a USB hard drive (with 1.5MB/sec or less transfer rates? no way).

  • Can't be that they sold out. I just saw one last week for sale (still new and still rocking--damn, that Bose sound is awesome) at the local Apple dealer in Hannover, Frings & Kuschnerus. Them folks be at http://www.fundk.de/ if ya wanna try and get it.

    Whoops, that's http://www.fundk.com/ [fundk.com]. Sorry... :-/

  • Posted by ChristianC:

    you may be able to use emacs, gimp and apache when the unix-like Mac OS X comes out
  • A good chance for us Scandinavians to corner the market following it: You see, we have three more letters. :-)

    "And now, the 2003 release of the Fjord Ø3. All the RAM, twice the CPU."
  • It comes with a pIII... not the best CPU (i'm holding out for the AMD K7... slot A, 200mhz bus speed.. truely superior to any of Intel's kiddie toys) And it runs WinblowZ 98.. Yeah, it'll run Linux alright.. almost right out of the box.. the video hardware might not totally be supported yet, but by the time it comes out, it probably will be.

    Someone said something that it's Packard Bell?? Are you smoking crack? NEC != PB!!! get it right, dumbass! >#)
  • Whenever I need to move source code from (or to) non-networked places,
    when I want to boot after Windows erased my MBR,
    when I am in school and they say: "you must back up on a floppy" :-)

    Though I use ZIP drives to transfer actual data,
    I can't rely on it, until most computers will have one,
    and for small text files, what's the point?


    ---
  • Posted by FascDot Killed My Previous Use:

    Yeah, but the stupidity of Apple IS present which is at least as big as (if not bigger than) that of MS.

    Now EVIL is another story...
    --
    "Please remember that how you say something is often more important than what you say." - Rob Malda
  • No PIII at any current MHz rating can outpower a 333MHz iMac. Make it with a PIII Xeon chip and then we can talk about similar horsepower. Too bad about the $5000 pricetag that machine would have.

  • Here you can find another one: http://www.mitac.com/micweb/index.html [mitac.com]

    Check out the Mitac Avenia, it's pretty cool. I once sent them and email and asked if it worked with Linux. Of course they could not promise that. But they did say that my email had reminded them of Linux's increasing popularity and that they would consider this in their next release.

    Well, we'll see about that. I'm not yet in a need for a new computer right now, my good old K5-system is still doing a good job. But I do like the idea of these kinds of PC:s, if they only could make them in black too...

  • They all share the bandwidth- and voltage too- depending on the design of the usb internals, you may *have* to get a hub anyways- a good example are those usb quickcams- they suck so much juice they can make your mouse/kb not work on macs...

    they share something like 2.1 or 1.2 megabits/sec...
  • I can't remember the last time I used a floppy. Can you?

    Yesterday. I'm sorry you don't like floppy disks, but for me they're indispensable, why should I have to spend $99 on a zip drive, and $14 on each disk when all I need to store on them is under 1mb of data? Sure there are situations where I think zip disks or CD-RWs are better, but for me, all I've ever needed is a floppy drive and around 25 floppies (total cost $30)
    -Ted
  • Posted by FascDot Killed My Previous Use:

    Does Rock City sell computers? Or just photos of women in short dresses standing next to wind machines?


    --
    "Please remember that how you say something is often more important than what you say." - Rob Malda

  • Oops! I was actually thinking of B&O!

    Something like this: http://www.bang-olufsen.com/default.asp?id=214
    --
  • Not talking about the design of the beast, which is a copy of the Apple Spartacus (20th anniversary one), but about compatibility...

    I'm a graphic designer and in my company we use both PCs and MACs, without any compatibility problems. For the graphic files, Photoshop, Illustartor etc. files are the same on both platforms, and I can read and write Mac zip disks, floppies, HDs thanx to a little piece of shareware called TransMac ($64). So your argument goes ploof on that one.

    And, as a PC user, I also understand why ppl use Mac in the graphic industry... Because it all started with Mac! 10 years ago, everyting was done on Mac simply because PCs were still discovering how to display more than 16 colours at once AND were as easy to use as they are today. It was also already super easy to put them in a LAN cofiguration, which can still be tricky with Windoze...

    At the moment, I'm using NT (yes, I know) for all the graphics I do, but seeing how fast the G3's are, and looking forward the new Mac OS, I might consider a little Mac training.

