

USB Stick Contains Dual-Core Computer, Turns Any Screen Into an Android Station - tilt
http://blog.laptopmag.com/usb-stick-contains-dual-core-computer-turns-any-screen-into-an-android-station

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giberson
Here's the major thing that got me, when you plug it into a computer via usb,
you can run the OS in it's own window. That's the big get for me. But rather
than be this USB device, it should exist as a feature on all our android smart
phones.

Someone come up with an APP, that lets me plug my phone into my computer via
it's USB cable and then let me have access to the device with my mouse and
keyboard as input devices and the screen output directed at a window on my
screen.

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joshfraser
My prediction is that is exactly what we'll be doing in a couple years. Smart
phone processors are getting fast enough to be a primary computer for the
average user. Why have separate devices when a smart phone and an external
monitor/keyboard is all you need?

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sandGorgon
The atrix was the first phone that recognized that use case - but the suits at
motorola made it prohibitively expensive to own the dock (costed as much as
the phone itself) that made this possible.

Here's the problem I see - the docking system that needs to be standardized.
The ARM Mali T658 GPU promises PS3 quality... and there are better chips
(Tegra 4, Adreno, etc.) on the way. The Atrix leverages the HDMI+microusb
because of the way it designed them to fit into the slots into its dock.

Theoretically, you could use the Adreno dock with other phones, but they dont
have the ports placed in the same way (to lock into the dock).

I think with Google's philosophy of open-ness, it is too much to expect the
creation of a new dock standard. I'm not sure if HDMI (or the displayport
equivalents) can carry serialized mouse signals in addition to display... but
somehow the ports need to be standardized before we have a hope of leveraging
hardware that will be equipped to play Crysis by 2012.

And that will be a shame - all that power and unable to use it. Almost as
frustrating Skype not using most Android phones' front camera towards video
calls for a long time.

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marquis
This is where I see the operating system going: a combo of carrying something
with you for physical authorization and dumb terminals that load whatever you
need, where you need (whether from the net or you've got it with you on a
device). Exciting times to see something like this.

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timwiseman
I think there would definitely be a market for something like that (I want
this USB stick for instance), but I don't think operating systems as a whole
are going in that way.

Even with the rise of the Cloud, there are a lot of things that for various
reasons are best handled by at least a fat client if not a full-blown PC with
its own OS and processing power.

~~~
marquis
Sure, right now. But I've stopped lugging my laptop around when visiting
friends or offices, because on the browser I have gmail, text editors, gdocs,
ssh terminals .. almost everything I do outside of media editing I can do
anywhere as long as I have my access credentials with me (thanks dropbox) and
the internet. I think there'll be a place for a long time for dedicated
professional machines - just like there's a place for dedicated servers but
many services run great on a VPS. While we'll carry laptops/netbooks with us
for some time to come I won't be surprised the day my kids come home with
something that doesn't require ownership of their _very own_ hardware, just
some kind of authorization module.

I'm sure many of us have been in the position before when an emergency comes
up and you ssh in remotely. All I really need to work is a smartphone, screen
and input device and I'm comfortably working anywhere.

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mhd
That sounds like a nice consistent and less interruptive alternative to a
bootable USB stick (not aware of any non-invasive virtualization products).

Considering that you might already carry around an android device, it would be
nice to integrate that. Some phones alrady have HDMI ports and would go nicely
with "dumb terminal" software like that. In an ideal world, I'd like to use
the phone screen as a touch pad and let it project a keyboard (with a tablet,
you could use that as both keyboard and mouse, of course).

~~~
nextparadigms
Android 4.0 would be especially good for this, since it looks better on bigger
screens, so once you hook the phone to the bigger screen, it could just show
you the same OS, except in "tablet mode" (like the the apps).

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mhd
Yes, I don't think we need a huge jump in OS capability for something like
that. For one, fullscreen apps are pretty common even on desktop machines.
Most Windows users I know run like that pretty much all the time, and OS X
Lion seems to go that way, too. Apps that need finer grained control often are
perfectly fine doing it themselves, e.g. a terminal application with split
screes – or simply using screen/tmux.

If the OS would support some primitive tiling (mostly to have two apps side by
side on a full HD class display), I'd say that 95% of the people would be
happy 95% of the time.

