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Always on Laptops
yapplejax writes "PortalPlayer is offering an interesting laptop technology to manufacturers which will allow information to be displayed without actually booting the computer. The addition will cost manufacturers a mere $30 - $40 and is supported by Vista via the feature "SideShow"." From the article: "PortalPlayer kept down the costs of Preface by using a display used in mobile phones, rather that developing one specially, to take advantage of the economies of scale in the phone market, Johnson said. The costs will include $18 to $20 for a display, about $12 for the single-chip processor and a few dollars for memory and other small components, he said."
Yes, but what happens when you have an RTG in your laptop, and you have the thing on your lap? Since they are typically used in spacecraft, I guess waste heat and leaked radiation isn't usually much of a problem in their design. On your lap, right near your crotch, I think there might be a problem or two.
I saw a prototype of this at PDC 2005 last year - it's a screen on the laptop cover and a software API to load it up with data.
.NET... The idea is to provide access to information that the user may want quick access to. The demo showed a weather application, an email application (seemed to be notification based as in "you have 56 unread messages", not an email client) and an expedia client that showed travel details - something potentially very nice IMO.
Programmers design their own UI and program against it with
Will there be an API for Linux? I highly doubt it - this is a product that Microsoft has obviously championed for a while - they showed it during the PDC keynote last year...
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
Or you could just buy a Mac and enjoy a computer that's "on" as soon as you finish opening the lid, which removes a large portion of the need for this special screen. Admittedly you would still have to open it, but considering that you already need to unzip your bag, take the laptop out, orient it, et ceteara, popping open the screen is no big deal. Unless you're on a Windows laptop that can take an amazing long time to go from sleep mode to fully functional (like mine).
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
It's been done before.
A buddy had a Tandy PC that was equipped with DOS v3.3 in the BIOS (designated c:\)
It didn't work very well in practice, but in theory, damn it was cool.
(Among many software problems that he had due to c:\ being read-only, the whole system was slow as hell.)
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Well the demo I saw last year, the guy went and booked a flight on expedia, then turned off his laptop and right there on the cover flipped through a handful of applications into an expedia sidebar app... showed flight date/time, airline, gate, and seat assignment... without having to power on the laptop.
I was impressed.
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
No, it's not rocket science, but it is incredibly complex, and I'm guessing from your post that you've never studied how operating systems work or things like "authentication protocols". What happens when you go without power for an extended period of time? You lose your entire OS. What do you do if you want to upgrade your OS and the volatile memory you're storing it on doesn't have enough space? (keep in mind that volatile memory is MUCH more expensive than a hard drive) How do you differentiate normal and "key" applications? It's either read-only or it's not, and every independant software developer out there is going to consider their software to be "key". Also, if the device state is constant, how do you handle removing or installing new hardware? You'll have to reboot for that. That is, of course, ignoring the fact that you should have the power completely off any time you're working on internal hardware, and that would wipe out your OS. All kinds of horror would ensue if you tried to move whatever device was containing your OS to another computer. You'll also have to reboot any time your OS's kernel changes.
These things aren't issues with PDAs and mobile devices because their OSs are much simpler, their hardware is not expected to undergo any serious changes (except perhaps swapping out an expansion card), and because they have so little data (relatively) that it is cheap to implement. If you think it's so easy, why don't you do it rather than telling the engineers what they should be doing?