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Canadian Researchers Debut PaperTab, the Paper-Thin Tablet
redletterdave writes "The PaperTab, which looks and feels just like a sheet of paper, may one day overtake today's tablet. Developed by researchers at the Human Media Lab at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada, the PaperTab features a flexible, high-resolution 10.7-inch plastic touchscreen display built by Plastic Logic, the company borne from Cambridge University's Cavendish Laboratory, and relies on a second-generation Intel Core i5 processor to turn what looks like a sheet of white paper into a living, interactive display. Unlike typical tablets akin to Apple's iPad, the idea of PaperTab is to use one app at a time, per PaperTab. To make tasks easier, users would own 10 or more PaperTabs at once and lay them out to their liking; with multiple tablets to separate your applications, PaperTab relies on an interface that allows you to combine and merge elements from disparate applications with intuitive dragging, dropping, pointing, and folding."
Apple invented paper.
Good to see our editors proof read: "may one today overtake today's tablet."
Because it would suck to have that many wires connecting all the PaperTabs together. And while it's flexibility makes it less likely to break when dropped, isn't there a risk of it being torn, or mistaken for regular paper and thrown away or shredded?
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81iiGWdsJgg&feature=player_embedded
since the day they were born in the lab, but there is more to a computer than its display, wheres the flexible and paper thin battery, the flexible core i5, the flexible ram rom and flash?
the Paper-Thin Tablet
But sir, it's paper-thin.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
We've had nice paper thin displays for years now. But a thin display doesn't mean a thin tablet. Until we have thin CPUs and thin RAM sticks, and thin flash memory and thin connectors, we aren't going to have a paper thin tablet.
When you get all the components you need for a tablet you end up with something just as thick as what we've got on shelves today. By no means thick, but not paper-thin.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Since the douchetard du jour forgot to, I guess it's up to old Anonymous Cowherd to link to the actual website (rather than the warmed-over blogruel we were served):
http://www.humanmedialab.org/papertab
You can thank me by clicking 'reply' and composing a note of thanks.
I think we've hit the highest point we can get in terms of slimness.
Would this be considered a singularity in tablets? Or am I a bit off?
Did you watch the video? So ridiculously un-useful. Can't see this catching on.
They're thinking of the retail packaging all those chips come in. The actual chips are far thinner than paper. Copier paper, for example, is about 100 microns. Chips were 7 microns in 2006. I don't know how much thinner they can be today.
Intel normally puts a CPU in a casing big enough to handle because there's no reason to make it thinner then paper, but that's just packaging. There's no reason flash memory or other clips couldn't be put in thinner packages. Remember microSD cards containing flash chips have been around since 2005. In 2006, Sandisk sold a 2GB microsd card barely thicker than the plastic packaging.
So we finally - after a few hundred years - manage to get rid of the majority of pieces of paper cluttering our desktops...
And now we get to bring them all back? Except they're thicker, and you can't let them touch each other or they do stuff you may not want? And they're all connected with wires? And we don't get color any more? And they will be as comparatively expensive as parchment was, a few hundred years ago?
So... none of the advantages of paper, and all the usual disadvantages of tech just for the sake of tech?
Hmmm... I read TFA; but I forgot to check the source. It wasn't The Onion by any chance, was it?
Mmmph. Capcha: "aborted"
The youtube video is worthless, they show off lame functionality that is entirely possible with any current normal tablet, such as extended desktops, tapping to move documents, and location aware features. The only papertab feature is bending the paper to navigate pages, which is error prone, gimmicky, and not worth much. Show me the technology in the papertab on why it is so thin and flexible.
I left the site immediately once that video started to auto play. This has to stop.
they had me hooked, until I saw the cables. They could have used Wireless and a smaller power cable, but it's just another tech demo of never to be seen stuff.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
I cannot wait, in 10 years we will get to see apple say they invented this and the patent office will happily give them a patent for it.
Sure, it's cool that it's paper thin... but a) it's black and white, not color; and b) the refresh rate, if the video is any indication, seems abysmal for anything but static displays.
Can somebody please tell me what possible advantage this has over an e-ink reader?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Pretty neat, but I can't for the life of me see how this would be "better" in any way than either a normal tablet or a desktop computer. The gesture controls they showed - bending the side or corner - are hardly intuitive, and why would I want a mess of those laying all over my desk? How is tapping my email to an "outbox" easier than clicking send? I think they are on the wrong track with how they envision using the technology.
Assuming they could make them entirely self contained and cheap enough to be semi-disposable, they would make a great replacement for paper.
> the idea of PaperTab is to use one app at a time, per Papertab. To make tasks easier, users would own 10 or more PaperTabs at once and lay them out to their liking; with multiple tablets to separate your applications,
Wonderful. Windows 8, except in a bunch of separate devices.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Just make sure that you are holding the paper correctly or it won't work!
