Weird Computer Question.?

Question

OK. Here's the thing I've been wondering for about a kazillion billion years. A PC chip is small enough to carry in a pocket or a briefcase. So is a flashdrive and an external hard-drive. So, how come PC's aren't constructed so you can just slide in your own chip and connect your external hard-drive to any PC on the planet and make it work like your own home PC?

Considering that many readers misunderstood my question, I am going to clarify it. What I'm asking is: Why can't I slide out the chip from my PC, take it to your PC, slide out your chip, slide in mine, and plug in my external hard drive so I have my own OS and programs and s***. That takes care of things like monitors, printers, keyboards, etc. Speaking of monitors, though, why not have a virtual one -- just light, like a 3-D projection? Add a virtual keyboard and you have a REAL pocket PC, right?

Answer 1

A single chip is pocket-sized, but a computer needs many microchips, all with interconnects. Your processor may be the workhorse of the machine, but there are many other parts of your motherboard and peripheral cards (like video) which are essential for PC's. All of this takes up space (think laptop).

And in regards to hard drives, portable flash memory is much, much more expensive per byte than your typical internal hard drives. $100 will get you about 4 GB of flash memory, or about 300 GB of hard disk memory.

Despite all of this, your idea has merit. Especially if you are not concerned with high-end applications. It is certainly conceivable that people will carry around their own hard drives in the near future that have complete operating systems on them, and which can be plugged in at public terminals or something of the like. But, then again, why would someone want this over a laptop?

Answer 2

operating systems are installed and configured for the specific hardware in your machine at the time it's installed, building an plug and play operating system that is guaranteed to work with every configuration of hardware it's 'plugged into' is impossible and it'd get very messy.

google however are going the route of having an entirely 'online' operating system much like a dumb terminal on a network but the operating system runs solely on google's computers, except for the initial startup of the device of course where cheap internet connected hardware is still needed.

it's not a new idea though, see here for web os'es:
http://franticindustries.com/blog/2006/12/21/big-webos-roundup-10-online-operating-systems-reviewed/

you can also carry a portable version of linux around on a flash drive or a cd, or a mini-cd which will run on any pc completely from the disc - occasionally with some hardware not being supported like i mention above - and they're free to download too, unlike windows versions of things:
http://www.frozentech.com/content/livecd.php

edit:
it depends what you mean by 'your chip', is this something that exists or something you're thinking should exist?

either way, unless these computers that the 'chips' are going to be plugged into all have the same hardware configuration you *would* run into problems with missing drivers if they aren't built into the operating system.

you couldn't (yet) have something as powerful as a home pc in something that can fit in your hand because there's too much to fit in, power supply, a processor which also needs a fan for cooling, a hard drive, etc. this is why while pda computers are mobile computers they're not of the speed or diversity as a full pc.

but an operating system on a bootable flash drive is pretty much that - your own operating system, with your own programs, your own documents, everything on the little flash drive that you're carrying around which you can plug into any pc with a usb drive - provided the bios is set to boot before the hard drive - but it uses the computer's cpu/ram/hardware.

Answer 3

Ok well for starters socket configurations for different processors are NOT the same so many different versions of processors, even from the same company (say AMD), will not all fit on any motherboard that previously had an AMD chip installed on it.

You CAN use your external HD and Flash drive on any computer you want and you can even change the BIOS settings to boot from the USB drive so that the PC boots the OS you have on the removable media.

Answer 4

They most likely will head in that direction eventually
Its not quite as simple as you make out since a PC chip has a few components that are relatively large, and these are devoted to keeping the chip cool. So once that is solved, probably by a room tempurature semi-conductor or super-conductor, then the smaller components you mention should be as feasible and as portable as you want. But most likely, People will keep them at a certain size for the moment, and I suspect that the demand for More Capacity in all respects will increase.
Will bring new meaning to compatibility issues :-)

Answer 5

Or maybe they could make a pc that you could just carry around with you and connect to the internet without any wires or plug-ins that was like a small briefcase and ran on batteries ---- or an even smaller model that you could actually slide into your pocket and access your emails and get all the lastest RSS feeds from all your favorite sites and still be able to use it as a mobile phone and stuff !!!!

Answer 6

To use a system like it is your own, you need to make sure that the OS that is installed on that harddrive has all of the correct configuration and drivers for the other pieces of hardware in the system.

With that in mind, you can do exactly what you say. Many companies use that method to allow their employees to test different software packages on the same system. However, the systems they use are all identical, and the OS's on the harddrives are set up for that image.

Answer 7

Because a computer chip is comparatively simple when you look at what it needs to work, and what a laptop needs to work. They are making smaller and smaller computers and soon there might be somethin ALMOST like it, but not that small, just imagine looking at a screen that small, you might not want to have it that small. Also have you seen a Treo 600 or a PDA, that might help.

Answer 8

Because a thumb drive (flash drive) cannot be replaced a CPU (processor). A CPU uses to run, calculate, compute, etc.....everything in a computer, while a thumb drive can't, its only main purpose is to store info/data.

As for HD (harddrive), HD contains infomation about your computer and drivers of your components, if you use it as plug and play at another computer, do you think your HD will have info of that particular PC in order to work properly?

Answer 9

Trade secrets and proprietary information. In layman's terms; they want to keep you buying their hardware and software, not their competition's. If this were a fair world your idea would be available. It is getting better though. It used to be each new model required new OS and software too.

Answer 10

No particular reason at all except perhaps for security.