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Cylindrical Rolltop Laptops
akshaynhegde writes "Germany's Orkin Design has proposed this fantastic concept of a futuristic laptop. The rolltop is a 'rolled up' laptop. By using the flexible OLED and touchscreen technologies, the created concept is a cylindrical laptop which can be rolled out when it needs to be used and can be rolled up again when not used." Something tells me it will be a little while before you will be unrolling your laptop on a plane.
Something tells me it will be a little while before you will be unrolling your laptop on a plane.
Enough is enough. I have had it with these motherfucking rollup laptops on this motherfucking plane.
Come on, this has been proposed many times before, but the most recent/mainstream place was in the show Caprica. They all had their little rolls of epaper that they would take with them and use as a laptop.
I don't think we will see rollup laptops, but rather just rollup monitors and keyboards. By the time these come out, your computer will be in your pocket, you will just want a larger screen and keyboard to do your real work.
And even if it was, do you know how god damn annoying it is to read a paper after it's been rolled up?
Look, laptops do it right. The hinge? That's a crease, a fold line, and allows this thing that otherwise should not be bent to use space more efficiently. A cylinder is will have that big empty volume in the middle. Well, it will until the slightest bit of pressure to the sides squeezes it flat.
I fail to understand the entire roll-up computation field. What's the appeal? Why would I want to carry around a cylinder of material that is easy to crush (and therefore crease, likely destroying in the process) when the same item can be made flat, rigid, and slide easily into my briefcase along with other flat things that I need to carry around? Floppy items are no fun to type on. Curly things are no fun to read.
Can someone explain, please?
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
One was the movie Mission To Mars. Another was a scifi TV series about a decade ago produced by Majel Roddenberry I think was called Earth Final Conflict. User had pen-like devices they could pull out a computer screen.
Post about it when it is built.
flatten 'em out, & roll 'em up. an unexpectdead oasis forms?
They'll call it the iScroll...
I bet the Apple Rollup will taste the best. Either that or it won't but many people will insist in forums and chat rooms that it is.
Red Planet, Caprica, Killing Star, others.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
News?
I'm sure someone sent me a link to a video around two years or more ago that looked almost exactly like that. Same shape, same blue shoulder strap, everything...
Same speculation that it's coming right away...
Anywhere you can carry a pen, you could carry a computer. Also the screen would be larger than a watch-size or cell-size when expanded.
This reminds me of stuff like the nokia morph concept. It took 10 years for me to be able to properly view a webpage on my phone. The monopolized 'slow roll' of our technology wont allow this stuff to happen in our life time.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
When are designers going to get it into their heads that touch displays make terrible keyboards!!!
I will gladly keep my rigid keyboard in lieu of the roll-up display.
Besides, I saw sketches of something similar years ago. This isn't new.
What's so new about that? Concept ideas along those lines have been around for years, long before OLED screens became mainstream.
The video in the linked site, which has been around since at least 2009, is entirely animated. It's a neat idea, but show me a physical device.
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
This idea has been around for a long time.
They see me rollin'
my laptop
I know they're all thinking
I'm so white'n'nerdy
PlusFive Slashdot reader for Android. Can post comments.
Remember snap bracelets?
http://www.google.com/images?q=snap+bracelet
Those didn't seem to have much of an issue with having been rolled up.
There are other methods of straightening out rolled-up works as well. The same principle as a scissor lift, for example. In multiple stages, they can be either expanded for sturdiness, or folded together and have a minimal profile that could be included in the roll-up.
I'm not sure if this sort of thing has benefits for notebooks. However, for handheld devices, I can definitely see that working quite well. Think iPhone with 10" screen, yet rolls up to a size optionally smaller than current iPhones* and be less prone to damage.
* Personally I wouldn't make it roll up into a cylinder per se. More of a rounded-box. That way the faces of the box can still function as normal displays, much like current-generation mobiles, and if you want the bigger screen you can roll it out entirely - without the edges that would be created by separate screens with hinges.
So that's a lot of moveable parts. Technically the screen is flexible but the other side appears hinged. What happens when one of those hinges bust?
