Web Browsing Tablet PC
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Whether it is for email, browsing or both; there are a good number of people who use their computers for only web-browsing. How nice would it be to have an inexpensive computer that was solely designed for internet browsing. This is exactly what some people want.
Here’s the basic idea: The machine is as thin as possible, runs low end hardware and has a single button for powering it on and off, headphone jacks, a built in camera for video, low end speakers, and a microphone. It will have Wifi, maybe one USB port, a built in battery, half a Gigabyte of RAM, a 4-Gigabyte solid state hard drive. Data input is primarily through an iPhone-like touch screen keyboard. It runs on linux and Firefox. It would be great to have it be built entirely on open source hardware, but including Skype for VOIP and video calls may be a nice touch, too.
If all you are doing is running Firefox and Skype, you don’t need a lot of hardware horsepower, which will keep the cost way down.
The article is an interesting read, but I do not know if any of the big computer companies would take the time to develop such a simple piece of technology. They would have to sell a large number of these computers in order to make a profit. More importantly, ASUS already has something similar on the marketl the Eee PC. For under $500 dollars a user can get a small laptop that runs the bare necessities, but the monitor is rather small.
What do you think? Would you be interested in a tablet-touch-screen, internet only laptop?
Justin
One Comment
Tom Terranova
July 23rd, 2008
at 1:55pm
It would be interesting if they could create a version of this that was basically just a 1/8 inch or thinner, 16:9 OLED touchscreen - hinged in the middle (with very little border) such that it could flip shut to become half the size and protect the screen.
if it was that thin plus foldable, it would be very portable, durable, and practical for going in and out of book bags, briefcases, etc.
If you could sell it for $99, I bet it would be a hit for browsing on the go through wireless networks or ethernet.
If we ever do get all of our mags and newspapers from e-documents using e-paper displays, i bet it might be something like this. eventually, mags and publications would create custom sized version specifically designd for their content, maybe with special custom buttons or interface built-in. that would be at the point where they were so cheap to produce that they were given away as incentives to get people to buy the magazine and read it.