Iridium AVPC

CTS Magazine (September '03)

Someone recently remarked that one of the problems with the PC world is that there is a lack of innovation, presumably meaning that because the products don’t look great, no one wants to buy them. Whoever it was will be eating their words now because if this Iridium AV PC is not a physical version of the word innovation then I don’t know what else is.

First, the screen is something that is sleek and stylish and would not look out of place in a design magazine promoting the latest screen technology. A wide screen with speakers either side has become the definition of cool. Then there is the drop-down keyboard, which again has a pad almost sculpted into a sliver frame with six hot keys down the side that help skip between purpose and function. Sometimes you really do get to feel like those test drivers on Top Gear who get to whizz about in the latest Helium-driven cars and those that run on salt water. Cutting edge stuff isn’t always available to the man in the street and it is a privilege to get to handle the PC equivalent to those automobile pioneers.

This PC feels like it has come straight out of the design labs, and tapping away on the keyboard it is slightly pleasurable to know that you are getting a glimpse of what will be in the shops this autumn. The sort of customer for the technology is easy to guess at – everyone who wants to look good when they tap in words, download pictures or play games. There is power here with Windows XP Home Edition the choice for navigatable desktops. When you talk about power you should really substitute that word with functionality. This AV PC really is multimedia and then some. It combines all you would expect from a leading PC spec with a CD/MP3 player, DVD player and FM radio and you can switch on the TV without booting up. To rub in the home entertainment nature of the product, it comes with the obligatory remote control needed to switch each of those functions on.

There are great advantages to opting for a piece of kit that does the lot. First it reduces the need for other gadgets and second it encourages the user to make connections between different media and take advantage of multimedia. If you think about the way things are going for the average user, the introduction the other week of a Sunday Times magazine section on CD ROM indicates that those serving the masses believe that the average punter is prepared to read and watch things via a laptop or desktop.

I was surprised the disc was not DVD, but that is maybe something for the future. The simple idea behind The Month, as the Times calls it, is that you can click and read about arts and events on that month.

Users that decide to choose the AV PC will be able to do something very similar every single day. At last we can say this is multimedia.