Tango - A PC the size of a phone
TechCrunch has uploaded many videos from the TechCrunch "Disrupt NY 2014" conference on YouTube and I just watched a presentation that caught my attention. The video was about Tango, a quite powerful pocket PC.
According to the company's site:
Tango is a smartphone sized PC that has built in CPU, RAM on socket and SSD on socket. It helps you remove the clutter of multiple desktops lying around in your home and office. replace all the desktops with inexpensive docking stations and have one single Tango PC that you can carry around and plugin wherever you happen to work. Saves money and hassles of upgrading multiple PCs, OS’es, Apps, and Games. Saves a lot on multiple software licensing costs. Saves you from the hassles of data synchronization."
Really interesting product in my opinion, since you will no longer have to carry a laptop with you. It would be extremely useful for many professionals, especially for engineers who are not constantly in the office and/or travel and need to run quite heavy programs (e.g. CAD programs) that require a lot of processing power.
It runs an AMD Quad Core 2GHZ processor, has upgradable DDR3 socket from 2GB up to 8GB and an SSD socket from 32GB up to 1TB. The judges at the end of the video raise some valid points, especially about how user friendly the product would be if the users need to unscrew their device and upgrade it by themselves.
Price starts at about $400 for the Tango PC and the docking station and then you pay ~$100 extra for each additional docking station.
What do you think about the product?
Interesting idea, however the use cases you presented are not viable use cases. This is for people who do light computing. Those specs aren't enough to do any real processing intensive work.
I fail to see how this is really "disruptive", given that you could have been doing the same with the Motorola Atrix back in 2011. Plus, given the rapid advancement of the cloud computing space, it's becoming even less important to be able to carry all of your data around with you.
Heister: What do you consider "processing-intensive work"? Sure, the AMD A6-5200 isn't exactly an i7-4770K, but it's still gonna be faster than the Core 2 Duos and Athlon X2s that were all the rage back in the day.
Most modern process intensive applications allow for GPU off loading. Most modern GPUs have higher point computing capabilities than processors that are in the same price class do. With out a dedicated GPU in this device I fail to see any real use for this device other than for light web browsing and maybe some MS Office use. There is no way this would be an efficient platform for the applications the OP mentioned. Running CAD programs that usually run on multi thousand dollar GPUs on this device, you might was we go back to pencil and paper. It is great for buying grandma a computer to send email on. But other than that, its pretty much pointless.
what's the difference between this and an app that runs windows?
I mean, apart from the fact that it runs a desktop OS and can plug into a standard desktop display, its not much different from any current smartphone. An iPhone 5S is about as powerful as a device as most people could ever use. Smartphones will basically become this in the future, I believe.
This is a neat idea, but I don't see it being all that useful. If you add the ability to connect it to a monitor, keyboard, and mouse, then a smartphone could do this as well. I don't see any major corporations replacing their standard issue desktops and laptops with this given that most companies have a way for employees to work remotely and thus carrying around a hard-drive full of data isn't necessary. It also seems less secure as the device becomes subject to theft, damage, and employees losing it outside the office.
First of all, that presentation was difficult to watch.
Second, cloud computing eliminates the problem of "oh my data is back at home and I need it at work."
Third, the processing power will be limited to your Office functions, emails and so on.
Fourth, the notion that this could replace gaming consoles and such is a bit farfetched. While undoing two screws is simple for ram and HD upgrades, graphic cards will prove a limiting factor. A good gaming PC, which is comparable, to say a PS3/4 requires a pretty hefty set up. This won't come close.
I think if these guys were to take the emphasis off the processing power and comparable features to a normal PC, and instead tailor is a low cost solution to basic PC users, it could do well. Especially in the EM space where there is a focus on cheap IT, connectivity etc (a la raspberry pi).
The docking station itself seems like it's where the company is looking to boost margins but even then it defeats the pocket-size nature of it with it being 11 inches wide.
Heck, you buy complete package (limited to 128gb HD) and you're at $600 bux. Can buy a decent laptop with external HDMI connectivity.
You can build a ~$500 pc today that is more powerful than the PS4. Just so you know there are GPUs in the sub $300 range that pack more processing power than the entire next gen systems do overall.
I built my current PC for about that amount of money, and it can run even graphics-intensive games like skyrim, battlefield 4, etc. on high settings with no issues.
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