The biggest issue I'd see is app diversity. Some apps might be willing to
target all of the devices, some won't. But no matter how perfect your app is
on small screens, if it will just scale badly to larger ones, people will
complain. There would probably be a need for some finer-grained selection in
the app launcher, clearly labeling what would be fine to use now and what not.

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bryanlarsen
How soon will Android phones have this capability? For many people, all their
data is already on their phones anyways and they're always carrying their
phones, so this is just an additional widget to carry. The PC part of this
widget just seems like software, and some Android phones already have an HDMI
port...

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nissimk
It looks really sweet. Here's the company website:

<http://www.fxitech.com/products/>

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ukdm
Connection error, but this is the same thing I believe
[http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/17/fxis-cotton-candy-
could-t...](http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/17/fxis-cotton-candy-could-turn-
every-screen-you-own-into-a-cloud/)

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untog
Fun concept. Does make me wonder about ChromeOS, though- everyone is going to
Android, even for full computer devices. I don't blame them- you can install
apps and do all sorts with Android, wheras ChromeOS is just a glorified
browser.

Taking bets on when Google mothball ChromeOS for good.

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gbog
Everything is in the browser is still the (long) way to go, I think. On my
android90% use is browser.

Remove apps from Android and you get chrome os.

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6ren
Screen and battery tech advances at a slower rate than silicon (CPU, GPU,
RAM).

By physically separating those aspects into different devices, users could
upgrade just the part that needs upgrading. i.e. this 21g device, and a "dumb"
smartphone shell.

~~~
forgotusername
I'm not sure we're at quite the level of modularity that would allow that yet.
For example in a smart phone, RF design is a big issue (antennae efficiency /
avoiding interference), which may preclude making the baseband component
swappable (which is one component we still seem to be iterating).

There's also the issue of designing a compact form factor that wouldn't result
in huge space inefficiencies within the phone. Maybe in another 10 years

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jablan
I wonder why they went for Android instead of some light Linux distro. Not
sure what's the point of having Android on a huge LCD.

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illumin8
They said it also runs Ubuntu, and will run the Windows 8 ARM version. Android
is good for a low power CPU like ARM since it doesn't require as much
horsepower. I would imagine that running a Firefox browser on Ubuntu under ARM
would be a pretty painful experience compared to running Android.

~~~
gvb
FWIIW, I have a Marvell OpenRD[1] system running a "normal" RedHat XWindows
environment (have not had a chance to switch it to Ubuntu/Debian yet). It runs
great, including firefox.

[1] <http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-openrdudetails.aspx>

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joshu
How painful was this to get? The website looks a bit schlocky but I am
intrigued.

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gvb
I got it over a year ago so my memory is fuzzy. IIRC, I got it directly from
Marvell as an eval board. My employer actually bought it - I gave the
purchaser the web site link and it showed up a week or so later.

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robododo
Too bad HDMI seems to only spec 5V @ 55mA.

I had dreams of just plugging this stick into an HDMI port (TV, monitor,
whatever) and having an instant PC. Sadly, it needs external power.

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JonWood
If your TV has a USB port (mine does, and is in no way state of the art) you
should be able to power it from that. Not quite a zero cable solution, but
it's close.

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kin
So on one end you plug in the HDMI, and the other end you need a female->male
cable to power the USB? Just asking for clarification.

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lucasjung
I think that's the idea, although you could do it either way:

-Plug it directly into the USB port and use cable+adapter to connect to HDMI.

-Plug it directly into the HDMI port and use cable+adapter to connect to USB.

Actually, a third way would be to use cables on both ends, but that just seems
kind of silly.

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paulsilver
Interesting, but note that the writer didn't get a chance to actually use it,
just saw it boot up the Android environment in a window on the laptop. So, it
could be great, or it could be unusable. Also the company aren't selling
direct, they're hoping for someone else to pick it up and turn it in to a real
product we could buy.

So, interesting, quite advanced concept, but I'd be more interested when I can
buy one than it's current state.

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steve8918
How does this compare against RaspberryPi? I've been waiting for that for
months, has this beaten it to the punch?