    Unfortunately, Linux still hasn't reached a user-friendl state that will allow artists without computer knowledge to do whatever they want without undergoing a computer training.

    Now you know!
  • Which part of this don't you understand?
    Expansion/Ports:
    • .... PS/2 Keyboard, PS/2 Mouse
    Yup, you can use a PS/2 keyboard on it. You might need to, if you want to run linux.

    My favourite comments was:

    8.4 GB - An enormous amount of space to handle your future storage needs
    Hrm, I have 8GB at the moment (on two drives); I could still use more!
    --
  • It doesn't seem to be better... Less memory, slower CPU, worse graphics, smaller HD.

    I don't see the point in buying brand name computers anyway, at least not PC computers. SGI PC machines are pretty nice though, albeit a bit slow in Q3Test.
    /El Niño
  • Sony has a desktop that looks like this (it has a console unit, but the basic flat panel styling is close to the Packard Hell's style). And Apple, of course, already built this when they released the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh (Spartacus). And when, pray tell, did Spartacus ship? Oh, yeah - 1996.

    SGI builds some cool looking stuff, but one thing about Apple - when it comes to design they tend to be _way_ ahead of the curve in the mainstream computer market. Wintel cloners (for good reason) are focused tightly on cost, and Apple doesn't need to obsess as much there - their main competition was the now defunct Mac cloners. And Apple's designs were probably at their most boring when they were squeezing the nickel until the buffalo shites against the cloners.

    Think about some of their design "greatest hits", though:

    The original Mac (and derivatives like the SE and Classic): Compact, friendly-looking, portable, quiet, and all-in one before the trend started (luggables like Compaq didn't count).

    The Mac LC series chassis systems: About as small as a mainstream desktop has ever gotten.

    The original Powerbooks (especially the 100): For the time, a much slicker looking system. The pivoting feet were pretty innovative then, and they still don't make many systems as small as the PowerBook 100 was almost 8 years ago.

    The PowerBook Duo: The first of the Transformer notebooks and still (arguably) the best-executed. Motorized loading, VCR-style, of a very slick subnotebook that turned it into a conventional desktop.

    Spartacus: Possibly the first desktop to have an integrated active matrix screen. And they're still serious eye candy.

    The Wall Street G3 PowerBooks: Fast, great screens, and "wicked swoopy".

    iMac: The first truly stylish consumer-level computer. Decent amount of stuff crammed into it, too, for the price - and to Apple's credit, they've been pretty aggressive about revving it upwards without raising the price at all.

    The Blue&White G3s: The case pivots open - how can that not be cool?

    I'd like to see Packard-Bell match _that_ track record...
  • I doubt very much that it is faster. The PPC has a severe speed advantage, even though the iMac only uses a 66Mhz Bus.

    Cheers.
  • The iMac is a low cost, al in one, easy to use computer wich happen to have cool looks. Making a cool looking PC still doesn't make it easy to use. You still have to spend weeks to configure it right. But hee... isn't that why geeks buy PC's :O)
  • "plus a unique hard drive peripheral upgrade connector"

    Translation: plus a PROPRIETARY upgrade connector, not compatible with anything else on the planet.

    I didn't notice - is this supposed to take the place of firewire? Whee.

  • Show me a benchmark.
    Does your 333MHz iMac do 1.6Mkeys per second of RC5? My P3 does..
  • Hmmm...

    It looks just like the Monorail [monorail.com]. Kinda neat, but no biggie.

    Personally, I have a 17" monitor, MS Natural Keyboard, and a Logitech Trackman Marble hooked up to four -- yes four -- computers: My Linux box (what I'm using to write this), My MS-DOS/Win3.11 laptop (my main computer), My voicemail system, and my linux-based network gateway. One of these days I'll get around to hooking up a Win95 box to play with.

    I'm using a OmniView switch box, of course. With something like the NEC, you need to make room for multiple keyboards, screens, mice, etc. to use multiple computers.

    I see these as handy in places like the foyer to leave messages to housemates/spouses/kids, etc, or other household/general business tasks.

  • What we might be seeing here is a new business model in the hardware industry.

    Previously, as all wintel boxes were pretty much the same, profit margins had to be pretty low. Raise your price by $100, and the consumer will buy a similar box from someone else.