I wouldn't want the wind to blow away my manual Metro layout.
Tired of my customary (Score:1)
...doesn't mean you should.
I'm laughing at the pedantic irony in 10 PaperTabs to get any work done.
If this is some sort of eink display as it appears to be, it is going to be useless for anything but reading, and personally I don't want my reader bending and contorting like a flimsy piece of paper. But hey, at least I could lay a bunch of these things out to view large monochrome images or something.
Might be somewhat useful if so. On second thought...looks more like a solution in search of a problem. Or like my first wife, cute but useless.
Maitre D: And finally, monsieur, a paper-thin mint.
Mr Creosote: No.
Maitre D: Oh sir! It's only a tiny little thin one.
Mr Creosote: No. Fuck off - I'm full...
Maitre D: Oh sir... it's only paper thin.
..on paper.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
I prefer a different concept - one where humans are augmented and become superhuman rather than merely the environment becoming magical.
;).
For example, cameras+ wearable displays + brain-computer interfaces. Control by special gloves, eye-blink gestures, and/or thought-macros. Then the "screen" can be pretty big even though it is physically small and doesn't consume as much power as a huge display.
Once you have that, you have virtual eidetic memory, virtual telepathy and telekinesis. Most of the tech is there or nearly there. One of the major problems might actually be Copyright Law - it conflicts with having eidetic memory especially if you want to share it with others. The **AA won't be happy with a penny for your thoughts, or their thoughts
Permanent video+audio recording at low/mid res, with high def/res in a ring buffer (past X minutes), so you can have the past X minutes in high def if you need it for whatever reason. Configurable image and audio recognition. Context awareness (time + location+ surroundings+ history) + super PDA features.
Military edition might have gun muzzle detection, camouflage countermeasures, automatic "crack-thump" sniper location, UWB radar+comms, range gated vision (the latter two can give away your position to enemies that are suitably equipped[1]).
[1] That said, electronic devices emit signals that can be detected if you have enough fancy stuff.
This seems significantly more inconvenient than tapping icons or photos on a tablet. The extendable display is neat, but I can already do that with my Nexus 7 and my computer with any one of a handfull of apps.
Keep on knockin'
https://robbiecrash.me
The display seems pretty large. Does this mean we are finally going to get proper devices for reading PDFs?
Finnaly some thing useful for school.
We now can replace the ancient "Kick me in the ass" with plastic tablets that are paper thin.
Intel please stick to making processors which will be useless soon.
Cisc is dead FINNALY. Long live Risc.
Even better, this could lead to wallpaper actually stuck onto a wall. Except more useful as the number of pixels would finally be sufficient for most purposes.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Couple of hundred of these bound together in a hardback cover, maybe with a processor and memory in the spine, maybe just a connector.
Kindle is great for fiction, which is linear, but less good for reference books where you often want to flip back and forwards etc.
Now you can have the space advantages of ebooks with the UI advantages of a proper book.
Tim.
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
The computer is built into the desk or sits under it, powering the desktop The desktop, the surface of the desk, is a combination of data transfer and inductive charger. You are working with a limited number of "papers" on this desktop. You can arrange them, scribble on them, "cut&paste". They contain just the display and enough flexible electronic to receive the necessary energy and data.
Its DoA. Sorry but this is 2013, it really needs to be color if it wants to be anything other than a proof of concept.
... its cool and all but it needs a lot of work to bring it successfully to market. getting rid of the woires and then figuring out how to power it, etc...
Sure, the idea of a paper based electronic displays is cool, but this product isn't. Looks like a screen stuck in some cheap lamination.
I don't really see a need for this product in general. A rigid tablet is more usable under many more circumstances and I am sure over the coming years rigid tablets will become slimmer and lighter. Even a tablet that is more like cardboard is more practical then floppy plastic. How about sitting at the beach trying to read a book and having this thing flapping in the wind? How are you doing to do touch with a floppy product unless you lay it down on a rigid surface. You know the first accessory for this product will be a "case" which will simply turn it into a rigid tablet which is what everybody wants.
I think it is ridiculous seeing a movie where someone reads a multi-page newspaper with dynamic content, folds it up and tucks it under their arm before getting off the train or something. I'd rather not live in some 40's rendition of what the future will look like.
Just because technology allows you to do something doesn't mean it has to be made. CES 2013 is turning out to be about how companies are failing to use common sense by creating products nobody actually wants, only to say "Gee, look at how cool this useless product is".
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
No, this is just incredibly idiotic. Have one device that does many things. A stack of paper is an awful, inconvenient form and if the computer has a Core i5 and any decent amount of RAM, there's no need to limit it to one application.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Rule 34, that is: how is this gadget going to improve access to porn?
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Make a book out of this things, processor, ram, and every other non display thing goes on the covers, you don't even need to go wireless since you can attach display cables on the side that is attached to the book.
...write on it with a pencil?