The following notebook concept can be seen as a puzzle, with each piece both being able to function independently and contributing to the storage or processing power of the whole.
The idea that award winning industrial designer Prashant Chandra came up with is rather simple, but maybe not so easy to implement, just yet. He noticed the tendency of tech manufacturers to bulk several devices into one, with results that are more and more satisfying, with each passing year. The Fujitsu Lifebook concept that he designed brings together a notebook, a tablet, a photo camera and a portable multimedia player.
“The proposed Lifebook is a laptop computer concept based on the principle of “shared hardware”. Currently a lot of hardware is wasted when we use separate devices, as there is often a lot of “repeat” of data stored and features. For example if I have my songs on my music player, why do I have to block the same amount of storage on my laptop? Similarly, if I have a processor sitting in my tablet, why can it not also run/assist my laptop? If I have a fully functional camera with its own memory and image processing power, why do I need to have it repeated in my laptop?” said Prashant Chandra.
The images are rather self-explanatory. The tablet, the photo camera and the MP3 player can all be used independently, but the notebook requires them for functioning. More precisely, the tablet plays the role of a keyboard, the MP3 player is used for storage and the photo camera replaces the built-in webcam that we see in all of the modern netbooks, notebooks and ultrabooks.
The fact that the keyboard is not mechanical is listed as an advantage of the concept, since injuries are avoided this way. However, I see this as a double-edged sword, as many of us would prefer to have only a broken keyboard, instead of a broken keyboard and tablet at the same time. More precisely, this concept may have the same problem as the all-in-one Macintosh computers. This Fujitsu Lifebook would be worth taking into consideration if manufacturers weren’t so interested in planned obsolescence. Till then, investing in an all-in-one product that would be practically unusable if one of the parts gets broken is not something I want.
If you liked this post, please check the Fujitsu touchpad keyboard and the Zemno Deskbook Pro.
