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BYU industrial design students present UMPCs to Dell

By squirrelbait - December 19, 2007

in Object Culture | Design Business

A group of ID students at Brigham Young University presented their final projects, three different classes of ultra mobile PC concepts, to two retired Dell managers and current Dell executives listening via conference call. One group focused on users in rugged environments, another targeted college students, and the third team created a version to be used mostly for entertainment. The concepts were presented in consideration for inclusion in a potential line of Dell UMPCs but it's not clear how serious the partnership is or whether any of the concepts will be developed. It would also be nice (ahem, if any BYU people are reading this) if the image links worked and provided more info about each concept.

thanks spencer!

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Carl

17 years ago

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Whatever your thoughts on corporate-directed student design, the Sentinel concept at the bottom is pretty sharp. The model could be cleaner, but great explanatory images. Nice work, whoever did that one.
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Sergio

17 years ago

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Great! Ideas for free. Why designers are so proactive to share the concepts for free? I never saw business competition about "the best business ideas for 2008". True that most of these concepts never arrive to the market but they are a beneficial way to advertise the company.
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christofay

17 years ago

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This post could be titled BYU students try to design a Mac for Dell.

Obviously Dell didn't place too great an emphasis on this event as the two Dell representatives "live" not "speakerphoned" were retirees, perhaps they made it there on their own dime.

For "rugged" environments read military use.

"Another group targeted college students", that's the Mac market now.

As for entertainment, advances in entertainment flow from the outsiders down to the mainstream. It just never goes from the mainstream to outsider status.
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Cameron

17 years ago

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I'm in the sophomore level at BYU in the ID program, I wasn't able to attend in person, but it's nice to see BYU ID get some press. We're a good group despite our small size. I also agree with "Prof Prague"'s analysis.
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UMMM

17 years ago

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What does that green tablet graphic say?
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Bill Kerr

17 years ago

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Did anyone else think that the green computer's screen said "s**t"
???????
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Spencer Nugent

17 years ago

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Here's a link to some other images of people presenting as well as other images of other ideas.

http://news.byu.edu/archive07-Dec-inddesign.aspx

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Prof Prague

17 years ago

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Well Well Well it is great to see a viable design from those at Mitt Romney's alma mater.
The great thing about this design is I can envision it coming to fruition not to far in the future.

Alot of these designs are problematic because there is little viability for future use. Dell would be smart to do some more R&D on these designs.
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