Dell starts shipping its take on micro-PCs to beta testers with Project Ophelia, an HDMI dongle the size of a large USB stick promising to turn any HDTV into a cloud-powered PC.
First seen at CES 2013, at first glance Ophelia is not too different to the recent crop of micro-PCs, even if unlike the popular Raspberry Pi it ships inside a proper case. However it features an interesting trick up its dongle-style sleeve-- as well as running as a stand-alone Android 4.1 device, it can connect to the cloud to act as a multipurpose Citrix or VMware thin client.
It packs a Rockchip RK3066 SoC ( X2 ARM Cortex-A9 cores clocked at 1.6GHz, Mali 400 graphics engine, memory controller), 1GB RAM, NAND storage, microSD card slot, Bluetooth and wifi connectivity. Since it lacks batteries, the Ophelia sips power through either MHL port or separately via USB interface.
Dell is eager to promote the device to both consumer and enterprise market-- at $100 it is not too expensive, while Wyse Cloud Client Manager software allows admins to manage Ophelia device permissions.
Will the PC maker find a new source of profit with such a device? We will have confirmation once the Ophelia hits the market come Q3 2013.
