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800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
Do you use a Mac? Maybe an Airbook?
Why, back in my day, a computer came with nothing and we had to walk 20 miles in the snow, uphill, both ways, to get parts to plug in to all the empty slots....
And there were 100 companies selling parts and drives and circuit boards that would plug right in and mostly work the first time, and the hardest part was reading all the reviews and trying to guess which were the best ones, and keeping your idiot friends from uploading incompatible drivers in an effort to be "helpful."
I can't imagine there's much of a market; people who care about upgrading already do (and will be put off by having to buy specific modules to upgrade things, as opposed to just getting the raw parts), people who don't won't bother. Fucking stupid.
Modular only gets you so far. It's not going to get you a new bus or a new IO chip or ICH or, increasingly, even video or sound card, because they're built into the motherboard. You HAVE to upgrade everything at once, because they are interdependent. And no one, not even the hard-cores, ever takes a soldering iron to a motherboard. Even God can't solder a 128-pin chip into a 64-pin socket.
We've had this conversation before with regard to phones. Swap-out modularization is DOA and always will be. That's just not how computers work.
CES is garbage and always has been. Gadgets are stupid. Calculator watches didn't change the world in the 1970s and their modern equivalents aren't going to change it in the 2010s.
Modular desktop is exactly the same as the component based PC system, in which if something breaks, you swap that broken part out instead of the entire system. It just looks prettier.
(I haven't changed my case since 2002. Everything inside has been replaced, mostly multiple times.)
I would add that modular is just another name for proprietary unless there is a universal standard. Apple's drive modules on the XServe were great, but pricey. Dead easy to use, but for how many times I actually swapped drives around they may as well have just been screwed in place.
The trend right now is actually towards less modularization with the iPhone, MacBook Air, MacPro, and competing phones, tablets, and all-in-ones.
My laptop has tension snaps that expose the RAM, and that snaps in too. Same with some sort of mPCIe slot where the WiFi is. There is an empty slot there but what would I put in it? This is 5 years old, we're not talking new tech here.
For everything else, USB.
If you think your computer is a closed system, you probably bought a closed system. Let me guess... MacBook
The next problem comes about when one considers that if you want to upgrade your video card, Razer doesn't make video cards (and if they did they would suck donkey balls). You're presumably going to want to upgrade to the latest GeForce or some such, from a company that DOES make video cards -- but then you're going to have to figure out how to install it in your Razer video module, which is absolutely guaranteed to be more difficult than just installing it in a PC case the normal way. From the looks of them, I don't there's any way to get a high-end video card in those modules at all; they're too small, and they don't have venting for the fans (video cards don't have oil cooling, sorry).
You could probably want until Razer releases a new module with the video card you want in it, but it is unclear why you would want to constantly put yourself behind the curve like that, and also pay a thousand bucks more than everybody else (gotta buy a new module case too, don't you?)
If you DON'T want a high-end video card, like that, then the whole concept of upgradeable modularity becomes moot, because your video card is built into your motherboard.
Future of computing? Hilarious. The dream of a "future-proof desktop is nonsensical on the face of it.
Not too impressed with the laser projector either. A better projector would be nice, but hardly groundbreaking. And you're never going to get really high-def on a grungy pitted painted wall -- and who wants to live in a place with giant blank stark white walls? Once you're off into 4K TV land, you're into the heart of CES thinking, and the heart of why CES is such bullshit.
My prediction: the future is in cheaper, better shitty devices -- crap semi-disposable tablets and phones and laptops, with good software and a much richer network behind them. The cloud, if you will. Not a bunch of hundred-grand megascreens with CEOs standing in front of them.
Unless you're just talking about the case. A case is not a computer.
I think I've pretty much exploded the idea of the two most-swappable components of a modern computer, the video card and the RAM, as being nonsensical. What's next? Hard drives? Tell me how many SATA drives you had in your machine ten years ago and we'll talk about future-proofing.
To me, the 4K TV stuff is neat, right up until the moment you realize we are still 10 years away from any content provider coming close to being capable of delivering the broadcasting feed necessary to utilize it fully.
Oculous Rift has the potential to be the biggest game-changer out of all the cruft at CES this year.
@fnarf I agree about the modularity. That's just silly. Modularity will not be within a device it'll be between devices (so-called Internet of Things).
But the surface/projection stuff is, I think, going to be big. The short-throw projector will make a huge difference. The walls won't be blank because the thing will be projecting your fake fireplace on it and you'll think your house it going to burn down it'll be so huge and clear.
At the moment people just want their TVs/Monitors etc. to be bigger and bigger. If you'd ever tried setting up a 120" projection theater you'd know it is a serious PIA - short throw would make it a breeze.
Turning my table into my "laptop"? I'm skeptical that we'll see anything usable on that front for a long time (and wouldn't you need a white table?).
A handful of ultra-geeks want their TVs to be bigger and bigger. The vast majority of the population doesn't give a shit. Look how successful 3D TV was. A bunch of millionaire tech buttholes are interested in watching a 120-inch video of a fireplace on the wall and wondering what is missing from their pointless lives, but not most people.
A step-by-step guide with no soldering involved. Unless you're making a Macbook there's no reason for glue either.
The real trend in "modular computing" is not a computer that has different mods, but the computer itself dissolving into separate devices (a tablet for casual browsing and content consumption, an entertainment box for streaming movies and playing games, and a cell phone for communications). The only thing folks really need a sit-down computer for is work, and if your job demands more serious juice than your out-of-the-box computer provides, then you're already savvy enough to install what you need.
Macs are made for kicking.
At that rate, people who aren't in the $40k projector demographic tend to think carefully about what electrical gizmos one really wants running. I think I'll be settling for actual things on my wall that remain visible without consuming energy.
Its also not the first "modular" designed case to pop up. The integrated oil cooling is something I haven't seen, and its a better solution that a fish tank full of mineral oil (cleaner). But there have been lots of case designs over the past 15-20 years that lock components in individual boxes to simplify cabling and cooling. This one is seems to be built around proprietary components (bad for upgrades and "future proofing"), and a clever cooling solution.