Looking at smartphones and PDAs I'm increasingly pondering that the old fashioned home computer ideas of static hardware and an OS dedicated to it are a damn good idea. As it stands the x86 based PC is a ludicrously customisable unit with the ability to pick and change hardware for many aspects of the unit and a selection of generic OSs to run on all this hardware.

Many moons ago the hardware didn't change apart from if you were lucky a solitary expansion port on your computer to add extra functionality. The OS was customised to the hardware it was running and resulted in a stable and sometimes tweakable system (looking back at the old 16 bit Atari and Amiga computers here). In a time where machines are getting faster and many functions gain their own dedicated chips to do the work for them the need for an OS to be an umbrella to grab all the functionality results in machines seemingly running slower than before. On the opposite side consoles which feature fixed hardware in order to shift games, and smartphones/PDAs featuring similarly fixed hardware are able to run with many improvements over the generation before.

At the moment a computers are still mostly big beige boxes with loads of hardware in, surely it would be sensible for manufacturers to produce much much smaller and unobtrusive machines, as an average user wouldn't want all the crap and only needs a static box which they will no doubt replace 5 years or so down the line. Hell as a "power user" I've little need for the modular design having been using a laptop for the last 3-4 years as my main computer. Lets face it in a similar boat a "power gamer" will buy a console and keep the same unit for 2-3 years before that needs replacing, does the average home PC really need the hardware modularity we have when a more compact custom unit could do the job equally well and with a sensibly thought out OS, do it faster and more stable?

Well it recieved no comments, anyone care to add anything now. Within 2 weeks of my piece (and I've had no interest in apple apart from being caught up in the aftershocks of MacWorld) it seems Steve Jobs has announced pretty much exactly what I was talking about. A cheap (enough) computer harking back to yesteryear where you supplyed the display, small form factor, and does all the jobs the average user will want it to. Sure it won't play games, just like any other Mac, but then most people will get a console to play games on rather than use a computer anyhow. Fair play Mr. Jobs, here's hoping that the iMac mini does the job for you.

interesting idea. although from my experience, although my big beige box of crap remains largely unchanged through its life, I do like the fact that i can add/change any bit of it as/when i choose to. especially when my hard drive went tits up a while back, i just swapped it with another one from an old pc that has been living in the land that time forgot (read in the cupboard under the stairs) and got up and running again.

also i have been able to add things that i didnt think i would need when i got the pc. CDRW for instance. they used to be megabucks, now they give them away free in cereal boxes (ok they're not that cheap, but i saw a 52 speed cdrw for £15 the other day!)

i guess your idea could work, but it would have to be a case of where do you draw the line at the non-modular concept. i think i would certainly be put off if hard drives or cd/dvd drives were non-replaceable, and if it werent for my spare pci slots, i wouldnt have been able to get on the net via my usb 2 card. A knock on of that would be no bluetooth dongle, so no fiddling with apps etc on my phone :o
i think i would be happy if the motherboard, CPU, graphics, sound cards were fixed. but i'll bet there are loads of people out there who would be mortified that they couldnt keep plugging in the fastest possible processor in the market into their machine, because that extra 0.2 GHz makes all the difference. :rolleyes:

Aye but my method was not intended for people who know what they are doing but for people who don't. Drives will always be modular units, unless someone figures out how to attach them to a motherboard safely. The modularity I meant was the AGP/PCI slots that most users who aren't interested in gaming never touch.