In other news… with the Sony Vaio P already shipping, Sony has been putting that “fits in your pants pocket” concept everywhere, including propping up a mannequin wearing a pair of Levi’s shorts with a Vaio P front plate (means it’s just the lid of the netbook and not as thin as it looks in the picture above) in the back pocket. Sure it’s nice to have a little netbook that you can bring along everywhere and quickly whip out at the coffeeshop to blog a bit, tweet a little and type out some short articles… but that got me thinking as well – is it even PRACTICAL to have a netbook which fits (though not entirely) in terms of width, but sticks half-way out of your pocket?
What do you do when sitting down? How about when you’re walking around? The netbook isn’t exactly so slim that it blends in… and it sticks out half-way too (see the picture above). Well, it gives a whole new definition to the word “Square Pants”, doesn’t it? How about pickpockets? Common sense tells me bringing your expensive netbook out for a walk, in this manner, will make you one of the primary targets of a pickpocket (imagine; shiny overpriced netbook sticking out of the back of someone’s pocket); next to the guy holding two smartphones in his hand strolling without a care in the world to the nearest diner. Intriguing questions and true situations, no?
From sources, HP is planning several new Mini (Note) netbooks for 2009/2010 – An 11.6 inch LED display Mini is on track to be launched this summer which will be “not much larger” than the current HP Mini 2133/2140 netbooks and may use a different Atom processor from the current N270 in the Mini 1000/2140. There will also be another model, slated for later this year in the 3rd quarter and a Mini Note tablet currently being at the “concept testing” stage.
Is Voodoo PC working on bringing out their own phone/smartphone? Information right now is very scarce and it still remains a mystery IF there will be a such thing (Since Voodoo PC so far has been strictly a (gaming) computer company). The last time someone brought up the topic of a Voodoo phone would be Rob Enderle in his article published in September 2008. Recently, there have been some little, little things which hint a Voodoo phone again.
Today Mark Soloman made a post entitled “Voodoo Design Secrets” on HP/Voodoo’s The Next Bench blog. Of course, there were no product roadmaps, no concept products, not many revelations at all. Not many revelations. The first picture certainly looks very interesting (see the screenshot above) – it appears to be one of those product design kind of thing in its planning stage where the designers need to list out the components they need to pack into the final product. The right half of the whiteboard writings highlight some very interesting components (to me, at least) such as “speaker holes”, “button finish”, “multicolor LEDs” and of course, a “proximity sensor”.
Why would a computer (desktop or notebook) need a proximity sensor? Who counts the number of speaker holes on their notebook PC and their size? What about “button finish”? All these unanswered questions… the “multicolor LEDs” list “BT” and “W”. Assuming these stand for Bluetooth and WiFi respectively, when was the last time you saw a recent HP… bah, or any modern computer with separate indicators for Bluetooth and WiFi? On the other hand, some old Pocket PCs and HP iPAQs have those kind of LED indicators….
Nah, maybe Voodoo is working on a computer that turns itself on when you approach it (And off, when you walk away from it) which has flush leather buttons and back-to-the-future style separate LED indicators for Bluetooth and WiFi connectivity. Plausible, huh?
If you thought huge notebooks like the HP Elitebook 8730w or HP HDX “Dragon” were huge, you can add another notebook from HP to the list: the HP+Voodoo Firefly concept aka the “Mobile Blackbird“. This thing features a main 17 inch display AND a secondary 4.3 inch display below the main one. In addition, the Mobile Blackbird packs a Core 2 Extreme processor, 5.1 speaker system, dual ATI graphics card and what looks like FOUR headphone jacks in photos. They’ve also moved the touchpad (which is multi-touch, by the way) to the right hand side of the notebook compared to the usual below-the-spacebar position… you know, where you’d normally find the numeric pad on other notebooks with lots of keyboard real estate.
Right now, this gaming notebook still remains a concept and probably won’t be released onto store shelves. But still, it looks like a solid concept and a sign of good things to come.
