Discussions

I do the majority of my work away from home, but I'm always forgetting some crucial thing, and then I have to pack up and head home. Those things typically involve needing peripherals, like printers and scanners. Here are a few peripherals I wish someone would smoosh into my laptop.

Internal Printer



I know they make portable printers, but I don't want to lug one around in my sleek little laptop bag.

I'd love a quiet printer that's small and lightweight enough to be incorporated permanently into my laptop's design, like a CD drive. It would be especially helpful in airports and hotels when I need to print my boarding pass so I can avoid the epic line.

Mini Scanner



They make scanners so small now, it would be handy to have one built-in. Why not just take one of those sleek pens and pop it into a groove above my keyboard like the pens on credit card readers at cash registers? Come to think of it, I don't know why no one offers this yet. Does anyone offer this yet?

Kinetic Power



My other wants all have to do with power. I'm tired of slogging an extra battery around, and a cord for that matter. I want a laptop that converts kinetic energy into power, a battery that powers itself with the energy I exert when I'm typing or moving my laptop from one place to another. The concept is already in the works with cell phones, and someone has figured out how to use a bike to do something similar. But instead of attaching this to my bike, and then hooking up my laptop, my laptop would just have an inertia sensor inside.

Projector



My last wish would be for the ability to turn my PC into a projector without a cable or any extra equipment. This would be genius for conferences, and for craft projects that require tracing.In fact, that's how we decorated our nursery:



Mostly it would be a welcome addition to our weekends at the cabin, when there are more kids around than just our two year old. If we could queue up a movie on the laptop and then (swish!) display it on a wall for a bunch of little ones in PJs with popcorn, this would give the adults sitting outside around the fire with our wine at least 90 more minutes of ahhhh time.

So what about you? What accessories are so crucial to you, you'd prefer they live inside your PC to improve portability, and make you less of a slave to the cord jumble?

Does any of this already exist? Surely it does. I bet if it's out there, one of you will tell me. I love it when I think I want someone to make this, and then boom, one of your comments says, They already have, here's a link. You guys are good like that.