Crunchgear’s Doug Aamoth is ambivalent about desktops with built-in touchscreens: he doesn’t really see the point in PCs like the Shuttle D10. But I can’t be the only one who sees a built-in touchscreen as incredibly convenient for a home file server, or some other use where you might want to have a computer but not have to dedicate a monitor to it. In fact, at a price starting at $500, the Shuttle D10 seems like a very attractive buy for just such a function.
Shuttle D10 with 7-inch LCD touchscreen [Akihabara News via Crunch]
#6: Ah, you beat me to it. This would make a nice shell for a MythTV system.
I am their target market.
Now, where to find one to play with for a bit?
Exactly.
This could also be cute for beautifully simplistic visualized status of your RAID array, or similar purposes as LCD serial teletype displays were used in Linux rigs in the 1990s.
In order to make it into a server, you’d have to get rid of Vista and install a serious OS. Does anyone know how, say, Debian Lenny would support the touchscreen ?
But it would definitely make for a great media center. Only needs a remote control.
This would be great for a home A/V Theatre system. Letting you select music without having to use your Projector or TV. It also minimizes the space it needs by eliminating the monitor.
Shuttle vs. a $500 Laptop?
The obvious advantages of a Shuttle are that you can put in bigger disk drives (3.5″ form factor still gets you a lot more gigabytes per dollar), or that you can put in a somewhat faster processor, or that it used to be cheaper than laptops for something portable. On the other hand, you can get a $400 laptop and hang an external SATA drive off it, and that’s not much different from a Shuttle plus an LCD monitor – if you need power, go for a six-pound laptop.
If there is some way to reverse the orientation so the bays are on the bottom and the screen is on the top, it would of a Macintosh SE. Looks like it would go beautifully with Microtorrent, some high-capacity hard drives and a powerful DSL connection.
I’m a sucker for Shuttle design, but having had 2 at home and perhaps 6 in the office (of various different vintages) they are not as reliable as you might hope. At least half of them have failed power supplies (although they did upgrade the PSU a few years back, and I haven’t had any problems since then with new PSUs), and pretty much all of them have failed on-board networking – the older ones with 100MBps connectors failed totally, and I had to install a network card in the PCI slot (not necessarily helpful if it’s your only PCI slot), and my newest one, with gigabit ethernet, will simply not connect at gigabit speeds for some reason, no matter how much I tinker with cables, drivers and switches.
I suspect the problem is with cooling: users do tend to put them up against a wall, which completely blocks the cooling vents on one side.
All the Shuttles I have bought, with the exception of the most recent one I have at home, have been AMD based. My latest Intel one does run noticeably cooler (hence quieter) than the others, so I’m more hopeful about the longevity. Pity the DVD-drive cover broke off the first day I had it, though.
- Andrew
#17: That’s a really good idea!
After recently installing a wall-mounted touchscreen for controlling my home media rig, I can definitely vouch for the functional aspects of using such an interface in the home. That being said, the fact that it is glued to such a large box definitely has a negative impact on it’s usefulness.
i would like a touch screen like this, but i wouldn’t have a need for much other than access to file windows for searching/organizing files on a hard drive. i often find that i wish i had a fast way to access the files in my tb hard drive, so i could share files with other people easily. other than that, i wouldn’t have a use for a screen on my cpu.
it looks like a microwave to me. I could see using this as a temp main computer and my dad walking by yelling* “WHY DO YOU HAVE A MICROWAVE IN YOUR ROOM? DO YOU WANNA GET FAT LIKE YOU AUNT? GO PUT IN THE KITCHEN”
*he’s deaf
I have seen these before…
Kaypro
http://flickr.com/photos/hanan_cohen/455243989/
Do they sell just the cases in the Mini-ITX form factor? I could do with one of those for my file server/MP3 jukebox (currently running headlessly).
why a built-in touchscreen?
Because POST test results are a PITA to see through VNC or RDC, and sometimes it really is the router’s fault you can’t see that remote desktop.
Hmm. This is nice, but I think I’d rather have that screen detached for flexibility. Perhaps a little wireless, handheld monitor, even if it could only update at about 10FPS? I wonder what tech would work best for that.
Bardfinn, I know what POST is. But IDK abt. PITA, VNC, RDC, etc. WTF, I know I should RTFM.
Pain In The Ass, Virtual Network Client, and Remote Desktop Client.