What tech do you least want to see in new computers?
What tech do you least want to see in a new desktop or laptop? All this talk of future hardware usually should come with the disclaimer that some new ideas are really bad ideas. Some future tech is just plain useless. Here's my favorite piece of technology that I least want to see in a new laptop that lots of people view as a necessary piece of technology: fuel cells.
Fuel cells basically take fuel (hydrocarbon fuel or hydrogen) and turn it into electricity. Fuel cells were created for the Apollo space program to power spaceships reliably and with no moving parts. Fuel cells will probably be the next big thing for automobiles in about ten years.
Unfortunately there are some people who think that they would be great for laptops. The idea is that you could run the fuel cell and never run out of charge. Who could hate something so useful? Well me for example. Let's think this through. I buy my laptop and then I have to carry around some gasoline in a squeeze bottle so that I can refuel my laptop. What if I spill? I have a laptop with combustible liquid on it. Do I have to make sure that nobody is smoking within ten feet of me when I refuel? Should I statically ground myself when I refuel? Is my laptop now a combustion hazard (yes, it is)? How many years do I spend in jail for trying to take my laptop with me on an airplane? Do I start getting nervous when my laptop gets really warm? Do I carry around a can of zippo lighter fluid? What do I do when I am out of fuel? Do I run to a gas station at midnight because my laptop is about to power down? Who thinks that this is a good idea? I sure don't. It isn't simple. It isn't convenient.
What other tech do you not want to see in a future computer?
Fuel cells basically take fuel (hydrocarbon fuel or hydrogen) and turn it into electricity. Fuel cells were created for the Apollo space program to power spaceships reliably and with no moving parts. Fuel cells will probably be the next big thing for automobiles in about ten years.
Unfortunately there are some people who think that they would be great for laptops. The idea is that you could run the fuel cell and never run out of charge. Who could hate something so useful? Well me for example. Let's think this through. I buy my laptop and then I have to carry around some gasoline in a squeeze bottle so that I can refuel my laptop. What if I spill? I have a laptop with combustible liquid on it. Do I have to make sure that nobody is smoking within ten feet of me when I refuel? Should I statically ground myself when I refuel? Is my laptop now a combustion hazard (yes, it is)? How many years do I spend in jail for trying to take my laptop with me on an airplane? Do I start getting nervous when my laptop gets really warm? Do I carry around a can of zippo lighter fluid? What do I do when I am out of fuel? Do I run to a gas station at midnight because my laptop is about to power down? Who thinks that this is a good idea? I sure don't. It isn't simple. It isn't convenient.
What other tech do you not want to see in a future computer?
Comments
sorry couldn't resist!
Apple would reduce the last remaining bits of noise by having a speaker that plays a reverse audio wave of the environment thereby cancelling out the ambiant room and computer noise. Similar to the Noice Cancellation Bose Headphones. The Silence would be deafening.
re Fuel Cells
The flammability thing is a non-issue. The fuels will be well packaged and might not even be flammable. I recall reading that the fuel was a mixture of water and methanol. It probably could burn if you really tried but it wouldn't go off with just a spark.
My issue with fuel cells is that they are not rechargeable. I'm not sure how I feel about this. It would be nice to get 10 hours or so of life from my PB. On the other hand, I could not just plug in and recharge and get an additional 10 hours. I'd have to find a kiosk (or Apple Store
I think fuel cells will get a lot of attention but will not be widely adopted as quickly as you would think from all the buzz.
Also, fuel cells will not be out for at least a year and will not be widely available for perhaps two or more years. In that time we may see enough improvement in battery and laptop design to make Li batteries look more appealing.
If batteries get a little better at holding charge, in lifetime and even a smidge better capacity while laptop power demand (OLED screens, better HDs, better CPUs) and power management improves we may see honest eight hour usage times even with Li batteries. At that point fuel cells may be relegated to a niche market.
car alarm screensavers.
there was an old SNL skit about "noise-seeking lasers"
that would vaporize late night screewoopwoopmeepmeepbraapers
most want to see (for portable devices)?
alternative power options:
- Solar charging laptop bag (with enough juice to run and charge at once)
- Gilligan/Hamster power wind-up (akin to Baygen radios and flashlights)
- "kinetodynamic" or motion-powered (like some watches... arm movement recharges them)
enough blackouts this year to look like a swinging cluestick.perfect for iPod.
no wires is good. no grid is better.
