Modular Gamer Docking System

[ICantSpellDawg]

http://blogs.zdnet.com/computers/?p=1457&tag=bitly

Great Idea. You can use a laptop with almost pure processing power and a limited graphical and hard drive capacity while you're on the road, but when you get home, it docks into a super graphical platform. 1 processor and operating system, two uses.

Great idea. The home system could essentially be like an x-box 360 with HD tv. Tons of uses.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Except of course that with a laptop I'd like more than just portability: I'd like mobility (not much use to take a laptop with you if you can't keep it powered on for more than 30 minutes). I.e. don't even think about an Core-i7 or an old E8600. So don't think about games, much either. Age of Empires will play fine of course, but that's not exactly the pinnacle of demanding games is it?

And while I am on the road, I'd still would like to be able to get some work done. And when I arrive someplace else, maybe plug my laptop into an external monitor with the lid closed for instance. And maybe, do some lightweight graphics processing like watching a DVD too. So my laptop should have: decent (not stellar, but decent) specs and decent batter life. Including basic I/O devices such as keyboard, touchpad, screen and speakers; including connectivity. So it starts to look like a complete laptop on its own.

Then I get at home and decide I want some more: I want to play a game. At that point I probably will need external mouse, keyboard, and monitor because 22 or 24 inch monitors don't meet the portability requirement. Possibly external speakers as well. And more harddrive space, of course that Nvidia thing.

Okay: $500,- laptop. $500,- Nvidia thingy. $500,- externals? Sounds like the price of 2 full featured systems to me. Except that those two full featured systems are not a range of imbalanced components and parts thrown together under the guise of some marketing ploy.

Short version: forget it as substitute setup to make one PC/laptop do the job of 2 for the masses. It seems much more suited for people who for whatever reason want to offload processing to a graphics card. People who want that run programs who are written to do that. And apart from media encoding/decoding that is mostly just CAD type work and the occasional scientist who doesn't need too much precision but wants to test a scientific model or a new way of computing an existing model. Nothing to see there then.