Low cost and portable plug computing

A few months ago, Marvell introduced plug computing. In essence, plug computers provide services to your home network, with a very low power profile. While this is a great idea from a developer point of few, it's not that easy to sell the idea to consumers. Most people still think of IT in terms of "on" and "off".

So I'd love to see the idea of plug computing expanded to the desktop world.

ARM recently stated their interest in capturing the market for $200 netbooks. One keystone of this goal is Canonicals commitment to bring Ubuntu to ARM based computers. Here's an Computex 2009 interview with Bob Morris, Director of Mobile Computing at ARM Holdings, who talks about Canonical's success with porting Ubuntu 9.04 to the ARM infrastructure.

Here's Chris Kenyon, Director of OEM Services at Canonical talking about the Canonical ARM partnership:

While there is a growing demand for netbooks, it's not just the portability which attracts customers. It's also the low price for computers, capable of doing most of every-days work: internet access, office applications and entertainment. With rising energy costs and a growing ecological consciousness, energy consumption will be an important factor for future investments. With Zii's announcement of the ZMS-05 based Egg handheld, I recently noticed how far mobile computing has come. It's not only a few hundred times faster than my first PC (a Schneider PC 1512 DD), they even close in on the performance of my current computer. To be precise: In difference to the Egg, my computer isn't even capable of offering 1080p HD without chopping.

So why shouldn't a customer be able to use a handheld computer for home computing?

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All it takes from my point of view, is a (preferably industry standard) docking connector and a monitor with some i/o modules integrated (basically just USB, Ethernet and HDMI/DVI). After docking your PDA/smartphone to your monitor, your mobile device would just start a desktop environment. There wouldn't even be a reason to reboot the device, since I don't see a reason why Android and Ubuntu shouldn't be able to use the same kernel. If you need more hard disc space, just add an USB-drive to the monitor. You would be able to use the handheld display for additional information, like your RSS feeds. This would also work for your TV, just add a USB DVB-x device and a USB-harddisk to the TV and use your handheld as a media center. If you visit friends for a movie night, no need for a handful of DVDs. Just bring your mobile.

There's one catch: You would most certainly need more RAM for desktop usage than a typical "cutting edge" handheld has to offer. This isn't primarily a matter of costs, but of energy consumption. Luckily, there are already ideas on energy efficient RAM handling for mobile devices.

With falling prices for mobile equipment and subsidies from the phone network operators, this would enable more people than ever to use modern technology on their desktops. There's even a sane upgrade path for consumers with existing monitors and TVs: Just offer a stand-alone docking station. Since it would be basically a I/O-Board with a case, prices could be as low as $10-$20.

Since Ubuntu is capable of running Android applications, this might make Android even more interesting for game developers. Which would solve the problem of having only a few commercial grade games available on Linux.