Next-Gen PC Competition Results in Some Wild, Beautiful Designs

Microsoft announced the winners of its 2007 Next-Gen PC Design Competition, and this year’s champs gave new meaning to that old cliché, “outside the box.” These PCs won’t be available anytime soon, but their industrial designers pick up some serious recognition along with a substantial wad of cash for their efforts. This year’s competition had entries from 35 countries, and the 349 submissions were judged on their innovation, user experience, aesthetics, technology integration and ecology.

Taking home a cool $25,000 for the Chairman’s Award is John Leung from Melbourne, Australia with his design you see here, called “MADE in China.” The acronym MADE stands for Massively Administered Digital Entities, incorporating a design that has all of its applications and data stored on remote servers. It looks like an Asian dining platter, and its chopstick-like input device, called a CHOPstylus, allows for input on the PC’s touchscreen. Take a look at the gallery for the other winners. – Charlie White

Brave New World of Computing [Microsoft]