    But with the iMac, the Z1, the Palm V, and the funky-looking prototypes that are coming out, manufacturers are giving consumers a reason to spend an extra $100: differently shaped plastic. Before, they only had "latest" and "fastest" to achieve the "wow" factor, but everyone else can sell the latest and fastest too. Only you can sell a case you've copyrighted. And, if I'm reading the Z1's specs right, you can bilk the hell out of the customer for it.

    We might even be entering a time like the '50s of Big Iron. At the time most U.S. auto profit came out of large, overpriced cars that people didn't really need. If this _is_ the beginning of a trend of cute, chic, overpriced computers that people don't really need...

    ...well, suffice to say that despite all the iMac's comparisons to the VW beetle, within their respective industries they would be absolute opposites.

    -crazy uncle dave

  • N = Nippon = Japan

    I think the point the original author was trying to make is:

    Japan = small/cramped living spaces = people will appreciate the small size of this thing.

  • This is probably a little off topic, but I hate when people compare the PowerPC or G3 chip to an Intel chip "at the same mhz". Simple fact:
    PowerPC == fully RISC
    G3 == fully RISC
    PII/PIII == CISC with specialized RISC instruction sets
    It's like comparing a MIPS and PIII, it just doesnt work right. RISC is naturally faster than CISC at comparable clockspeeds simply because it doesnt use as much chip overhead to process, it uses a handful of small instruction sets rather than large variable length instruction sets. It's easier to read a paragraph composed of small short words than it is to read one that says the same thing with more colorful language.

    As for cuddletech, cute needs to be powerful or people wont buy it. But it also has to be cheap so people can afford it. I like the iMac, it's a well designed machine that is very easy for a new users to get working with. For serious users who know whut they're doing an iMac probably isnt the best idea. But with the PC industry trying to copy the iMac's popularity they are missing the point. The iMac is cheap and cute. It's icons are cuter, it's boot screen is cuter, it's made to make you want to hug it, hence the name cuddletech. The Z1 probably wont catch on, Windows 98 isn't cute, it's expensive, and it has "cool factor" but no cute. I'm not going to buy one, I like beige boxes that I can tear apart and rebuild with as few proprietary parts as possible.

  • OK, so this thing is basically made up of laptop components, with the keyboard separate instead of connected, right? Why doesn't anyone take it to the next step? They should make the "monitor" an actual laptop. Have the screen hinge fold backwards and have it stand up like a "V". This way, you get the compactness of this thing when you're at home, but without the normal cramped keyboard. Plus you can take it on the road if you need to.
  • Really.

    It looks like a repackaged laptop minus portability.

    Why not just get a laptop?

    It's not a particularly cutting edge design, so it doesn't even have that going for it.

    My assesment- it's not worth any more of my time.
  • I've had the Logitech Cordless Desktop for about
    six months. I'm quite happy with battery life. I've replaced the batteries once.


    For a couple of months of that time I wasn't actively
    using it, so YMMV [tuxedo.org].

  • Well, I'm a Mac user, and I'll admit it: my computer isn't perfect. Neither is my operating system. And Apple has certainly had its share of mistakes in the past (and probably the future).

    But nothing's perfect, and I can say with certainty that despite their shortcomings, I love my operating system and the company that makes it. I have yet to see a wintel user that can say the same.
  • It look like the DINO sold in Korea, made by
    the DAEWOO.

    My personal opinion about the DINO is that
    it's cool. But it would be difficult to be
    upgraded.

    I like the NEC's one more. The finishing of
    the case would be great. ( decision by looking at
    the NEC notebooks- super slim notebooks. )
  • I still think I'd prefer a VAIO.

    I'm typing this on a VAIO F150 running Red Hat 6.0, kernel 2.2.9 (yes, I know I should be running .10 by now).

    This is what's wrong with my VAIO:

    - Built in Winmodem - it hits high tranfer rates, up to 55kbytes/sec on download of compressed files (I've seen it) - BUT it sucks because the specs are closed, forcing me to use an extra modem when running Linux, and also, the winmodem *heats up the processor* (no kidding - the fan comes on high when a download is in progress).

    - the advertised uptime on batteries is just a lie - you will get an hour at most off one battery. The power-hungery winmodem and big display just make this worse. **You will need that second battery*** (it fits into the floppy bay).

