Nothing new under the sun, but better in every respect
The original Ergo Brick
The recent announcement of the 2” x 6.5” x 6.5” Apple Mac mini reminded me of Jerry Pournelle’s approach to portable computing back in the mid-1990’s:
... Then came Ergo’s Brick, which was no larger than a disk cartridge and contained your whole computer. Plug in a keyboard and monitor, or plug the Brick into a docking station, and you were set. That worked well, and I used to carry it to the beach…Jerry was writing about how he liked to split writing between his home and his beach-house and the $2,495 16 MHz 386sx-based brick offered him the convenience of a small (well, somewhat larger than the Mac mini – 3” x 8” x 11” – and I guess disk cartridges were bigger in the early 1990’s too) PC that he could tote between the two locations, keeping a separate keyboard and screen to plug into it at each place.