Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2003-09-25 01:48 pm
azurelunatic) wrote2003-09-25 01:48 pm
Ooooh, I *want* -- electronic ink!
Courtesy of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-syndicated.gif)
outofambit: Electronic ink is getting towards video speed!
I like the idea of this. There are some books that I want on paper, of course, always, because nothing replaces a paper book. But for books where I just want the information or the story handy to me at all times, this is ideal. Some books are about the object of the book itself. Some books are about the information. This is about the information -- and about gadgetry!
My ideal computer is about the size and weight of a school folder. It has a huge screen, and a full-sized keyboard/stylus-input area. (In fact, the keyboard itself is a thing that fits onto the stylus-input area, and is utterly optional; those who don't want it can easily remove it; those who use it and the stylus equally can flap it out of the way; I'm seeing hinges of some sort.) Probably the bulkiest thing on it will be the power supply, the heat-sink, any drives it has to interface with legacy equipment, and the places where it plugs into stuff. Oh, and storage. How could I forget the storage? Um. Maybe not so light as all that, then.
Above all, it is tough and stiff. It is not shock-sensitive; I can drop it on its edge or corner, and the media player might skip. I can sponge it down if someone spills coffee or soda on it; the keyboard itself is all moving parts and nothing electronic; I can toss the keyboard in the dishwasher and pop it back on after it's dry; all the electronics are inside the computer, sealed out of harm's way.
I do want the keyboard to be larger than some people might like, for ease of typing. I can type very fast, and I'm very used to keys that I can feel under my fingers. I touch-type in the dark.
outofambit: Electronic ink is getting towards video speed! I like the idea of this. There are some books that I want on paper, of course, always, because nothing replaces a paper book. But for books where I just want the information or the story handy to me at all times, this is ideal. Some books are about the object of the book itself. Some books are about the information. This is about the information -- and about gadgetry!
My ideal computer is about the size and weight of a school folder. It has a huge screen, and a full-sized keyboard/stylus-input area. (In fact, the keyboard itself is a thing that fits onto the stylus-input area, and is utterly optional; those who don't want it can easily remove it; those who use it and the stylus equally can flap it out of the way; I'm seeing hinges of some sort.) Probably the bulkiest thing on it will be the power supply, the heat-sink, any drives it has to interface with legacy equipment, and the places where it plugs into stuff. Oh, and storage. How could I forget the storage? Um. Maybe not so light as all that, then.
Above all, it is tough and stiff. It is not shock-sensitive; I can drop it on its edge or corner, and the media player might skip. I can sponge it down if someone spills coffee or soda on it; the keyboard itself is all moving parts and nothing electronic; I can toss the keyboard in the dishwasher and pop it back on after it's dry; all the electronics are inside the computer, sealed out of harm's way.
I do want the keyboard to be larger than some people might like, for ease of typing. I can type very fast, and I'm very used to keys that I can feel under my fingers. I touch-type in the dark.
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> storage? Um. Maybe not so light as all that,
> then.
It's a network device, using wireless ethernet and GPRS cellular links as appropriate to talk to a 'base-station' which is tucked away in your house/office somewhere which is a combination of a network storage device, network router, and perhaps even a more powerful CPU for offloading intensive processing tasks (which would help to offset the need for big scary heatsinks and reduce power consumption on the portable device). (The CPU offloading can be done both automatically, and manually - imagine applications which all have a 'process this task later' option for anything CPU intensive. If you're within range of your base station (or one you have access to), it asks for CPU time then and there, if not it puts it on hold until you're within range.)
The other option is just to use tiny HDs. Go look at a 30GB iPod. The drives in those things are /tiny/, and there's even smaller ones on the way (I remember reading about credit-card size and /thickness/ 5GB hard drives not that long ago). Flash memory could be a viable option too, depending on what the main use of the machine is.
A no-electronics keyboard is unrealistic, I think... you'd need to do /some/ processing on the keyboard before sending signals to the machine... but keyboards as they stand can handle being cleaned. I don't know if it changed when they moved to USB, but Apple's official recommendations for dealing with stuff spilled into their keyboards was to unplug it, rinse it thoroughly with cold water, then hang it up until it was completely dry. As long as it's not plugged in when wet, it should be perfectly fine...
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The top layer is just the keys & so forth, the primary user-interface physical layer.
Under that is the little buttons that the keys hit, the actual guts of the thing.
What I'm thinking, here, is a pressure-sensitive surface on the laptop, which can either be used for writing with a stylus or mousing or however you want it configured -- OR -- you can snap on a keyboard shell, which will press the appropriate area of the pressure-sensitive bit for you.
The surface on the laptop can be wiped down, of course.
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And the benefit to that would be that you could dispense with the key-layer entirely and just type on the touch-sensitive surface.
There's a problem with that, though. Actual touch-sensitive things like that are pretty expensive, IIRC. Things like graphics tablets work by having the touch sensitivity components in the /pen/, rather than the tablet (but, obviously, it only works in conjunction with stuff in the tablet, not by itself) - I think that's the only practical way to have things like levels of sensitivity, too.
It might result in a cheaper and slimmer device if you were to just make it a 'normal' keyboard that passes the key-signals on through either a wired link that snaps into place when you click the keyboard on, or something like BlueTooth, for an entirely wireless keyboard. Even with that, the keyboard itself could be made to be very thin and washable as in Apple's recommendations.
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They make all sorts of small keyboards for handhelds...
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This is why I'm not a hardware guy...
...Yet.
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My laptop is about the size and weight of a school folder, and has about 3 hours of battery life, wireless, and a cd-rom drive. However, it also has the durability of a crystal vase; the corner containing the CPU and sound card is especially problematic, and this has caused me many memory wipes.
Suspect the Ideal Computer would have all the properties you suggest except it would weigh a lot more due to being made of very solid materials.
I don't think a touch screen could be made to work underwater.
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They won't really take off till you can skim through them like a book when you want to find that one bit, where you can't quite remember where it is...
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On the other hand, I'm a Google gurette, mostly because of my ability to rephrase a search in most-likely-to-return-correct-result terms.
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