There are several advantages with having a small PC. Although laptops were meant to provide mobile computer access, they are still kind of bulky especially when you are traveling. You still need to find a spot where you can sit down and breakout that laptop of yours. Smart phones, tablets, and other hand held devices are becoming more common these days, and they can be accessed with ease even when you are traveling. These small devices however are lacking the computing power that are sometimes needed by people on the go. They are still limited when it comes to what they can do and what they can achieve. This is where small PCs come into the picture. PCs with the power of full sized computers and the portability of hand held devices.
So what’s the world’s smallest Windows PC? There are several devices that laid claim to the title. There was the FlipStart, which was manufactured by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s company Vulcan. The FlipStart has a dimension of 4.5 inches by 5.9 inches by 1.6 inches and weighs 1.75 making it very lightweight and very easy to carry. It has a 5.6 inch screen that can be folded, Wi-Fi capability, and battery life that could last between 3 to 6 hours on a single charge. Unfortunately the FlipStart was only offered for a limited period from 2007 to 2008. By 2009 the company had stopped offering support for its product.
Tech companies didn’t take long to come up with another device that can be considered to be the smallest Windows PC. The Japanese company Fujitsu Inc. developed the Windows 7 Handset F-07C. This device is actually a two in one product that can be booted either as a mobile phone, or a personal computer that runs on Windows7 Operating System. It has different software for the mobile phone mode and all you have to do is flick a switch on the side to convert it to a personal computer. It comes equipped with a QWERTY keyboard that can be pulled out, and a 4 inch LCD screen that has touch screen capabilities. The biggest drawback with the device is the limited battery life of its PC mode. It automatically switches back to the mobile phone mode after two hours of use.
If you need to do some heavy load computing work then you can connect input devices like a keyboard or a mouse using the USB port, or you can hook it up with output devices like a larger screen for browsing and viewing pictures and videos. It can be connected to a printer for use in office settings. This kind of technology is definitely bound to improve in the future, but this device from Fujitsu is already on the cutting edge of things. Unfortunately this device is still available only in Japan where they keep a lot of advanced technological advances to themselves. Hopefully we can get to sample it in the near future. This is the kind of technological development that has a very long and exciting way to go.