SlashGear Japan
The wisdom of designing gadgets that look like spiders when so many people find the many-legged bugs creepy is arguably lacking, but that hasn’t stopped Ericsson. The company’s latest concept is the so-called Ericsson Spider Computer, a tripod design that will incorporate a full PC, pico-projector, laser keyboard and integrated 3G, and offer the people of 2020 an easily transported computing setup.
Video demo after the cut
Unfortunately that 2020 timeframe means the components of 2009 are a little too large to fit into Ericsson’s wishful-thinking mockup. Instead the company have been demonstrating a rather more mundane (and arguably less frightening) prototype, which so far only squeezes in the projector, laser keyboard and a multiformat card reader.
Still, you can see the direction they’re going in: why make do with a tiny display and tiny keyboard (or lug around a huge display and a huge keyboard) when you can project them instead? The track record of low-resolution pico-projectors and finger-hurting laser keyboards doesn’t exactly fill us with confidence, but perhaps the world of 2020 will only ever use soft-touch surfaces.
One Response to “Ericsson Spider Computer projection-packed concept [Video]”
jonnysomniac November 4, 2009
I had the idea of doing this as well, probably wont sell much, since projectors are virtually useless anywhere but in a dark room, and the bluetooth laser keyboard right there is a pain to work with, I owned a portable projector for 2 weeks, the 3M MPro I believe it was called, $400 when it first was released, as well as the bluetooth virtual keyboard, returned it in 1 week. I found both virtually useless, unless I was going to sleep and wanted to watch netflix on the ceiling, and the keyboard just doesnt give enough feedback like a real keyboard. Just existing gadgets put together, not very cool, practical, or useful.
+2 to him though for reading gadget blogs and browsing thinkgeek.com and then putting couple gadgets together into one gay looking unit
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