One of the selling points is that the rolltop fits in any bag, but if my livelihood depends on a reliable machine that won't physically break in the airport right before I get on the plane, I'll gladly get a specialized bag for it, it's not that big a deal.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Since the Internet is a series of tubes, a cylindrical laptop makes perfect sense!
Seems like he wrote about this several years ago, now -
It only makes sense to use a rollable anything if you have something else already that rolls up that cannot reasonably be made to take up less space in some other way. For instance in my camping kit I have a big thermarest pad which rolls up so it only makes sense that I should carry around other stuff that rolls up, then it can all go down the center of my pack and end up pretty well-balanced with other stuff packed around it. So I pack clothes into those gigantic zip-lock bags and wrap them around it. Anything that is highly breakable and fairly elongated can go in the middle in a Ziploc(tm) or in a screw-top container, etc. If I were to have unlimited funds or if I were arriving at Fry's in my flying car I might buy one for a couple hundred bucks.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
is Old
This blog post is so full of grammar and spelling errors that I'm amazed it's worthy of a front-page link. I almost want it to get Slashdotted just so people won't have to parse such broken prose. Even the quote contains a typo.
Great it comes with a "Fix Button" for when it breaks! :P
A rolled up newspaper over your head is one thing...
http://xkcd.com/875/
Tell younger me I said "Hi".
-Space for rent
Virtual chicks carrying a rolltop around should move their ass in more better ways.
WTF is this whole article + video ?
Is this an early april fool ?
As much as the concept could be nice I can't figure out a worse way to "promote it"...
I'm glad to see Aperture Science is coming out with new products.
It looks nice and kinda cool. Good concept. I see designers and hipsters as a good target group for this. For us that use the computer for a lot of typing, I don't think a touch keyboard will do the job. I also imagine the horror of that speaker/power-supply entangled in the cable mess under my table. Overall I think it's a fun concept, I wouldn't buy it, but I know people who would.
The one thing that tends to break first on a conventional laptop is the foil connecting screen to keyboard. That's nowhere near the stress level a rollup screen would have, contains no active components, far fewer connections and is decade-old mature technology.
It also bends in a controlled and designed manner without direct access of the user.
Now go figure.
I am still waiting for my roll out mobile phone from 2004.
Excuse me while I whip this out...
Why is this even being slashdotted? Nothing has been made. No new technology has been put forth, it's just a 3d-render of what someone thinks the future will look like, with absolutely no scientific merit behind it. I could fire up 3ds max right now and make a similar design, and submit it for slashdot, will I get a feature?
So how long before the keyboard and screen start curling up and not laying flat anymore? And I guess you won't be able to put it on your lap anymore.
Have a small cube or brick that projects a keyboard (like http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/8193/ ) on the table, and a screen on the wall or on a roll-up screen. The "screen" could even be "touch" enabled via the same sensing technology the projected keyboard uses. For "Laptop" use there could be two dishwasher resistant plastic boards, which could also double as breakfast plates while commuting. ;-P
Definitely nothing I would want to write a book or code software on, but good enough for weak-point presentations or use on a plane.
I didn't care for the design shown in the link at all. It didn't provide any advantages over a laptop, yet was trying to replace one. But I have thought of it before, and I do think it would be a good idea in some situations.
First some constraints. I don't think this would work well for a laptop; typing on a surface without tactile feedback sucks compared to a real keyboard. So it is limited to tablet-type applications. It would also need a solid core (like a scroll) or even sheath (like a retractable projector screen) to prevent the flexible part from being creased when transported. I imagine all the electronics and batteries being in the core, and just the screen rolling. Finally, for it to have any space-saving properties, the core and screen would both have to be thin.
I first imagined this being used for large-size eInk devices for reading schematics and floor plans. You really don't wouldn't want to carry around tablet the size of an A1, A2 or A3 paper. You could get away with an A3 surface size by folding in half to A4, but beyond that you need something like an accordion fold or roll-able, and I think roll-able would be better as it doesn't have seams. This could be done now using eInk for the display and the core would be quite small (although annoying to design), considering how the volume of electronics in small eBook readers.
