Ask anyone what a laptop, a notebook, or a netbook looks like and the chances are they’ll tell you it has a screen and a keypad and is sort of square shaped but maybe with rounded corners.
Ask them to elaborate on differences between the various models and you are likely to hear about differences in thickness, whether it’s light or heavy, and the sizes of the screens.
Source: Hao Hau
Some may come out and speak about fancy features like raised keyboards or multi card slots, data security maybe.
Then you have those who would focus on the different colours and trims, whether it’s glossy or matt what they are made of and so on.
The point I’m getting at here is that basically all laptops, no matter what you call them, follow the same basic bookish design with maybe a few added touches, features or specifications that differentiate them from the rest.
You would be pretty shocked if someone came out and said that a laptop is cylindrical or tube shaped and that it rolls up like a scroll. It might even cross your mind that they were completely mad or some alien creature from another planet.
That just isn’t an image the masses are likely to have in mind at all when you mention a laptop and yet that is exactly the design that computer scientist and designer Hao Hua has come up with.
Ok so it’s still at the conceptual stage and not a reality yet but what an exciting idea.
According to Hao Hua the digital roll as he calls it is “the next generation laptop design”. Personally, I can’t wait.
The laptop would have a flexible OLED screen, a roll-able keyboard and the straps double up as USB outlets.
It even has a mouse and a webcam that you can attach to your wrist. This really is computing on the go at its best.
Hao has even put a lot of thought into the cooling system which is equally as innovative as the rest of the design.
I particularly like the thought that has gone into the in-between bit that allows you to check your emails quickly without unravelling the ‘laptop’ entirely.
Are we likely to see it making an appearance on the streets any time soon? Unfortunately no! But you can bet that I for one will be waiting when it does.
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It has to be said , that this is one awesome looking laptop , one of the big laptop boys wants to have a serious look at this design , I just hope Hao Hau doesnt get his idea ripped off !
actualy this tjhing has been kept allong
since the sphere pc, or the pool water cooled pc
they won’t reach the stands, why?
because they need expensive components, and not just that, they ten to go small and small, i mean… barely a CPU would fit there
Congratulations on the idea! Spectacular!
I mean really, will the CPU be rounded? How about the hard disk? Does it use some fancy new-yet-to-be-released SSD drive? What about an optical drive? Tell me this: will the backlight be LCD based? Will it need a power inverter if it is? What internal components like the CPU heatsink, RAM chips, and graphics chipsets? All round? Sounds pretty expensive if they are!
There are so many design flaws with something like this… They (the designers) should be forced to take an engineering class before art school. BTW I can fly and pigs shoot out my ass!
The way Tech is going anything is possible ! Your not telling me they couldnt mould somthing into a curve shape ? I would love to see the pigs coming out ya bum
That’s a pretty ridiculous looking laptop. Who would buy it? This thing won’t sell. The keyboard looks like a huge pain to use too.
This is a rediculous speculation of a design concept with more thought going into the desighn that the practicality, need and realities of the product!!
So many new technologies will have to be developed for this to even go into proper designing stages, let alone the prototype construction and final release stages, new technologies that would be far too time consuming and expensive to justify developing.
The laptop does not even look all that aesthetically pleasing, infact, it looks rather ugly! This ‘laptop’ (you cannot really call it a laptop as it would be highly impractical to use on, as the name suggests, your lap) looks like it fell out of the 50’s view of modern tech!!
There is a reason why laptops follow a similar design, thais reason being that the current design is both aesthetically pleasing AND actually practical for use. It is a tried, tested and proved design!
“Daniel is right!” is indeed correct in saying that the designers of this concept should “be forced to take an engineering class before art school”!
Several posters have been quite passionate about the design. As an Industrial Designer I think it is a truly organic approach to as inorganic medium as I can think of.
Can this design work. Absolutely. Flash based storage. Bluetooth or motion sensing keyboard and a flex OLED.
I believe the biggest issue is that engineers need to take a usability class. Remember the old metaphor of the TV remote.
You are all idiots. This is cool. That is all.
Personal taste when it comes to design , is just that, personal taste and I happen to think that the design is really cool..
Just a bit of food for thought for those people who seem to think engineering will get in the way..
If I said to you in 1985 that in 20 years you will be able to order a pizza from a hand held mobile internet device with a slide touch screen , and that this device could fit comfortably in your pocket and you could take small video clips and pictures from it .. oh and you could use it to call your aunty in Canada… what would the majority of people have said ? “lets get back to engineering school” or “whats the internet”
The only thing I don’t like about the design is the keyboard. Looks totally unusable. Other that that, I LOVE the look and the concept. Sweet!
the whole flexible screen that can roll into a tube has been around for years. many years. this is hardly original. the reason why it’s not out is simply because it costs far too much to create for mass consumption. reminds you of touch screen devices right?
i think the reason that laptops have been the same over the years is that it works, this is an ugly design, who types on a keyboard like that, the reason laptops are square is because monitors are square, because applications are based on a rectangle
“because applications are based on a rectangle..”
No they aren’t. Style sheets frame the content into a rectangle because our user-agent happens to be a rectangle.
Why can’t the roll laptop be oval, round, triangular [to allow multiple perspectives]. What if this was on a key-chain and only supported a motion keyboard and a multi-plane oval extendable OLED. Perhaps the OLED retracts or elongates based on the user preference or ’setup’. The OLED is fully extended for a voice chat but flattens for web-browsing.
i got a stainless steel cock ring i could turn into a netbook with a rollout condom screen. see, i too can design a computer. fucking garbage from dumbasses.