Yeah, anything beyond 17" the round design would start being huge. Imagine it with a 24" display!
Hmm, but for a little netPC for about $400~500 and a 15" screen, it could be workable. Obviously, with todays technology, it would be a lot thiner very easily - espeically with an Atom CPU and the power supply on the outside. Look at how the netbook market has exploded with 9~12" screens as people seem to be moving away from 17" notebooks.
Looking at the site, it was designed back in 2001 - before the lamp-shade iMacs hit the market. And some how, it was user upgradeable for a graphics card, which could explain its thickness as well.
I saw in Frys, a round computer from SONY - but its sits on a table and obviously no LCD monitor, kind of like a mac-mini.