The Disposable Computer

sp00 writes "A disposable paperboard computer has been developed and is already in use in Sweden. Developed by Cypak AB, the paperboard computer can collect, process, and exchange several pages of encrypted data, the company says." Pretty impressive, given that they say it has a mere 32K of memory.

Comments

a mere 32K of memory

[the_other_one]

I remember when a 32K Commodore PET was a cool thing.
If they print double sided could they emulate a Commodore 64.
In a few more years ... Just imagine a cluster .... in a three ring binder.

$$$ for recycling

[Supp0rtLinux]

So what's the payout for collecting pounds of these and returning them to my local recycling center?

The difference between disposable and classic is age. My three year old PC is disposable. My 15 year old PC is a classic and goes for $9,000 on Ebay.

The only thing necessary for Micro$oft to triumph is for a few good programmers to do nothing". North County Computers

Re:$$$ for recycling

[Anonymous User 2000]

The difference between disposable and classic is age. My three year old PC is disposable. My 15 year old PC is a classic and goes for $9,000 on Ebay.

The difference between disposable and classic isn't just age, but period. Your 15 year old computer is worth someting because it was one of the first of it's kind. If you try to sell the computer you own today 15 years from now it wont be worth crap.

I need this

[Saint Stephen]

Somebody help me: I keep my todo/dates, todo/tasks, books/want, books/have, tidbits in a plain Unix text file and I maintain it with a text editor and print it using a2ps -2. My life fits in two columns landscape mode.

Whenever I need it, I print it, at a cost of 17 cents on my inkjet. When I need to update it, I simply use a pen and "sync" at home later.

I can fold it, put it in my pocket, access the data randomly instantly, and easily add graphics or test with a 0% error rate. However it gets expensive at 17 cents per sync.

All I need is a little bit of memory (32k) and a read-only display screen, super-tiny, and cheap as hell. If America wasn't ass-backwards, I'd just SMS the stuff to my cell phone.

As an employee at Microsoft I had TWO of the top of the line PocketPCs : I played quake on them, wrote some C programs, and put them away as toys. I need to do WORK, as a technical person, not a salesman. All I need is digital paper.

What can I use?

Jobs was right

[dmoen]

When Jobs hoisted the pirate flag and built the Mac, he specifically left out expandability and color on purpose. It wasn't because of technical considerations,

Yes, it certainly was. The Mac was not Apple's first computer with a mouse and a graphical interface. That was the Lisa, which nobody bought, because it was too expensive. A colour Mac would have required a huge frame buffer in order to provide adequate resolution. The memory costs of this would have pushed the price too high. Also, the 7MHz CPU was not fast enough to draw text and windows on a colour graphics display (again, unless the resolution was too small to be useful).

And keep in mind that the Lisa, despite its immense cost, was also black and white. So was the Xerox Star (another failed GUI computer that cost too much).

The Mac was not the first personal computer with a GUI. It was the first GUI computer that was cheap enough for ordinary people to buy. The hardware limitations you mention were necessary to keep the cost down.

Doug Moen