Next generation of PDAs?

Tim Rowledge tim at sumeru.stanford.edu
Mon Sep 10 20:38:04 UTC 2001


"Norton, Chris" <chrisn at Kronos.com> is widely believed to have written:

> As far as size goes... IMHO, I prefer a thin machine with a pretty large
> screen.  Something around 4 X 5 inches might not be bad.  It's too hard to
> look at the current generation Palm and Wince machines.  The screens are
> just too small.  Now if someone could come up with a telescoping screen
> concept, that would rock!  Imagine a screen that could be extended by
> pulling on the sides, like a window blind...
A _long_ time ago, when I was at the Royal College of Art, I designed a
portable machine based on the idea of the old papyrus scrolls. Imagine
a short stick, perhaps 7" long, maybe 1.5" diameter with all the gubbins
in - batteries, cpu, stuff like that. Now include a rolled up screen
made from a suitable descendent of the flexible electronic paper that is
almost usable now and just pull as much out as you have room for. On a
crowded train you could pull out just enough to read y asingle column
formatted newspaper, at your desk you pull it out to A4 size. A larger
model might be 11" long and provide A3 maximum display. All at 300dpi of
course :-)

As an added bonus, you can hit people over the head with it. This is
important.

tim
-- 
Tim Rowledge, tim at sumeru.stanford.edu, http://sumeru.stanford.edu/tim
Useful random insult:- There she sits, the Finite State Automaton at its best.





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