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- Hacker News
- I don't understand this at all and I've deployed Linux machines to workstations and factory environments.
It's an "all in one" in that it has compute and a keyboard. But the mouse isn't integrated (literally just a wired mouse you lug around with it) and no display. So you can't actually walk it right up to a bench and start using it like a laptop. It has built in storage for your "stuff" but again, it's not fully portable so what else are you going to be carrying with it? Is it supposed to be used by a developer or a technician? And if a technician, why portable and why a non-standard keyboard layout? I haven't even gotten to the Workbench software yet, which seems to be appealing to neither an engineer nor a technician and is a Linux OS that somehow costs more than Windows.
This is silly and it bothers me more than it probably should that they say this "is designed for offices, workshops, labs, and factories" when this doesn't seem like they've spent any time in those environments. I'm just gonna keep shipping Asus Nucs running NixOS to my technician workstations and let my engineers use laptops.
by MerrimanInd - Yeah, I'm just reading it as hobyists putting it in the workshop next to the 3d printer.
It isn't even well thought out. You can fold the keyboard away while you're doing work. But you can only access the storage while the keyboard is open.
by benj111 - > The case is CNC milled from a solid block of aluminium
What a waste of material and machining time!
by JR1427 - Why?by ffreire
- How would you make a low run product? Casting requires molds.by benj111
- iPhones are iPads have a milled CNC “unibody” as well… Being able to dictate where to have more thickness helps a ton on the luxury feel. Most of the chips are recycled anyway into new billets.by syntaxing
- It’s probably not milled from a brick-shaped block, but a cast that approaches the intended shape.by rbanffy
- Not sure on the first. Apparently almost all alumninum is recycled, and reused, as its melting point is super low compared to most metals, so its not quite as wasteful as it seems at the first glance.by torginus
- Usually the ads on hacker news are accompanied by a press release or a technical writeup so that I at least learn something new.by arn3n
- Nice, I've always wanted my desktop PC to be coupled to the keyboard.by conorbergin
- For the first 20 years or so of my career, mine was. The Apple II, the TRS-80 model 3 (even had an internal screen!) were super chunky blocks of computing.by rbanffy
- Nice design, but the website is vague. What about the actual tech specs (not simply GB of ram and SSD space) or a picture of the "user-replaceable" internals? How about a picture of the port layout? About the workbench operating system, the information is also surprisingly light.
Am I missing context here that others have that make this website sufficient?
- Looks cute, but unsure what it does and why they made it and how i can use for what...
Site looks good but it might mean c100 have no substance, thus at least had to make the site and their gadget pretty.
by yipinwong - I’m not sure what you mean, it’s a mini PC. You can use it for anything you want.
The esthetic and form factor is the appeal
by dgellow - >unsure what it does and why they made it and how i can use for what...
its a computer. it does computer things, and you can use it for whatever computer things you want.
- Famous Design House™ decided to make a custom computer. They took a nice PC, made a nice metal box for it, and attached another box to the back.
You can put things in this box, which is an unusual accessory for a computer.
They also made an OS which will cost a lot of money per seat per year.
Then they took many clean smooth fingerprint-free photos and made a web site to try to sell it.
The web site makes the box look nice but does a poor job explaining the rest.
- Who came up with this and then designed it around a non-standard keyboard layout... Jail is the only answer.
- Why the number pad on the left?
I'm left handed and don't think that's a good idea
by benj111 - Also it's close to ANSI layout, what about ISO? I want a german E1 layout(§), thank you very much.
-- § https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/E1_(Tastaturbelegung)#Umfangby Tepix - There's a lot of WTF here, including paying $1400 for a Linux workstation with 32GB of RAM and what looks like a mobile CPU, along with an integral keyboard that seems like it would give you RSI just looking at it. Who on earth is buying this?by rpcope1
- The form factor and "designed to run Workbench" bit made me think it was aimed at nostalgic Amiga enthusiasts without running afoul of whoever-owns-Commodores-trademarks-today.
But https://caligra.com/workbench/#pricing suggests it's an awkwardly-reskinned Fedora with a $240/year subscription fee.
So, er, yes. WTF?
by roryirvine - Here are some more informative photos:
https://www.pentagram.com/work/caligra-c100-developer-termin...
by Caracas288 - I accidentally read "performative photos" and it still made sense. Mouse looks painfulby amarcheschi
- So from these pictures they just put an off the shelf minipc in a aluminium case and ship it with a matching keyboard.
- I found the UI really interesting. Nice to see a group really trying something new. This really feels a lot like the raw experimentation of computer types and styles in the 80s.
https://customer-i8ks9tgi5lkllj0i.cloudflarestream.com/c60aa...
by ramijames - I think they are going for the super premium polished user experience, yet they waste space with adding foreign window decorators to apps that are supposed to integrate them (Chrome, Zed). And not sure why having a single smallish window and tons of empty space is good practice, when tiling wms have shown how to manage lots of windows and large screen estate efficiently..by torginus
- I have one of the units from the first run where 96GB of RAM was offered.
Personally speaking I was buying it primarily for the design aesthetic (an industrial design partner from Pentagram was involved), but I've come to enjoy the Workbench OS UI features and associated shortcuts; I use it as a secondary work machine for various data science applications.
I can attest to the general build quality which so far seems high to me.
by LeanOnSheena - Same, it's fantastic, and SIMPLE.
Very rare these days.
by nickisnoble - How's the guts look? There's a lot of flash and pizzaz about aesthetics, but I work with files in the 400-800GB range on a regular basis, so I tend to prefer dumping gigantic SSDs into my work machines (I recently liquidated fortune 5 stock to get an 8tb disk[1]).
There's some words about "oh yeah you can upgrade this" but not many details. The only thing I've seen so far has been a single shot from the Pentagram splash where it looks like a fairly standard off-the-shelf mini PC that's been gutted and put on life support like a Raspberry Pi Cyberdeck.
by indrora - I feel sorry for any company trying to launch a new compute product during this window of extremely elevated RAM and SSD prices.
This looks well built with a lot of attention to detail. It’s impressive that the price isn’t higher for this level of machining and build quality on a low volume product.
I could see this doing well in some niche studios where they value design of all of the products in the office, but it’s a tough niche. The graphic and video designers are all going to be buying Apple. The CAD and engineering people want something with a real GPU. Most developers want a laptop that they can take with them. It’s nice that parts can be upgraded, but anchoring to that CPU is tough.
by Aurornis