DreamGot a great idea for a pc? Big or small we want to hear it.You Dream it. ASUS Builds It. Intel Inside It.

NETBOOK PC PC : DISCUSSION

CAN touch this!
Posted in Netbook PC | March 25, 2009 5pm

This my last post for WePC and wow - what great time it's been! If you told me at the start that we'd all collectively come up with and see so many "touch interface" ideas - I wouldn't have believed you! Back in October when we first started talking about the dream PC - touch was mentioned here and there, but over time on WePC.com and independently the "touch interface" has become an expected feature of any new system on the horizon. In just a few short months (last 2008 to present) it seems like every netbook and all-in-one will start to support some type of touch interface. As this transition happens, it will not only be interesting for the current computer users to adjust, adapt and use touch screens - but in just a few years the next generations of computer users (kids) will start to only know that "all screens are touchable". Imagine that - a kid growing up today will see a screen the same way you and I see mice, keyboards and a stylus. The other day I saw a father on the subway hand his iPhone to his daughter so she could play a game, she immediately understood how it all worked - this was a 7 ot 8 year old - the screens in her world are all interfaces. Another kid saw this interaction on the train and had a PSP, he paused - looked at the PSP screen and tapped it - as if perhaps the screen would suddenly respond. He went on to finish his game, but I have a feeling he'll be seeing a touch screen PSP sooner than he thinks! This interaction reminded me of a story that Clay Shirky posted... You'll get the analogy:
I was having dinner with a group of friends about a month ago, and one of them was talking about sitting with his four-year-old daughter watching a DVD. And in the middle of the movie, apropos nothing, she jumps up off the couch and runs around behind the screen. That seems like a cute moment. Maybe she's going back there to see if Dora is really back there or whatever. But that wasn't what she was doing. She started rooting around in the cables. And her dad said, "What you doing?" And she stuck her head out from behind the screen and said, "Looking for the mouse." Here's something four-year-olds know: A screen that ships without a mouse ships broken. Here's something four-year-olds know: Media that's targeted at you but doesn't include you may not be worth sitting still for. Those are things that make me believe that this is a one-way change. Because four year olds, the people who are soaking most deeply in the current environment, who won't have to go through the trauma that I have to go through of trying to unlearn a childhood spent watching Gilligan's Island, they just assume that media includes consuming, producing and sharing.
So here *we* are - touch screens are going to be the default - look for little fingerprints on every screen soon, touch interface or not - it's coming!

NETBOOK PC PC : DISCUSSION

Laptop hi(story)
Posted in Netbook PC | March 10, 2009 9am

As the "DreamPC" project here winds down with our authoring coming to a close, I was thinking about the past decade or so of laptops I've owned or used. I'm pretty sure there are a few missing, but here's my list. For fun, list yours as fast as you can!

TRS-80 Model 100
Compaq SLT/286
Texas Instruments 286, can't recall the name.
Macintosh Powerbook 140
PDAs (Sony, Newtons, Palm Pilots)
ThinkPad 700
Dell Inspirions
Sony Vaios
Tablet PCs
Apple Powerbooks
OLPC MacBook Pro
ASUS Netbook

Wow! Over 20 years - Looking back it's amazing how far things have come along, computers were over $2,000 20 years ago and only had tiny amounts of storage and performance, now you can get a "super computer" for under $500 or a real super computer for under $2k! What's interesting is the form factor hasn't changed "that much" - but as electronics shrink and we demand more input/output the next big breakthroughs seem to be user interfaces.

To just add a little more history, almost exactly 3 years ago to this day I saw Jeff Han's multi-touch display, from that moment on it was clear - the future is multi-touch. One of the great things about writing about tech is you get to look back, here's my post - enjoy!

