Dell Wyse Cloud Connect: Pocket Android desktop When somebody hands you a dongle-sized computer, you might, for a moment, be impressed. But when they then put it in a bag with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse and suggest you find a monitor somewhere, you might wonder what exactly it is they are trying to sell you. Dell Wyse Cloud Connect Android dongle Mini USB – fancy …
In our offices we have a number of meeting rooms with either very large monitors or DLP projectors. They're currently powered by left-over Dell Windows XP boxen which were considered too cruddy even for secretaries to use. Their main uses are PowerPoint presentations, light web browsing, and Remote Desktop to a more powerful computer. A cheap Android dongle seems like the ideal way to replace these XP machines; but clearly this Dell/Wyse device isn't up to scratch.
(Yes, the meeting rooms are also equipped with videoconferencing kit, but I've never seen anyone actually make use of it.)
Come on..
This is an overpriced mk808 Android TV inside with half baked apps.
If Dell was serious, they would be building a small box with VGA/DVI connector, Kitkat and matured apps. VMWare view and Citrix stuff are going to be released officially soon, add the official MS RDP app and you cover most of the needed connections - but until then, this device doesn't worth even half the price.
Think the point that this is a beta version is important here.
While this is distinctly undercooked, it sounds like they mightn't be too far away from something that could be worth spending money on, especially if you're in charge of IT spend in an organisation that likes to tightly lock down PCs.
Stick a beefier processor in there (say a Snapdragon 600, which would only knock up the price by a few bucks), sort out some of the more obvious bugs and they might actually sell some. Partnering up with MS, making an equivalent to Chromecast based on Media Centre and they might well be onto something.
Credit to Dell for experimenting though.
Promise lots - deliver not much, but i think this is way things are going to go in the future, so these first stabs are going to tell us quite a bit on how not to do it.
Once this is bounced around in the wild, this will improve - until Apple comes along and does it properly.
>until Apple comes along and does it properly.
Who knows? Apple could, if they wanted to, do it well. But the same goes for other companies, too. Amazon, for example, have just relased the Fire TV - but they want to sell movies, so its Android fork is not geared towards touchscreens, mice or keyboards.
As I understand it, the adaptor actually translates the signal, it is not just a straight electrical connection.
I have a Belkin Displayport-HDMI cable which is useless when playing HD videos as the video breaks up on screen. I also have an unbranded adapter which cost €15 in FNAC and works perfectly. With for example DVI-HDMI adapters which are straight electrical connections, any adapter will either work perfectly or not at all. The fact that Displayport-HDMI adapters are not like this leads me to believe there is signal conversion going on.
hahah linux has for years... seriously you want dell to do this with re-cased/branded MK808 or such like at a massively over inflated price and give you the same features you would get pretty much if you were already a google apps for business user.....
... i think not, nice try dell, but pull the other one.
I'm with the other posters here.
You can't just put a sticker on a MK808 device, double its price, and pretend that you have a game-changer. The hardware is almost there, but the software isn't.
It's curious that Dell thought that Android was the right base. It's the right base for a mobile device, where the single-running-app model is a simple, robust way to control power use. A corporate desktop front-end would be much better served by a Linux install.
My guess is that this is more of a low-budget trial balloon rather than a well-considered compute ecosystem.
A lot of what Dell is trying here is a near miss to my reference model. The display here is an Acer 20" 10-pt touch, with dual-MHL/HDMI interestingly enough. I already had designs on un-tethering from it's 16'/5m cables. I wander around with it a lot and aside from backlight heating is quite comfortable to use in most any position. Current OS is Windows 2012 R2 since it's my test bed. So local OS is on the table; already playing or will be playing with Galileo and nVidia K1, perhaps more; and will have to fab the power source. So, nice try Dell. Can use it here but it'll stick out asking for one brush leading to a dead unit due to an irreplacable connector (HDMI/MHL). And that power cable on the display will be another catchable item while manipulating a sales pitch or similar use-case (hate that term).
So much seems broken here its more like a work in progress alpha than a beta, but maybe that the point. Mikeys no fool when it comes to playing hardball - As one of MIcrosofts biggest customers, could this be a bargaining chip to float in front of Satya - "Lets talk about our licencing terms, and if we don't like what we hear then I guess we'll have to fix all these bugs"
I have a couple of year old Motorola Droid Razr "Maxx" I've traveled with it a lot. It is not a replacement for my laptop, no do I want it to be. But with the simple addition of an HDMI cable I can plug it into a hotel TV or monitor and use it to watch video, as a fair computing device with "Webtop", and if I bring my mini Bluetooth keyboard I can actually use it as a pretty fair netbook. This is more or less what Motorola intended with its under developed "Atrix" dock system, though I never bothered to buy it. It's not the fastest processor in the world--I bought it more for durability and battery life, but it sounds no less powerful than Dell's offering. Oh, and it's a 4G phone, GPS receiver, etc. that doesn't require any finagling to power it up.
The point I'm trying to make here is that I see little point for the Dell device. Most of the functionality of the dell unit with the exception of the remote admin capability was included in my cell phone as an afterthought.
And in an environment where the Dell device would maybe be a useful alternative to something like embedded XP or another OS, the very nature of these locales (factory floor, call center, etc.) means that someone so inclined can just pocket the device and walk away with it. So again, I fail to really see a "killer app" for it. It's not like desktop PCs aren't cheap and plentiful, and there's a lot better mobile devices.
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