Five PC Innovations the Industry Should Get To

An anonymous reader writes "Flexbeta.net has an article which describes 5 great technological advancements in computing that just about every PC user wants." From the article: "Why has there been such a sudden lack in innovation as of late? Are we in a technological drought? I like to stick to my own diagnosis of the industry as being too concerned with keeping a steady cash flow over social experimentation with new products but then again that's just an opinion from a little guy."

Re:This is a joke, right?

[MyDixieWrecked]

the site wasn't loading, and I thought your post was a joke.

then I looked at Network Mirror [networkmirror.com]

I completely agree with you. Worst. Article. Ever.

Now, some REAL innovation I'd like to see (which I've been talking about for YEARS):

1. GPS built-in to laptops. So you can use mapping software more easily on the go.

2. digital clock on laptops. I'd love to have an external LCD display showing the time, even when the machine's not on. hell, that'd even be useful on a desktop machine.

3. touchpad on the side of a laptop. Sometimes I'm holding my powerbook in my arm and I wish there was a way to control the mouse from there. One idea I had was like an inverted optical mouse with the laser sensor that would detect thumb movements. That'd even work for the side of a PDA for scrolling

4. how about an integrated mouse in a laptop? it could snap on/off and you could use it on the side, then just have the cord retract and it would re-attach to the machine.

5. I say bring back the keyboard/CPU combo for small-footprint computing.

c'mon, whadaya say?!

little guy

[sewagemaster]

" but then again that's just an opinion from a little guy.".

no one's going to listen to you if you're a dick ;)

Re:Innovation

[Anonymous Coward]

Excluding Bell Labs and XEROX, naturally.

Slashdotted

[foo fighter]

It's slashdotted, but here's my top three wishes:

1. PCs that finally boot from USB and FireWire.
2. PCs that can boot into target disk mode.
3. PCs that go to sleep and wake up instantly.

My Mac laptops have had this for many years -- a decade already? -- but I still can't find any PCs that have this standard. This is brain dead stuff that should be there but isn't. Come on PC manufacturers, catch up before you try and "innovate".

It was mainly satiracle!

[Dangerouslycheesy]

Hey all, I'm the writer of the article and I just want to make a few things clear:

This list is just mainly things I personally have gripes with in the industry, not so much a "What's most important to do in the next 5 years" article.

I agree with you guys on the fact that there are many leaps and advancements in a lot of the technology sectors but I must say that in many ways, innovation and new ideas are not coming out like they used to.

It's great that they are building on the present technology but how many years do we expect them to re-tool the "same" thing over and over again until we demand something better and completely new?

Call my article bad or the "worst article ever" but again, this is just a playful list of things I personally would like to happen in the next 5 years and I would of included at least 10 more things but I'm a lazy bastard and I wrote the thing at nearly 3 A.M. before passing out on my desk.

Just...take it [the article] for what it is and try to honestly and truthfully discuss your ideas and wants for the future, because if no one talks about this sort of thing then things will just keep looking the same for the next decade without any real considerable change.

Re:a commercial operating system... for free

[joe90]

Most likely, Google is going to release their own operating system

Most likely not. More likely is a Google presentation layer sitting on top of an existing OS.

Re:This is a joke, right?

[hacker]

1. GPS built-in to laptops. So you can use mapping software more easily on the go.

Yet another feature for employers and others to use to track you and invade your privacy further. I can see uses for this (LoJack for laptops?), but I can see it being abused right out of the gate. "Sorry, in order for you to connect to the corporate LAN, your GPS needs to be enabled."

2. digital clock on laptops. I'd love to have an external LCD display showing the time, even when the machine's not on. hell, that'd even be useful on a desktop machine.

Someone has figured out how to write software that displays on the LCD touchpad of some of the recent laptops (a penguin of course). Perhaps you could use that... but if your lid is already open so you can see the touchpad, why not just have a clock on the screen? I use osd_clock and osd_cat to keep 6 different timezones in the corner of my screen, so I know what time it is where my colleagues are.

3. touchpad on the side of a laptop. Sometimes I'm holding my powerbook in my arm and I wish there was a way to control the mouse from there. One idea I had was like an inverted optical mouse with the laser sensor that would detect thumb movements. That'd even work for the side of a PDA for scrolling

4. how about an integrated mouse in a laptop? it could snap on/off and you could use it on the side, then just have the cord retract and it would re-attach to the machine.

The Toshiba Librettos had a very slick little mouse device on the lid of the laptop, which worked surprisingly well. You can see an image of it here [paulbristow.net].

Basically your thumb sits on the grey "dot" on the lower-right, and your first finger and middle finger "pinch" the lid there, and where your fingers rest behind the lid, are your left and right mouse buttons. It was amazingly intuitive.

But back on point, IBM has a foldaway mouse that fits in their UltraBay slot. I Googled but couldn't find a good image of that.

The technology exists, but the motivation to produce it does not. Vendors are too busy producing garbage that they THINK we'll buy, instead of listening to our needs and producing what we WILL buy.

Re:This is a joke, right?

[mr100percent]

Better fans. Apple had some great fan designs and ideas, like their convection cooling iMacs, and silent G5's.

Better cases, Apple is my favorite.

Wireless everything. I can see what you mean, but Apple took care of that, you could have an entire room of Macs in a lab all with cordless mice, as long as you setup and pair them one at a time. Also, they don't go far enough so your neighbor gets the interference, unless you're in an apartment maybe, and there's some simple ecryption done anyways.