I could also see it being used for smaller devices. Like a phone or PDA that wrapped around your wrist like a slap-bracelet. This will require further miniaturization before practical, but it isn't' too far away.
Everyone flipping out about not wanting to use a roll-up laptop... which is fine, but I think the idea here is to just showcase one small application for roll-up/out technology.. I can think of many places a roll-out screen would be handy... A roll-out GPS map in a car, a roll-out screen for consuming content on the road, like in an RV. Large roll-out displays for use in aerospace, either on a space station where size and weight are key, to on a passenger plane for larger personal video screens.. Personally I want a roll-up screen as blinds on the windows in my house... Sure, I don't want the cartoon-animated one showcased here, partly because it doesnt seem practical, and partly becuase I don't live in toon-town... I prefer my computers to exist before I use them.
I'm tired of reading about rollup screens. This article is more about a design than an actual device (the video is computer generated). I might just as well be watching Terminator 3 to see how control over fluid metal could look.
I've seen articles and concept designs of folding and rolling of displays for the past 10 years at least. It's time that this stops making news. The next time this should show up is when someone actually builds one.
Apple bought the patent for this gazillion years ago.
There was always one thing you could do with a real newspaper that you couldn't do with an iPad or a laptop, and that's train a puppy with it. With these rolled-up laptops, that limitation is gone.
gathers no Mossberg ;)
You heard it here first! New macbook air will roll up!.
A laptop is a computer that can be use atop one's lap. A rolltop suggests to me its light enough to place on your protruding fat rolls without sinking down and being absorbed in your disgusting self.
from 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
to 45 2F 6E 40 3C DF 10 71 4E 41 DF AA 25 7D 31 3F
If so (of course they are), enjoy having them break and/or warp due to repeated fatigue on the materials.
Does this also unroll your loops?
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Mod parrent up.
Also, codexes [i.e. bonded books]are able to access information dynamically [flip to page x] vs. sequentially. [i.e. unbounded books]
If you want to find a good example of why this matters, look at early Christianity writings vs. Judaism writings on the same subject. Codexes were invented about the same time as Christianity was founded. The Torah is always read linearly on a scroll. The sense of time, relationships to the texts, etc. are very different.
are you just happy to see me?
What you say may have some truth but I seriously doubt that Orkin Design had the inputting of Chinese characters in mind when designing this.
As long as it doesn't have a shitty "you bought this laptop to watch movies, right?" 16x9 aspect-ratio screen, I'm furrit.
It already does. And it's about as useful afterwards as before.
Well, at least we know their design doesn't have any bugs.
* simpler and smaller than the 'old' one. * more efficient than the 'old' one. * The 'new' one should be able to serve more of our needs in a more better ways. Yes, I want my 'life' to be 'a more' 'better'. Thank 'you' for gouging my brain /. with 'a' rusty screwdriver.
And I NEED redundant 'apostrophes'. 'I' live for them'.'
http://www.acetonestudio.com
Would love it if Apple launched one and called it iRoll. Or better still, iJoint.
mschaffer why are your posts showing up under clone53421 ( http://slashdot.org/~clone53421 ) post history here? From what I have been reading it seems that clone was run out of here for being caught using that registered user name as well as clone52431 ( http://slashdot.org/~clone52431 ) where somebody caught him and he ran http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1928730&cid=34703840 and here as well http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1928730&cid=34703372 later, when he was caught trolling others as ac here http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1927208&cid=34718828 and later when of all people, MichaelKristopeit called him out on his thieving images of Mikes and his family http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1929880&cid=34781360 and the law came into play, and he ran, and clone in either guise hasn't posted since. Care to explain this for us?? You see, I am sort of new here, and I just came back recently, looking for clone in either guise, and strangely I see your posts under his history now, take a look above. That doesn't make sense and I was thinking about registering, but I don't want to post on a forums with some weird bug on them for security reasons. Thank you in advance.