Intel's reinvention of the all-in-one PC is slim, portable and still huge
Black Brook. Quaint country town? Probably. It's also Intel's code name for its all-in-one PC reference design: a slender tablet-ish device with a kickstand and a handle. It's also got a full HD 20-inch display, quad mics, multitouch support and Intel's RealSense 3D cameras for gesture-based meddling. Sound familiar? Well the reference slab was mentioned in passing back in March, but it was out in the flesh at Intel's recent Future Showcase that's currently touring Asia. It's certainly big, but the hardware's been kept at a thickness of around 20mm. Intel explained that despite the size constraints, the built-in battery will power through five hours of use, presumably including a little bit of multitouch board-gaming. The use cases are pretty similar to that gigantic 27-inch "portable" AIO we saw from Lenovo at CES in January. In this reference design however, it's all in a much slender package. Intel poses the very important question: "What is a portable AIO?" in its own intro video to the design -- we've added that after the break.
The usual prototype provisos apply: it's a reference design, so the fit and finish (the cameras' fittings were particularly sketchy) left a lot to be desired. Like the designs that came before it, however, this is more about Intel putting things together to offer a a glimpse at what PC manufacturers could well make -- if they wanted to. It's possible to have desktop PC components in a giant tablet form-factor within this slender profile... with a handle. But just because you can make it, that doesn't mean people are going to buy it.
