Quote:
Originally Posted by Shaggy
Last I heard they were losing tons of money and laid off half their staff.
|
Well they are a non-profit group. Funding is always an issue.
The point was that this technology has seen mass production and release. It's not just vaporware.
Quote:
Originally Posted by emellaich
Yes, you are right that it should be easy to design around. However, I would suggest that there is no appropriate off-the-shelf designs. You could just plop them in a netbook, but I'm not sure that really gets the sweetspot of the market. You could put them in an existing e-book hardware form factor, but again, I think these units bring other things to the table and you would probably want a different arrangement of buttons/software -- possibly to play video, for example.
The closest ready-to-go designs might be some of the tablet PC designs. Perhaps newly energized using Pixel-Qi, Windows 7, and multi-touch. However, realistically I expect to see new form factors and thus, new designs utilizing these. And these new designs will take some time. Just look at the evolution of the TechCrunch tablet as an example of the time it takes.
|
Being able to use an ordinary netbook in daylight should itself be a huge step forward. I don't see much wrong with the conventional clamshell design to be honest. Making it a convertible tablet PC might be nice, but then again it adds the demand for a touch screen. And most manufacturers would resort to a crappy brightness eating resistive screen since they're cheap.