    - the DSTN screen is a little iffy - it's nice and bright, but you get rectangular bleeding from bright colored regions across the whole screen, both horizontally and vertically

    - the power management bios support is very questionable... it worked for a couple of days under Windows, then just started crashing after that. Under Linux, suspend/restart works the first time after booting, the 2nd time you'll die a horrible death from which only a hard power-down will get you back. Once I even had to pull the battery to bring it back to life.

    - There is some strange interaction with LILO or kernel (I haven't isolated it yet) that causes root to fail to mount (100% repeatable) if LILO times out - to boot Linux you have to hit Tab, then enter.

    - There are some very curious omissions in the bios setup, such as not being able to turn off the cute little sound it makes every time it boots (yes, you can turn the volume down, but you can't turn it off). You can't get rid of the "SONY" screen either, which hangs around far longer than necessary. Apparently, MS knows how to get rid of the bios preboot screens, because the annoying Windows preboot screen goes away after you add logo=0 to MSDOS.SYS and start/exit windows, or else the VAIO knows how to read the msdos.sys file (yikes!).

    - No way in the bios to turn off pressure-sensitive mouse click emulation - this would be great if it worked reliably but the truth is it doesn't - you get a *lot* of spurious clicks, even when hardly touching the pad.

    - The speakers really suck.

    Um, that's about it with my gripes, the bottom line is, with a 300 MHz Pentium II processor (reported as a celeron by proc) it really kicks butt, recompiling the kernel in about 5 minutes. It has a nice, fullsize keyboard and a large bright screen (mine has 1 dead pixel, I'll have to talk to Sony about that before my warrantee expires). Now, if Sony would just do something about the warts - lose the winmodem, debug the power management, etc., I'd be a really happy camper.

    (if someone from Sony is reading this, feel free to drop me a line at phillips (at) dowco (dot) com)
  • That is something that is long overdue to die! ISA slots!
  • > ...has the advantage of not ginving money to MS or boosting their market share...

    Not quite true, MS own a significant proportion of Apple Stock (somewhere between 5 - 15%). Some kind of 'keep apple afloat so we can say we have competition' deal.

    --
    Bin
  • This must have been before PB decided to integrate everything and make it even hard dr to replace. =)
  • The iMac is a concept existing of low cost, al in one, easy to use computer wich happen to have cool looks. Making a cool looking PC still doesn't make it easy to use. You still have to spend weeks to configure it right. But hee... isn't that why geeks buy PC's :O)
  • Maybe you need QoS support to some degree on USB - clearly the bandwidth is somewhat limited when you put video or other time-sensitive traffic on it. Firewire (IEEE 1394) is meant to handle such traffic better. Also USB 2.0 will have a lot more bandwidth.

    Since USB is somewhat like an Ethernet shared-medium segment in concept, you could perhaps use RSVP plus SBM (RSVP allocates bandwidth end to end, while SBM is the implementation for Ethernet subnets). This all seems rather heavyweight, and assumes you are running IP across USB, which is not how devices currently work.

    A lighter-weight approach might be sensible - just have a mini QoS policy manager for USB that lets you allocate bandwidth and class of service (e.g. gold, silver, bronze, where gold gets to front of queues), with simple weighted-round-robin queuing (like CBQ, you get a guaranteed bandwidth for gold and silver but can burst beyond that). Then you just config this on one USB host so that (say) your video grabber gets X MBps of gold, and your keyboard/mouse get a very small amount of silver. This is basically the DiffServ model but would need implementing over USB.

    The policy-based approach means that the user can decide whether video is more important than mouse input - for a video editor, it might be, whereas for general use, it might not.

    Linux 2.2 has quite impressive queuing support which is already multiprotocol but I have no idea whether it makes sense in kernel terms to try to apply this to USB - probably only a very small subset of the full Linux-DiffServ stuff is required.

    My company makes DiffServ focused policy-based network management tools - currently we don't support USB, but it would be cool to see this working!

    For useful links, see www.orchestream.com (my company, see the Links page), http://www.qosforum.com QoS forum, check the About page), and http://lrcwww.epfl.ch/linux-diffserv/ (Linux-DiffServ).

