back to article 'Fan docks' are about to become a thing

Yesterday at Computex, Intel announced the new Core M, a new CPU architecture based on a Broadwellian 14nm process, and said it is destined to appear in premium tablets and two-in-one typoslabs. Today, Chipzilla revealed a little more about the new product by showing off a reference design for a Core-M-equipped typoslab called …

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  1. Owain 1

    Marketing blah blah

    "Depth perception also means it will become possible to use one's hands to control on-screen action in games or with apps built to offer a gestural interface"

    Which we already have (from plain old 2d cameras and touch screens) with limited take up. Primarily because it wears you out and isn't very precise; and, as a lazy git, the only time I really want to wave my hands about trying to attract attention and give direction to an uncomprehending other party is either when I want to order more food at the restaurant, or when I'm drowning.

  2. Andy E
    Facepalm

    The wasp

    Soem people are terrified of wasps and they do occasionaly get into the office. I'd love to see what the PC makes of it when they start flapping their arms about trying to swat the bugger.

  3. LaeMing

    "For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive - you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same programme."

    - Douglas Adams "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy", Ch12.

    1. Christian Berger

      What Douglas didn't predict back then is that the interfaces would be more and more primitive.

      Just compare what you can do on a console and on a GUI and on touch interfaces. Extrapolate this and you'll see what you'll get here.

  4. Billa Bong

    Performance is great... until you want to go mobile (aka without external power for a fan)?

    Come on, ARM - show us your wares.

  5. Charlie Clark Silver badge

    Solution in search of a problem?

    NFT

  6. Vic

    Is this really the right way round?

    It strikes me that the requirements for a "docked" unit and for a "mobile" one are opposed; one wants to be powerful, the other frugal.

    So making a powerful machine and underclocking it to keep the power consumption down is just going to cause design compromises - and thereby additional cost and inefficiency.

    Surely it would be better to have two binary-compatible systems, and use the docking action just to put the filesystem from the mobile device onto the (fs-less) dock with the higher performace?

    Vic.

  7. User McUser

    What, no photographs allowed?

    Not a single picture of this amazing device and its fans?

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Sod off Intel and cooling fans.

    Just when people got rid of their big duty Intel poo boxes (desktops) and laptops/tabled reduced the noise of personal computing, Intel has to bring back the cooling fans.

    I've had a few years of little or no fan noise and it's bliss.

  9. Elmars

    right... 3d gesture recognition

    Pretty much the only gestures I make to my computer are a fist and the birdie. I just wonder what the computer should do when it sees a birdie...

    a) bsod?

    b) reboot?

    c) launch a porn site?

    d) do a Max Headroom and Skype your mom to complain?

  10. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

    I'm a fan of fans

    Fan docks already exist, inasmuch as you can get a combination of a fan-cooled rest for your notebook computer with USB hub. But I don't know if you can get that in USB 3 yet. (Meanwhile, an article in free newspaper Metro explained that Android tablets are all too thin to have proper USB ports in but that this will be possible "soon" with "USB 4", which is an announcement that many of us may have missed.)

    The benefit of an external fan device, even if it's powered from the PC's own USB, is that the PC's internal fans have less work to do, are activated less often, and don't wear out so fast. Would you rather try to replace a fan inside a notebook or tablet - or replace an external fan all-in-one accessory? I had (have?) a tablet, Samsung Q1, that evidently I used much more than the designer intended. After the fan burned out, I could only use the PC at all for any length of time by sitting it on an external fan board to keep it cooled.

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