NETBOOK PC PC : DISCUSSION

Multiple screens and touch interfaces!
Posted in Netbook PC | March 4, 2009 11am

This week we're going to dive right in to multiple screens and touch interfaces, but first up, some housekeeping!
It all started with a dream. Back in October 2008 ASUS and Intel launch WePC.com as a way for you to share your ideas, and join us in making the worlds first community designed laptop. And we have been more than impressed with the results! ASUS and Intel want to thank you for all of the amazing PC's and ideas you've created and shared. We've discussed your ideas, listened to conversations, talked with our engineers, and are ready to kickoff the next phase of this project: Focused conversations about the most popular ideas and concepts. The first of many ideas we want to explore with you are Multiple Screen and Touch Interface. We want you to tell us more about what you want out of, and how you would use a PC with these features in the comments area below. To keep the innovation going, in a few weeks we'll be announcing more of the top ideas on a new section of WePC.com where you can discuss, vote, and dream in much more detail.  Our goal is to further inform the development of the DreamPC, so please join us in the next phase of developing the worlds first community designed laptop at WePC.com.
Some of the top ideas for the DreamPC were "multiple screens and touch interfaces". Let's take a look at these and what the readers had to say... dual screen slide display moccpew writes:
you have the main screen, then you have a 2nd screen behind it that slides out to be your dual display. and it can pivot to give you better angle.
Luxury Double-Screen Notebook MonaM writes:
The epitome of boardroom laptop oneupmanship, the luxurious double-screen notebook features a swing-out LCD panel that doubles as a tablet screen when the laptop is closed. In addition, hand-crafted leather and walnut inlays borrow from luxury car dashboards to give an overall highbrow user experience.
Touch the air lucacruz writes:
My dream pc is a two panel touch screen not very big, about 10" or 13 " very costumizable that you can use one like keyword when you need or you can use like piano or you can rotate the netbook and use like a book to read pdf and with your finger you can scroll the page, or you can use like a disk jokey with virtual lp or to manipulate immage and so on. we can placed on a table open in vertical side and wacth movie (I dont know if the middle black line will be a pain in the as...) In my dream The TTA netbook will came with open source operating sistem so is easy to every one to write application that can get satisfaction to everybody.
Fogli Zhigarev writes:
Folderable dual touchscreen netbook. Touchscreens 800x640, when geting together (in Artist or Cinema mode) 1280x800 - 12"-13,3". Intel Atom, discrete sound, 1-2 GB RAM. 2 USB, stereo speakers, mic, HDMI, DVI/VGA, SD-cardreader, 60-80 SSD or 1,8" HDD, proximity sensor, stylus. 3G, WiMax, WiFi, BT, GPS. OS - any! 24 hours operateable. Light (0,3-0,5kg), slim (10 mm opened, 20mm closed).
So what do these all have in common? I like to look at what folks want to do when they talk about features - in each of these popular ideas there are some themes that emerge - "more display area" - angles for multiple views, "wowing", "book reading", creating art & watching movies. What's interesting to consider is how these tasks are combinations of multiple devices - an e-ink reader, a web tablet, an external display, touch screen phones and more. The imaginations of regular laptop uses are now on par with industrial designers, they both are looking at a variety of devices in the market and doing "virtual mashups" in their heads to do the things they want to do and the tasks they want to get done - all in their portable. So based on these top 2 ideas, what do you think? Will you use a "DreamPC" like this? Do you like to have multiple devices or do you think you would use an all-in-one type device described above? Post up in the comments!

NETBOOK PC PC : DISCUSSION

On the subject of universal power adapters...
Posted in Netbook PC | February 24, 2009 10am

One of the great (and top) ideas from everyone here talking about building their dream PC was a universal power supply. Let's take a look at it -
Every notebook, every pc, ... everything uses a power adapter... a different power adapter. An universal power adapter using a simple common connector (like a mini usb connector? a magnetic one like the Apple magsafe?) that let the user buy and share between devices the same power supply.
Great idea, everyone wants this - but it's technically and logistically very challenging. First let's talk about the last bit of "universal charger" news that is making the rounds - cell phones. This is a pretty easy one, many phones charge via USB now, their batteries are about 4VDC, plug them in to a USB port on a computer you can get 5VDC at about 500mA, the maximum allowable by the USB spec - plug them in to the wall and you can get more current, maybe 1-2A (that's why it's faster to charge via the wall, more current). But laptops, that's tricky - the batteries come in many shapes and size, the capacities are all different, the form factors are different. Form factor isn't that big of a deal, a few millimeters for a round socket can be designed around for just about any laptop - but the real challenge is charging without damage. Laptops will go faster, turn off parts of a motherboard, dim screens, brighten again - all depending on how much power is left or it's plugged in. A lot is going on and you really want the laptop engineers doing testing on a known configuration (power supply) before you plunk down your cash on a new system - while a cell phone can charge via USB and has some nice circuitry, there's a lot less going on inside a cell phone for now than a laptop, they're also cheaper in many cases. So a laptop needs a little more engineering and more testing with the power supply, a knock off or something "universal" might save a few bucks, but it also could damage a system. Manufacturers are unlikely to agree on a standard for laptops (just my opinion) - but there is a solution, don't go universal and don't look to the mobile professional - go to a developing country and try to do some work! That's right, go to a place in the world that doesn't have the power infrastructure and design your power solution based on that - you'll quickly see that there are a lot of ways to get power and it's not always what you expect. While putting this together I recall seeing one location online that had cataloged all the power sources along with pros/cons - it was from the OLPC page (one laptop per child project) and sure enough, everything we've been talking about with universal power supplies are represented there. Check it out, it's a wonderful list and I think this is an important place to start when considering what it would actually take to make a universal power supply. Any way - the OLPC can take power from anything in the 11VDC to 18VDC range, a 12V lead acid battery fits right in between (many developing nations use lead acid battery power). When you allow a range of voltage like this, there are tradeoffs - how efficient it is, the size (small to big) and the cost (you want it to be inexpensive). The more voltage you want it to handle, the more electronics you'll need to safely use the power - that means size. So while you could increase the range it can handle, the cost and size goes up. What does this all mean for the chances of a universal power supply? I think if and when it does happen it will come from millions of laptops in developing countries "battle testing" what works and doesn't - and later we'll see some of those solutions hit consumer portables in the rest of the world - so it's not coming soon, but it is coming I think!