Sounds like a good niche (*and* a good idea).  Very Star Trek.  I think 
the current reason pocket devices don't have 256MB of RAM is power (not 
the M$ kind).  I believe it was on this list about a week ago someone 
posted a link to an interesting processor design by Charles Moore -- a 
*very* heavily stack-oriented machine, somewhat like the Transputer (but 
more so).  At one point they mentioned that power consumption would be 
dominated by the RAM that was attached.  I was surprised, as I always 
thought of, say, the easy-bake ovens Intel sells as Pentia as the 
power-mad components.

-Mark

On Thursday, September 6, 2001, at 09:41 pm, Stephen Pair wrote:

> I'm sure many people on this list have seen the relatively recent HDD
> based MP3 players that have come into the market (if not:
> http://www.pjbox.com).
>
> What strikes me as incredible is that there hasn't appeared an entry in
> the PDA market based on this concept (that I know of).  I would love to
> have a device that has 20GB of secondary storage that fits into a shirt
> pocket.  I would love it even more if it ran Squeak (of course) and
> could:
>
> - become the computational engine (or just storage) for your home
> entertainment system (with that much storage you could store a good bit
> of video, mp3s, video games, etc)
> - interface with a automobile computer system
> - serve all the traditional PDA functions
> - interface with your home network (and automatically back itself up
> overnight)
> - plug into a desktop or laptop form factor as it's computational engine
> (or it's storage)
> - interface with a home and cellular wireless network
>
> Does anyone know of such a device?  Seems like it could be a huge
> market.  Current PDAs are too limited in terms of storage capacity and
> it's a pain to keep them in sync.  The current devices only have about
> 12MB of DRAM, but I would imagine you could build something with 256MB
> of DRAM or more and still keep it small.
>
> - Stephen