What I most want to see is whatever gives me honest-to-Steve all-day battery life. With wireless networking goodness. I'm a patient man.
In that case anything that involves turning my computer into a tablet.
Imagine that one of your kid, press this button by mistake ...
silent, no fans--solved with liquid cooler
thinner--oled, minimal battery, fuel cell
plug in ram disk for instant boot up
very durable
drives--with huge ram would this be necessary, xd card i heard can go 8gb. maybe a series of these cards instead of a hd and optical drives--would this ever be replaced???
AE/BT combo card
micro sized pcmi slot/cards
only usb and firewire ports, get rid of those serial and other bulky ports
tiny power "brick"--for emergency use, fuel cell 10hrs, and can be refueled while on.
how about 1/2 inch, ruberized, thatt can be dropped repeatedly from 5 ft.
or wrist watch that plugs into a rollup oled screen all voice activated.
we keep talking about the future of the laptop(how much faster do we need), it's the surrounding lack of connectivity that limits us, we should be able to use our 12PB anywhere, everywhere, superbroadband(>5mbs)everywhere
future--cover the country with wifi, wireless everything, the future should have total connectivity all the time. wireless broadband from your home, car all public places.better voice recognition, intuitive instructions, learn our preferences. if connectivity was universal like cell phone coverage, we'd take our laptops more oftern, then the need for thin light and functionally small. more would by 12 screen, all laptops would be widescreen, because we need more page space with voice scrolling.
Originally posted by Programmer
Voice recognition and head mounted displays.
now we're talking
HMMM
I want a home server that I can load all my programs and multimedia content on to and then share it amongst all the computers I have in my house. It would be integrated with my cable TV and Stereo system and all my vcrs dvd players and TV's. It would serve up the internet and monitor all of the clients so that they are up to date. It would have strong security features and it would backup files automatically. Best of all it would be cheap to implement and be virtually self maintaining.
Next I want static ram drives. Cheap and fast. The clients could net boot what they need for an OS and no seperate ram would be needed.
more to come later8)
Originally posted by oldmacfan
My wish list.
HMMM
I want a home server that I can load all my programs and multimedia content on to and then share it amongst all the computers I have in my house. It would be integrated with my cable TV and Stereo system and all my vcrs dvd players and TV's. It would serve up the internet and monitor all of the clients so that they are up to date. It would have strong security features and it would backup files automatically. Best of all it would be cheap to implement and be virtually self maintaining.
Next I want static ram drives. Cheap and fast. The clients could net boot what they need for an OS and no seperate ram would be needed.
more to come later8)
I think you ought to read the thread's title more carefully.
The scrollmouse provides a slightly different but easily accessable way of performing a certain operation. There is a minor but noticable benefit in performing the operation "the scrollmouse way" (using the wheel) but the penalty is that a chunk of what's under your fingers suddenly becomes dedicated to a specific, trivial, operation. Users, because there's a benefit, quickly become acustomed to the new feature and get very annoyed when they're made to use a mouse that doesn't support it.
So, here's my contribution for the tech I least want to see in new computers, and it's based upon the scrollmouse: a row of buttons, under the space bar on the keyboard, marked "The", "And", "There", "Hello", "Some", "Now", "This", etc.
Hit the key and the word is auto-typed for you, complete with a leading and trailing spaces if necessary. Hold shift and it's capitalised. Have CAPS LOCK on and it types the whole thing in caps. And, for Microsoft keyboard behaviour compatability, if you hold down shift and have CAPS LOCK on it'll put the first letter in lowercase and the rest in caps, lIKE tHIS.
You may laugh. But consider: People will start using it. And once they get used to hitting the key to the below-left of the space bar to type "The", they'll get very annoyed when they use a keyboard without the "The" key. And they'll say "Your keyboard sucks, I have to go all over it to type "The" when on my keyboard I just hit one button".
THAT, my friends, is the innovation I don't want to see in new computers. But something tells me someone's about to do it.
how about pull down menu where you can place frequently used terms