The Next Computer?

Hi!

For my Senior Project I'm designing the next generation computer for the home user. I thought this would be a good place to get some input for it. This would be something totally new, so throw out what your idea of a computer is. What will be the role of the computer in 10 years? How will it help us live? What will its function be in the home? Maybe the most important question is, What would you want it to do? Remember, don't be confined to todays idea of a computer. Thanks alot!!

Athlon 1200c 512Mb
ABIT KT7A133
Creative Geforce2 GTS
Win2000

clones, byborgs, morphable objects - ie your bed can turn into a chair, VR environments. so you only need one room in the house. roads abolished - antigravity, teleportation.

did you know time travel is impossible - other wise - why havn't I met myself?

I would have made sure I cam back and said hello to myself just so I could say time travel is possible I have seen myself - that way I would be rich.

<font color=purple><b>Techie2001</font color=purple></b>
<i>(Crazy Alien)</i>
If it ain't broke, Don't fix it.

Ok,

I guess i let youu guys get a little to carried away. Maybe bring it back down to earth a little and think in reality (10 years from now.) Where doo you think they will be and describe their uses in the home.

Athlon 1200c 512Mb
ABIT KT7A133
Creative Geforce2 GTS
Win2000

Ambient room temperature contollers, lighting controllers, decent voice recognition, order before you travel tools for shopping (kind of that now), single point of contact, video/audio phone, home security controller and device for contacting the authorities in the event of break-ins.

Dozens more in my head. Some far-fetched some not.

<b><font color=blue>The Cisco Kid</font color=blue></b>

*OK, I changed my mind of the SRAM hard drive. Too impractical...Optical hard drives may work (or not) In my mind it makes sence since light is so fast.
*As far as monitors go, I don't think LCD will be the way. Plasma by far will dominate this PC

"The greatest pleasure in life it doing what other poeple tell you you can't do."

Your idea of tech is more like 2 years away.

Heres my version:

Computers will be inexpensive in comparison to today. Most people will not go out to buy a computer for the sake of a computer, but they will buy general equipment that will be "smart" i.e. have somesort of a computer built in. The uses will be more mundane than specialized.

There will be wearable computers used as personal assistants. It will be practical to be build the display into your spectacles. They can be controlled by subtle gestures and voice. It should be possible to control them with your mind as in wires to your nerves etc, but thats unlikely to happen (cos it already is to an extent). Imagine that guy you never spoke to at work, you meet him a few years later, he shouts out hi zeidlern, you think "bollocks! whats his name now!". no need, coz your PA will let you know his name from the built in visual face recognition system. This will also act as a comms device i.e. replace the mobile phone and pager.

The smart home controlled by a centralized computer. There will be various consoles around the house control relavant features of the house, rather than the computer. There could be dedicated consoles, or be accessed via a HDTV screen or voice commands etc. For example, not only will there be a central setting for the climate control of the entire house, but also more personalised ones for each room or even each person, and the climate can be automatically set to the preference of the person as they move from room to room. (forget fighting over the tv remote ).

Most devices will be connected to the net and it will be possible to control them remotely. Heat the food on you're way home, have it ready when you walk through the door. The fridge can tell you when you're running out of milk or even when your milk is out of date. It can even do the shopping for you over the internet (unless thats been surpassed by the datagrid).

There will be plenty of video on demand and such on the entertainment front. For routine stuff, the computer (not the service provider) can gather viewing habit information to give you brief of what programmes are on and can even record them when you're away, on the central permanent storage array ofcourse. (All the media companies will be totally against this!!!)

The techies like us will still be getting machines to custom build our tech-houses. The technology in those systems will be things that already exist today but are either only on paper or are being developed. There will be Memory technology devices for low capacity portable storage, fluorescent multilayering technology (data cubes and discs) for high capacity and mram for high speed fixed storage. Extremely highspeed memory. At the lowest level, the CPU technology won't be any different from today but close to its end though. At the high level, we probably won't be using x86 computers. We'll probably using 128bit computing with 256bit for large corporations etc.

There can be plenty of cool technology in that time. The only things to slow it down are the multibillion dollar corporations and stupid government legislations.

Oh yeah. The computers will run linux.


<font color=red><i>I refugee from Guatanamo Bay,
dance around the border like I'm Cassius Clay
</i></font color=red>

I believe the portable comps will be merely a pair of sunglasses, which have a translucent/opaque (u can set this) image that one can control either via a tiny keyboard in the pocket, or with eye movements (I have seen this technology demonstarted, where this guy had on a pair of sunglasses and they knew where he was looking, so it gave him the data on whatever he was looking at. It was awesome. O, and naturally this will be expensive but affordable.

Only if you let me see the Umpa Lumpa- Homer Simpson.