One Hand Clapping

According to Ashley Vance of the New York Times:

Fujitsu has built a smartphone that splits into two pieces: the display and the keyboard. NTT DoCoMo, another Japanese company that is part of the NTT Group, will sell the device under the Prime Series F-04B name.

DoCoMo pitched the product as the answer for gamers who want to set their display down and hold the keyboard like a controller. But the phone may appeal to businesspeople as well, since users can swap the keyboard for a tiny projector for presentations.

If you ask me, this is a much better idea than the iPad, or for that matter, any useless tablet product that will be rolled out. If I were designing a new computer, I would eliminate the screen, not the keyword!

Here is my suggestion. Rather than eliminate the input part of the laptop, turning it into a media consumption device, leave the keyboard, processor, SS hard drive and i/o ports in the device, add a monochrome LCD screen, 80 character wide and 10 character long, so it can be used by itself. And provide a port for connecting to an external monitor. This will leave it as a production device, a very low cost/low energy computing platform.

As for screen, offer a choice of electronic ink screen for reading books and working on documents, low energy average quality (SVGA/XVGA) LCD color screen for browsing and general use on the road, and high resolution color screen for those who need/want it. At home, it can be attached to a HDTV or any type of monitor one has or buys for the purpose.

Now THAT is a netbook I would look forward to buying – not an expensive tablet with no keyboard!

Acer, are you listening? Acer? Oh well…

This entry was posted on Friday, February 19th, 2010 at 12:22 pm and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.