And the thing is

[Sycraft-fu]

Quieter fans are out there. A couple years ago I kinda hit a wall with my case, I'd had the same case for like 6 years, and it just couldn't do the kind of cooling I needed without some fast fans. So I got a new case, figured while I was at it since the noise annoyed me I'd get some silent fans. I went from having 1 case fan to having 4 case fans, and the overall system noise dropped to less tahn half of what it was previously.

SilenX and Papst both make some excellently quiet fans that aren't too exspensive. They don't move quite as much air as some others, but still plenty to keep your shit cool if you properly plan airflow (good cooling comes from good airflow, not just sticking fans in randomly).

So stop whining and go upgrade your system

[Sycraft-fu]

I can't read your article, so apparantly #6 should be "A server that doesn't suck" but from the mirrors of the first page I've seen and the /. comments, most of what you want is already out there.

Fans are easy, go buy quiet fans. There are plenty of companies out there perfectly willing to sell you quiet fans for your system. Mine is totally outfitted with them.

IF you want shit on your case, put it on then. Yuo can glue a bottle opener on, or add a tape deck, and so on. Some of your ideas aren't possible, like a soda dispenser (soda dispensers require large tanks of syurp, CO2, and a water hookup) but if you want your case to do more, make it do more.

Wireless everything, well go for it. You can get all your controllers wireless, and your speakers too. Your monitor, well sorry, but we don't have the technology to do 3+ gigabits over the air yet. PEopel keep working on faster wireless, but it's not at the level for monitors. Of course, even if ou do go wireless to the tower, you still have to have wires for power, or battries. You can't transmit enough power through the air to power a device efficiently, and physics is the problem there, no amount of innovation will solve it.

As for USB key uses, agan call it done. Many dongles for pro software are USB. Not done on consumer software because it would be more expensive than it's worth.

I don't know what your fifth was, and can't glean it from comments.

At any rate, it sounds like most of your personal beefs can either be solved now, or are things to which there are real, physical limits that prevent it from happening.

Agreed

[lullabud]

I hadn't even heard of target disk mode until I got my powerbook, and now I frequently come across instances where I wish I had it for my PC's.

As for booting from USB and FiriWire, I know the new Dells have USB as an option on their F12 boot menu, and they'll show USB key drives as regular drives even when booting to older DOS prompts, like the Win98 CD.

Re:It was mainly satiracle!

[Dangerouslycheesy]

:) I won't argue that my spelling is attrocious. I've never actually had Sparks but I've heard of it, is it really any good? Hahaha, send some over to me if you have the dough and I'll write an article about how well it goes down ;) As for the "Ask Slashdot feature..." I'll definately do that but for this instance I didn't ask to be Slashdotted, someone else /.'ed me :( Thanks.

Re:Slashdotted

[chadseld]

Disk target mode turns your computer into an external firewire hard drive. Though this sounds silly ($2000 comp -> $100 HD) it is super useful when performing backups, first-aid, disaster recovery etc...

As for the quick sleep/wake. In my experience, the PC world has only had 'reliable' sleep mode since WinXP SP2. Your results may have been different.

Re:OLED keyboards

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

It would rock even more if it actually existed

Re:Dell is the bane of the industry

[flabbergast]

Dell is not the cause, its a symptom of our times. People want $500 laptops and $200 computers and Dell has the power to give it to them. So, it does. Its not Dell's fault that its built itself into a powerhouse of low cost computing, its simply serving a public that wants everything at the lowest price possible regardless of the overall cost, in this case, innovation.

Re:This is a joke, right?

[Dun Malg]

Dude, the printer you can get - it's the paper that's tough :-/

Crane's Crest Opaque Fluorescent White. It's close enough to fool most regular folks, and readily available.

Re:Dell is the bane of the industry

[DrFalkyn]

Some people will still pay for quality. Look at Alienware for instance. And thats where the innovation will happen before the Dells of the world produce the cheap knockoffs.

Re:This is a joke, right?

[Solosoft]

It's the mouse. What I do to combat this is to simply flip the mouse upside down. It's a cheap hack but it works.

Re:This is a joke, right?

[RedWizzard]

I completely agree with you. Worst. Article. Ever.

That's a pretty broad claim to make. I liked this recent piece [slashdot.org], a post by an anonymous high-schooler about how useless he thought floppies were, described as an "editorial".

You might not be suprised to find that the floppy "article" is from Flexbeta.net, just like this "article". Can people please stop submitting this sort of rubbish?

Re:This is a joke, right?

[IWannaBeAnAC]

Sure, but once your laptop has GPS, what is to stop your boss requiring location-reporting spyware to be installed as a condition for connecting to the corporate network? I think the OP probably meant this anyway, I doubt many people here are that clueless about how GPS works.

Re:This is a joke, right?

[hswerdfe]

....A printer which can print $20 dollar bills....

Most decent inkjets will do a pretty good job here, but the US Govt. takes a rather dim view of such activity

not in canada, we have real money
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_twenty_dolla r_bill [wikipedia.org]

Re:The fan thing... + mirror

[TeknoHog]

I agree, fans themselves are not the problem. It's how they are used.

It's the stupid historical design that puts the CPU in the middle of the case, where it's the most difficult to cool. What I'd like is a CPU mounted on the 'wrong' side of the circuit board. Then you could use the entire case as your heatsink, and barely need a fan anymore.

I want big heatsinks with natural convection cooling. It's not impossible as it was done in the G4 cube at least. It wouldn't work for laptops so well though.

Coral cache of the printable article here: http://www.flexbeta.net.nyud.net:8090/main/printar ticle.php?id=99 [nyud.net]