Hasta La Gadget!

At the CES trade show this week I saw a bunch of intriguing concept products, but this combination phone-PC really grabbed my attention. It looks like a home phone – and when I say home phone, I mean that thing with the big buttons and no display. But it has inputs and outputs for a screen and keyboard. If you like, you can hook it up to a big screen to browse the Web, play a few games or listen to music.

This device from Inventec, based on a Qualcomm ARM9 processor and a Linux-based OS, isn’t for the US. Rather, it’s a super-low-cost PC – think under $100 – to bring Web-browsing capabilities to folks in developing countries. It’s also in part intended to be a way for those countries’ somewhat beleagured landline operators to give customers a reason not to cut off their landlines and go mobile-only, Qualcomm execs said.