wtf lmao , thats all i can say

Associate
Joined
14 Mar 2018
Posts
2
There seems to be a huge amount of misinformation about this Winbot and false information being reported by both media sites and retailers.

First of all, the sphere and base are all PLASTIC, not glass - as many media reports and commenters have been saying. And that clear acrylic sphere will scratch just as easily as the acrylic panels on your PC case or the plastic exterior of your router.

Second, many of the media reports and retailers are advertising the Winbot to have two stereo cameras that would normally operate in PTZ Pan–Tilt–Zoom mode in applications where stereoscopic cameras have previously been used. But the production Winbot only has a single very low-resolution crappy camera. The OverclockersUK product listing also falsely mentions "Built-in stereo camera" twice along with various other incorrect and misleading information. I am not sure if this is the retailers' faults or if In Win is providing the retailers with information about nonexistent features.

Third, many reports and retailers still advertise built-in voice recognition. The Winbot never had voice recognition at all. In Win originally made a few Winbots equipped with two stereo-vision cameras displayed at Computex 2017 in Taiwan. But in a bit of bait-and-switch marketing, the Winbots they are selling just have a single blurry low-res camera. In Win also originally envisioned the Winbot to have full voice recognition using Amazon's Alexa, but they also never developed that, even though false reports about this persist even now. The prototypes displayed at trade shows are usually more primitive than the final product. But in the case of the Winbot, the two Winbots displayed at Computex 2017 were actually better prototypes, and In Win then stripped off some features to increase profits.

You can buy a crystal-clear sphere or dome made of acrylic of this size for less than £200. Many plastic fabricators can even easily make clear domes that are big enough to display a car inside the dome. Compared to the £2400 price of the previous mechanized In Win H-Tower which had more metal and far less plastic than the Winbot and the H-Tower could be remotely controlled using an iOS app (which the Winbot does not have), I think a £1800 to £2400 price would be fair for the Winbot. £3600 is way overpriced since In Win never included the two stereo cameras, never added voice recognition, and the whole thing is wrapped in plastic. So it really is not much of a "bot" robot, but just a plastic WinSphere. You can buy a fancy motorized robot that moves around, has voice recognition, and can have a conversation with you for less than £300. And you can buy a very basic cell phone for £30 that has a better camera than the single camera on the Winbot.

The meager 2-year warranty is also terribly lame for a £3600 plastic sphere case because if its motor dies on the third year, what tiny bit of "bot" functionality it had is now totally lost, and you just now have a plastic globe that can be manually rotated on a ball bearing turntable. I loved In Win's S-Frame, but this Winbot is just way wayyyy overpriced.
 
Associate
Joined
19 Jul 2011
Posts
2,343
Came in to muse about the train and boat cases (and that thermaltake with the shoeboxes sticking off a plank thing) while pointing and laughing at mega expensive goldfish bowl.

Instead found someone grinding an axe!

Thread delivers!
 
Soldato
Joined
9 Jan 2016
Posts
3,727
Location
Derbyshire
i think that looks awesome, not over 3 grand awesome, but still awesome, i like space theme stuff, though much be said, i wonder how many they would sell given to have a fancy worthwhile system to showcase in it will cost you at least 2 grand.
 
Associate
Joined
14 Mar 2018
Posts
2
Came in to muse about the train and boat cases (and that thermaltake with the shoeboxes sticking off a plank thing) while pointing and laughing at mega expensive goldfish bowl.

Instead found someone grinding an axe!

Thread delivers!


Careful with that AX1600i, Eugene!!

I actually think the Winbot is an interesting concept. And the Winbot is only the second spherical PC design ever produced, with the first sphere being the 2014 spherical pre-built Zotac OI520 Plus mini-PC: https://www.zotac.com/us/product/mini_pcs/oi520-plus

But for its overinflated price, In Win missed many opportunities to make the Winbot a truly epic design - completely leaving off the originally-planned voice recognition (so you cannot just walk into the room and speak out "Winbot power on" or "Winbot reboot"), replacing the two average-quality stereo cameras displayed in the Computex 2017 prototypes with a single poor-quality camera lens, and not even including a mirrored-glass 1065-watt power supply in the £3600 price, unlike their previous 30th-anniversary cases like the Tou 2.0 and H-Frame 2.0 that include a PSU. Instead of offering 250 Winbots at £3600 each, they could have made even more profit by offering 500 Winbots at £2400, i.e. priced the same as their previous motorised H-Tower because both design and production costs for the Winbot are comparable to the H-Tower and not £1200 more.

The OverclockersUK product listing is misleading with its marketing embellishments:

"Acrylic glass" is mentioned four times, but it should be called "Acrylic plastic"! "Glass" is silica sand melted with limestone and soda ash in a furnace at 1700°C to make a tough dense scratch-resistant surface. "Acrylic" is a lightweight thermoplastic made from propylene gas, a petrochemical, and anyone who had an acrylic panel on their PC knows how easily they can be scratched. In Win is known for their beautiful tempered glass cases. But there is not a single piece of "glass" on the Winbot.

"stereo camera" is mentioned twice, but the only Winbots out there with stereo cameras were the few that In Win made for their own trade show use in 2017.

The product listing also says the "Winbot holds a lot of hardware", but there is actually a very poor utilisation of space inside the big sphere. You are limited to a 45mm or 50mm 360 radiator with fans on one side. If the radiator/fan bracket mount point was lowered down to the middle of the chassis, instead of being located near the top, since all spheres and circles have the most room near the middle, there could have been enough room to use a 60mm-thick 360 radiator with push-pull fans. If the sphere was made just an extra 10mm to 12mm larger in diameter, there could have been room inside to mount a 45mm-thick 420 radiator with push-pull fans on the back side of the mobo, for those of us with 16-core and 18-core CPUs, and additional space to mount a second 240mm radiator in the rear if desired.
 
Last edited:
Soldato
Joined
6 Jun 2008
Posts
11,618
Location
Finland
Kinda wonder if PC assembled to that would pass EMC testing.

Besides keeping external EMI out case forming Faraday cage also limits how much EMI PC can emit.
And without some conductive coating plastic won't do that.


The meager 2-year warranty is also terribly lame for a £3600 plastic sphere case because if its motor dies on the third year, what tiny bit of "bot" functionality it had is now totally lost
Maybe they meant buyer with that bot part...
 

D3K

D3K

Soldato
Joined
13 Nov 2014
Posts
3,735
Ok I'm bored now, this is a bot or Wikipedia cut n paste.

It's managed to keep the entire rant relevant to OCUK, as well as In Win, so it's gotta be a bot! I'm quite impressed with the astute the technology is - calling out OCUK for dodgy advertising of products is a surprise!

*cough* vive pro with wireless video *cough*
 
Associate
Joined
25 Jan 2006
Posts
2,057
Location
Kent ,UK
WINBOT: Passive infrared with Radar guided tech built in?
& Can it make Genuine bourbon whisky with Licence addon?

Wonder if WINBOT was named after
WINBOT, the Window Cleaning Robot
 
Last edited:
Back
Top Bottom