    Of course, for videoconferencing, you may well want to have the same QoS applied for a USB video camera across both USB and the IP session you are using for the videoconferencing app. This is where an RSVP and/or DiffServ approach makes sense, since they can span multiple technologies and you can just assign one QoS policy across IP, USB, and maybe FireWire etc. Really the simplest solution here is to give every USB and Firewire device its own IP stack, which is bound to happen eventually, and avoid having to port DiffServ/RSVP to different stacks.

  • Well, sure I've got a ZIP, and a tape; however, at the office and around, the good old floppy is the only thing I can count on people having. Besides, I haven't found (maybe not looking hard enough) a utility that will let me boot linux through the ZIP. Can it boot from CD like Solaris?

    Hey, just coz we have all this space to waste, doesn't mean we should. Distributing by floppy is a nice way to cut down code size. Small programs are happy programs.
  • I had those problems with the LS-120. Bought it for my machine (when it was just parts in a bag...) The guy said that to boot from it you had to load the drivers for your OS. Huh? This is a new machine, I try to explain, it has no OS yet.

    Well, after a few minutes of trying to explain myself I just went and picked up a $10 floppy drive.
  • What part of that didn't I understand? Umm... I'm not sure. Probably the whole thing. Sorry, temporary case of blindness. But yeah, this is definitely good news!
  • The floppy drive in my Mac has been broken for over two years. To be honest, I don't really miss it at all. I don't really need it for anything- I back up all my files to tape (which is much more useful than anything for backups, since it holds 4GB+). Smaller files (i.e all of the documents that I create are backed up to a fileserver on the internet). Since Macs have never really had a problem with booting from a CD, installing MacOS releases has been a breeze.

    Furthermore, the only thing that I use the floppy drive in my Intel box is for reloading Windows NT when it barfs (now that I have a BIOS that supports booting from the CDROM, I don't even need to do this anymore). I did use it once to install FreeBSD, but I've been downloading all of the patches over the net.

    I guess the lesson here is that if you don't run windows, you don't need a floppy. :-)
  • Just out of curiosity: How often do you have to replace your batteries?
  • I have heard that when IIS4 gets bogged down, the first thing it does is stops serving to Netscape browsers (all non-IE browsers to be more specific).

    I don't know if it's true.. but I have had the experience of trying to load a page from NS and IE at the same exact time using the same connection to a site that has been /.ed and the IE browswer would get the bandwidth... the NS browswer wouldn't.

    If you click 'reload' on the Netscape browser 4 times, it seems to bypass this.

    Anyone know any info that would validate this? I have a hard time believing it would be possible... but as I said, from my experience it seems to be the case.

    --SONET
  • The PowerPC processor is not so great RISC
    cheap. It's a CISC-fied RISC chip.
    To be a RISC chip, it has too much OP codes.

    And.. I think the PowerPC is not that
    faster than the P-III. Although I like Apple's
    products, I don't see any reason to choose
    the PowerMac over Pentium PCs.
    Current Pentium machines are fast enough, and
    cheaper, and easy to be upgraded.
    I know some shortcomings of Windows and PC H/W,
    but there is some replacement. The Linux!

    The PowerPC chip is just a subset of Power architecture. Even IBM use the Power3 for their
    highest level machines. ( Well.. Yes.. they
    use the PowerPC for up-to middle level machines. )

    Anyway, PowerPC is not in the league of MIPS/Ultra
    SuperSparc, Power3, StrongArm, Alpha.
  • The 20th Annies were sold out as of about three years ago. My brother got one of the last handful, at about $2000 (original price was a preposterous $7000).

  • Re:Z1 (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    But it's true! 31337 WaReZ hackerZ and gamerZ d00dZ!
  • You know how there's a certain amount of bandwidth on USB ports? If your computer has 2 ports, are they bandwidth-independent of each other, or does heavy traffic on one affect the other?
  • Damn, maybe that explains why my USB QuickCam was on the blitz! My mouse and keyboard were running fine, but the QuickCam would overheat and get crappy-ass video! My brother had an old serial-port QuickCam from the old days and it had better performance than the QuickCam Pro I just bought... Ok, I will try it with a powered hub.
  • The iMacs are on a different speed scale, with a 66mhz bus and SO-DIMMs instead of SDRAM. Benchmarks I've seen of the 333mhz iMac showed that it was still slightly slower than the 300mzh Powermac.

