PC still beige, and butt-ugly

By CHRIS BARTON

PC design sucks. You know it's true. The basic, ugly, beige box with its awkward, TV-like screen hasn't really changed in 20 years.

Sure, sometimes you get the box on its side and sometimes it's black or grey. And yes, some have become a bit smaller with a few curvy, twiddly bits on the front. But you can't get away from a simple truth - the thing is butt-ugly.

It's hard to understand - especially when you see the innovative designs Apple comes up with. So I was hoping for something surprising, even stunning, in the lineup of new "concept PCs" at the Intel Developer Forum I attended a week ago. I was disappointed.

The new designs were all variations on the ugly, beige box shrunk to fat-telephone-book size. Intel vice-president of desktop platforms Louis Burns was excited, saying this new "form factor" represented a major change in PC design.

Sorry, Louis, it's not that new. Brick-like designs for PCs go back to the late 80s.

What is new is that the microprocessor chip itself has now become a key design limitation. Running at 2GHz and heading for 4GHz, the thing gives off so much heat that fan and heat sink requirements and the chip's optimal location on the motherboard are now paramount. In essence, that means a PC that acts like a wind tunnel.

That's what you get when you leave design to hardware engineers who design from the inside out.

Also coming to a PC near you in the next couple of years is a replacement for the PCI (peripheral component interconnect) bus.

What the hell does that mean? It's the data path between the chip and high-speed peripherals such as the graphics or networking cards that deliver great-looking video.

The last time a change like this happened was about 10 years ago - when the ISA (industry standard architecture) bus was superseded by PCI.

During the changeover chaos reigned, and for a while some manufacturers shipped PCs with both, but eventually PCI took over. I imagine the same will happen this time.

On the horizon is a bus called 3GIO (third generation input/output). Apparently a single-wire 3GIO connection will carry 206 megabytes a second. An eight-wire version will carry 1.6 gigabytes a second, and the 32-wire version will carry 6.6 gigabytes a second.

That's about six times faster than current PCI and quite a lot faster than the fastest ethernet network cards available, which carry data at 120 megabytes a second.

So many acronyms, so little meaning. What this coming bus change really means is another reason why your PC will soon get out of date.

You have to ask why they don't design PCs to last longer. Surely by now they know we're always going to want to go faster, so why not build in surplus "headroom."? Unfortunately not. Things like buses are worked by groups of geeks from the manufacturers who get together and work out a "standard" that will be good for us all.

Sounds fine in theory, but the problem is there are quite a few of these standards groups out there. And just when you think it's all sussed, one of the largest manufacturers decides to do something slightly non-standard.

So in the bus world, for example, you've got USB, IEEE 1394 (Apple's Firewire), PCI, AMD's HyperTransport, 3GIO, and Infiniband - to name just a few. That's what you get when you leave PC design to a committee.

So besides bus confusion - what can we expect in PCs over the next few years? Mostly more butt-ugliness I'm afraid.

But there are one or two encouraging signs. A flat LCD screen next to a brick-sized box does at least take up less desk space.

It's also nice to see more USB (universal serial bus ) alongside "1394" connectors at the front of the machine so you don't have to scramble around at the back trying to plug things in.

There are signs, too, that the floppy drive may soon be replaced with memory cards slots that can take both Sony's memory stick and the SD (secure digital) format. Look out, too, for wireless 802.11 dual band "a and b" networking cards as another "standard" fixture.

But for the real avant garde in PC design, you have to look to the fringe ground between PCs and notebook computers.

Here's where you find the tablet PC - essentially a flat touch-screen with computer behind it. It's not exactly a new idea. Tablet PCs go back to about 1988 when companies such as Go Computers and Grid Computing were trying to make handwriting recognition work. And in many ways tablet PCs seem little more than big-screen versions of handheld computers such as the Palm and Pocket PC.

But there are a couple of things that make them really interesting - they don't particularly need Windows and they don't particularly need an Intel chip. I know it sounds blasphemous, but if you want an example of really radical computer design, take a look at the Simputer - "a low-cost portable alternative to PCs, by which the benefits of IT can reach the common man".

Designed by seven Indian engineers to take the internet to the rural masses, the battery-powered machine uses a Strong Arm processor and runs Linux. What's more, it costs only $US250 ($581).

Third-Generation I/O (3GIO) Information

Simputer