Your chance to design a future ASUS PC

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 30 October 2008 09:21

Your IT - Home IT

Got any pet hates about your PC? Are there features you would really like to see added? Well you might just get your chance. Intel and ASUS have launched a web site where consumers can collaborate with them and with each other to design PCs of the future.

The site, WePC.com will "enable a global conversation about the ideal elements of PCs." Visitors will be able to share ideas, vote on submitted concepts and engage in discussions with other community members about the qualities of the 'dream' PC.

Intel and ASUS say their goal is "to deliver to market what could be the world's first community-designed PCs." The community will be divided into three conversation groups, addressing three of the most popular consumer PC categories: netbooks, notebooks and gaming notebooks.

Intel and ASUS hope to bring to market "a consumer-inspired product that simplifies and enhances computing needs with Intel and ASUS technology" in each category. The PCs will be powered by Intel Atom, Intel Centrino 2 and Intel Centrino 2 Extreme processors.

Prizes will be awarded to select participants for their creative role in the project. Details of these are to be announced at a later date.

Participants can submit ideas by specifying up to three features, giving a general description of their dream PC and drawing it on the web page. There is also a long 'shopping list' of tick-the-box selectable features, and a series sliders where users can specify a balance between conflicting parameters such as price and performance or durability and price.

"ASUS and Intel have created WePC.com in an effort to bridge innovation and technology with consumers' wishes," said Lillian Lin, director of ASUS' marketing planning division.

But because this is a community site all these ideas get published for the whole world, and ASUS' competitors, to see. However only Intel and ASUS will have access to the raw data and so be able to really mine it to identify and quantify important trends and preferences.