  • Most likely all four ports are connected (Score:3)

    by timur ( 2029 ) on Thursday June 17, 1999 @12:08PM (#1845429)
    On the iMac, the two USB ports are connected. I would assume the same is true on this computer. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if Windows 98 didn't support multiple USB adapters.

    In other words, all your doing is sharing the bandwith among four ports instead of two. It still helps in reducing the need for a hub, but that's it.

    --
    Timur Tabi
    Remove "nospam_" from email address

  • It has an LCD screen. AFAIK, those still aren't cheap. Not that that makes this thing worth the price, but that would explain where at least some of the price comes from.
  • LinuxPPC [linuxppc.com] runs on the iMac already. As for the price, an iMac costs 1/3 to 1/2 as much, depending on the model. You can get an older iMac for under $900.

    Anyone who thinks this competes with an iMac is a moron. It costs twice as much!!! Would you compare a $20,000 Honda Accord with a $40,000 Porche?!?!? No, of course not! Would you blame someone for choosing the Accord over the Porche?!?! No, of course not!

    When will you people realize that the iMac is a great computer, it just wasn't intended for the typical Slashdot reader! And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that! I bet that for 90% of the people who read Slashdot, the iMac is a great computer for their significant others.

    --
    Timur Tabi
    Remove "nospam_" from email address

  • Re:iMacs cost 1/3 to 1/2 as much and also run Linu (Score:3)

    by shymko ( 7271 ) on Thursday June 17, 1999 @05:46PM (#1845450)
    Yup. I am one of those 90%.

    And, like everybody else around here, I'm a tinkerer. I've run linux for web development, as a router, and as a desktop. I've tried GeoWorks, OS/2, most of the Windows flavors, and BeOS on PPC. I've used Slackware, RedHat, Debian, SuSE, and Caldera. I helped administer a FreeBSD server in a library. I buy or assemble a computer every few months then usually sell it after I get bored.

    But nothing has proven of any lasting value until I got an iMac at home (well, okay, that FreeBSD box was pretty solid). It takes care of a lot of things that bug me: it's small, quiet, doesn't demand a lot of maintenance, makes good use of the ADSL line and it runs Netscape Communicator without a hitch for hours on end. Most Linux boxes won't even do the last part.

    If it had a bit more room for more pixels and ran a terminal window with bash, it'd serve the needs of a good chunk of that /. 90% as well. Gimme emacs, gimp and apache on an iMac, and I'm not sure what else I'd need.

    Sure, Apple is greedy and pushes silly proprietary ideas too far. But when they get the hardware right, it's damn impressive to see. Nobody else seems to understand the idea of a home Internet appliance. Give 'em some credit.



  • What kind of computer and what type of USB support do you have? I also have a QuickCam Pro and had to run the gauntlet of misleading info to configure my computer. FYI, QuickCam Pro, beige Mac G3, and Entrega PCI USB card. The entrega USB device driver was interesting; you had to use ResEdit to get it to work.

    Keyspan (another provider of PCI USB cards) had previously reported problems with the QuickCam Pro. Initial reports indicated that the voltage of the QuickCam was not up (actually down) to the USB standards. Tonight I return to the Keyspan site [keyspan.com] and find out that everybody is pointing the blame to everybody else.

    Go figure.

    BTW, I used to use a MacPoint Pro mouse to get 3 button support for LinuxPPC. Three kernel patches later (the patches had to be delicately manually put in), I decided to gamble with a USB 3 button mouse with the release of LinuxPPC R5. I heard reports that it was suppose to work. After some minor puttering around my 3 button USB mouse works great! Gnome looks great! This coming from a previous fvwm user.:-)

  • Re:oops (Score:2)

    by craw ( 6958 )
    Why oops? I read what you wrote and could easily see the typo. I would hope that the other folks that view this site would also recognize this "typo." Some other people will also point out your 55 KBits/s -> 5.5KBytes/sec glitch (hey!, close enough for government work!). Big F*cking Deal! Your other points about the VAIO are well recieved. I don't know anybody else with this beast, so I welcome hands on comments about it.

    Your oops is unfortunately required by /. and other net sites. Visualize vulture circling overhead, ready to pounce on any mistake. (Probably circuling this post :-))

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