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maxmcd
Target for this is end of next year so afaik the raspberry pi will beat it to
retail. This device is significantly more powerful, smaller (if that image is
accurate), and as mentioned, 8 times the price.

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davux
Not quite the same, but Microsoft is doing 'Windows To Go' for Windows 8.
Might be neat if it integrated with the phone somehow.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_To_Go>

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nitrogen
_When you plug the Cotton Candy into a Mac or PC, the Windows or OS X
operating system recognizes it as a USB drive. You can then launch the
software and run the Cotton Candy’s Android environment in a secure window..._

Wouldn't this still be vulnerable to key loggers and screen capturing spyware?

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notatoad
wouldn't everything be? secure doesn't mean 100% no possible way that an
attacker could ever compromise anything. it's also vulnerable to people
looking over your shoulder.

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nitrogen
What I mean is, it doesn't provide much of an advantage over just using the
hotel lobby computer with your data on a USB flash drive. Connecting it
directly to a monitor via HDMI, on the other hand, does seem quite useful.

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emehrkay
Has the Android emulator gotten any better? If not, this may be a must have
for some Android devs

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yellowbkpk
Depends on the cost. If it's much more than $350 then it's probably cheaper to
find a phone or tablet on ebay.

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swombat
Considering RaspberryPi is building this for $25, for these guys' sake it
better not cost $350!!!

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dspillett
You are comparing apples to oranges there though: the specs are significantly
different:

* more powerful CPU (or at very least the same design at a higher speed, 1200MHz rather than 700) * more powerful GPU (both can play back 1080p OK, but the GPU can be used for much more than just movie playback acceleration) * more RAM (1024Mb on the CC, 256 on the RP(B), 128 on the RP(A)) * wireless networking via 802.11b/g/n and/or Bluetooth (the rp will need a USB device plugged in to do either of these) * the thing the RP has that these don't are wired networking built-in (and then, only on the slightly more expensive model B) and USB ports (it looks like the CC will operate as a USB MSD but I can't see any wording in the descriptions that suggest it can act as a host for USB devices)

I plan to grab at least on RP (the planned-to-be-$35 model B) when they turn
up as the spec and the price combine to make it irresistible as a techie toy,
but what you get for the extra cost of the CC (the target is $200, not $350)
is considerable extra power and built-in wireless options. Depending on your
needs this price-for-performance might be a good deal, though the Pi should do
admirably for what I plan to play with.

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jnbiche
Or you could buy an 8 gb USB stick for $10, load your favorite Linux distro on
it using Universal USB installer or unetbootin, load all your fav software,
make a separate partition for your own data, and then use the host machine's
processor to run it, which will almost certainly be more powerful than a dual
core 1.2 GHz ARM device. You could even encrypt the drive for privacy. All for
the cost of two Starbucks double lattes.

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101001011
And you could do the same thing using another open source OS other than Linux,
and without an installer or unetbootin.

The cost is the stick and the time to learn about some simple low level
concepts.

Why wait for some company to deliver a solution to you? DIY.

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Rickasaurus
This would be fantastic for working with encrypted data in a secure way.

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wanorris
Up to a point. Someone interested in monitoring what you do could still
capture the display data and the data transmitted from whatever input devices
you use. This is especially true if you plug this into a computer of uncertain
provenance, but still potentially true for a monitor, TV, etc.

It definitely seems like an improvement in security over just booting or
running a VM from a secure flash drive, though.

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6ren
specs <http://www.fxitech.com/products/>

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JoeAltmaier
Can't read; get endless hover ad.

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tlianza
It's brutal (but yeah, 'click to skip' upper right)... I really wanted to
share this article, but the number of ads on the page is so crippling that I
was embarrassed to send anyone there.

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vu0tran
shut up and take my money

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ctdonath
vs. RasberryPi?

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cnxsoft
Nvidia has a patent filled for this type of USB computer, I wonder if they
infringed in anyway.

I like this product a lot, I may buy it when it becomes available. However,
for people who have a MHL smartphone and MHL TV, there is no need for the
Cotton Candy, as they just need to buy a cable for the same functionalities.

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xxiao
definitely interesting stuff

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CWIZO
I have no use for this but I want it so bad it hurts. This is a truly an
amazing gadget.

