Sony are about to release the gadget I have been dreaming of.
The size of an iPod (that great form factor that fits in your pocket), the ‘PacketPC is basically a WiFi enabled portable bootable drive. Plug this into any computer and use it as if it were your own.
With 60GB internal storage this can hold most of your applications and important data. Lets face it, although many people use more disk space, the critical stuff like email and applications account for far less space than replaceable items such as MP3’s.
The PacketPC has a screen and Palm Pilot style text entry capability, but is primarily designed for read only (I always used to update my palm from scraps of paper when I had it connected to my PC anyway). The built in GPS chip will make use of location aware mapping services and entertainment/travel guides. Without hooking up to a PC the PacketPC is not designed to run much other than a web browser and contacts manager, but to be honest that’s all I would use on the move. It has an MP3 player and headphone jack etc.
The best thing about the PacketPC and the reason why it has pre orders of 150,000 units from Fortune 500 companies, is its simple approach to backup. Sony’s enterprise backup service (a consumer service will be available later this year) means that the PacketPC will remotely sync via WiFi or Ethernet with an identical machine in a datastore. Lose your packet PC and clone replacement will be delivered by Fedex with 48 hours. The backup seems to be a simple disk image so there are no settings to really worry about, the offsite model is an exact clone of whatever is on your machine, and data is transferred in encrypted chunks for the enterprise service.
Jeez I sooo want this, if only for the backup.