[denim]

http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/ptech/1...eut/index.html

Combine the roll-up screens with some kind of computer based on a similar technology, and what do you get?

[El Pre$idente]

How can you roll up a powerbook? The harddrive, memory and CPU doesn't exactly roll up.

The light emitting plastics will be used to save on energy. Just because they are thin doesn't mean people will be rolling them up. Their creators simply used rolling up as an example of how thin and efficient they are.

They could be rolled up for video presentations in board rooms, taking the place of the projector screen, but a laptop cannot be rolled up.

[denim]

Disks aren't the only storage media available. Figure on some kind of static RAM, made of plastic. Network via 802.11something-or-other, and hook to other peripherals via Bluetooth.

Power, if the requirements are low enough, by built-in solar cells.

Just because CPUs are generally semi-metallic semiconductors doesn't mean they have to be.

[Too Much Coffee Woman]

i think the president is right...what you're describing is cool but probably the crappiest notebook on earth

laptops are not toys....using that technology to make them thinner would be a better and more functional idea

there are better things to rolll up....

[denim]

Originally posted by Too Much Coffee Woman:
i think the president is right...what you're describing is cool but probably the crappiest notebook on earth

If Apple did it, you know it'd at least look cool.

[El Pre$idente]

Originally posted by denim:
Disks aren't the only storage media available. Figure on some kind of static RAM, made of plastic.

Just because CPUs are generally semi-metallic semiconductors doesn't mean they have to be.

All other materials and methods are too slow to be useful and can't run the complex operating systems, games and applications demanded by the modern world. Just try taking a photo of a fast moving object with a digital camera. Writing to compact flash media is slow and the image ends up blurry. That's what happens witih fringe technologies. They aren't geared towards power computing or advanced use.

Read even closer, the light emitted by these new thin plastics are in one direction only. That means a very narrow viewing angle. Then there will be refresh rates problems. Current LCDs have taken a long time to get where they are today. Do you remember those first color LCDs that had such slow refresh rates that anything moving onscreen looked like a blur? Well, those light emitting plastics have very slow refresh rates and currently only project monochrome images.

By 2005 they'll still be experimental and their only real use seems to for self-lit projection screens and whiteboards. Possibly in 10-20 years there will be digital paper which interfaces with a thin long device along the left hand margin. That's years away.

Personally I don't think paper should go away but I don't want to see more and more forests cut down to provide paper. Therefore I suggest we use genetic engineering to synthesize paper. It's cheaper than roll up plastics and recyclable.

BTW, I have actually seen one of these a few years ago when they were still in a very early phase. A small brown sheet of plastic (not very thin at the time) was connected to a circuit board which interfaced with a PC. The PC sent an image to the screen. It was a small blurry still photo from Casablanca (the movie). The image wasn't very sharp. Possibly it has improved since then.

[denim]

Originally posted by El Pre$idente:
All other materials and methods are too slow to be useful and can't run the complex operating systems, games and applications demanded by the modern world.

So far, sure. But you know how fast that can change.

Therefore I suggest we use genetic engineering to synthesize paper.

Genetic engineering of what?

[El Pre$idente]

Originally posted by denim:
So far, sure. But you know how fast that can change.

Genetic engineering of what?

The chemicals that make up paper. Instead of cutting down trees, you grow 'paper'. Scientists have found they can literally grow materials in labs now. Metals that bend like plastics for example. Woods hard as metals. That's the future. They still need to take the elements from nature though but it means trees don't need to be cut down.

I'm not a tree hugger, BTW.

[MindFad]