Decrying stasis in the laptop industry, InfoWorld's Tom Yager and crew have designed their ideal laptop for 2009 given the components are available currently. The project was subjected to the same limitations manufacturers face when whiteboarding a new notebook and introduced only those components that would increase end-user productivity manyfold. The resulting AMD Puma-based WorldBook Ether and WorldBook Meteor [specs, tour, pricing] include an 'Embedded Smartphone' system-in-system ARM microcontroller, flash-memory overlay for fast boot, and ATI/AMD Hybrid Graphics for power-saving switched mode.
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Member since:2005-07-06
...and it would be great if more people/companies finally realised how great Trackpoints are, especially in contrast with miniature touchpads used in minilaptops.
Heck, nevermind minilaptops...from what I see around most people who have a chance of using Trackpoint end up really liking it. Large number of them actually ends up using Trackpoint as the main input device.
Contrast that with how many users of touchpad only laptops can't really use them if there's no mouse attached (again, from what I see around). Especially hilarious was some recent TV news report about people still working/directing their companies while on vacations...where somebody was actually trying to use a mouse on smooth case surface next to touchpad, with laptop on their lap.
But instead of really usefull things...we get this "bling, bling, bling" proposal, that can't decide what it wants to be. Quite large, doesn't look very tough...like desktop replacement. OTOH it also wants to be always on/always with you device (solar panel and smarthpone integrated in the same case)
Edited 2008-07-09 00:18 UTC
Member since:2005-07-06
Amen.
When my wife got her Thinkpad, she had me disable the trackpoint. One day, while she was resizing a bunch of photos, she got fed up and whined about how inaccurate it was with the touchpad, how she had to lift her thumb while keeping her pointer finger depressed in order to do major resizes, how accidental brushes while she was typing highlighted other windows and interrupted her typing, how she had to do all of her pointing with her least dextrous finger (her thumb), etc.
I enabled the trackpoint.
One hour of awkward discovery later, she disabled the *touchpad* and has been a trackpoint convert ever since. She refuses to buy another laptop with a touchpad. Ever.
Member since:
2005-11-10
Why doesn't anyone just commercialize the design of the OLPC? I consider that almost perfect except for maybe the size (adult size please), color, and distro. Are companies prevented from doing so by patents? I mean they could share almost everything with OLPC except for size differences but that should be easy to compensate for while still helping to reduce most of the costs.