Laptopia! The World’s Weirdest Portable Computers
Twenty-one innovative, impractical, irresistable breakthroughs in mobile technology.Posted by Harry McCracken | Monday, September 7, 2009
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There aren’t many pieces of technological design that simply can’t be improved upon, but the clamshell-style laptop computer case–introduced by Grid Systems in 1982–may be one of them. That’s why the vast majority of the portable computers built ever since have used it. But for more than a quarter-century now, inventors have been trying to top it, with folding screens, screens on stalks, folding keyboards, two-screen clamshells, tri-fold clamshells, and more. Most never even get off the drawing board. Herewith, a gallery of designs from Google Patents (click the filing dates to see the patents). There’s only one in here I might have considered buying, but on some perverse level I admire them all.
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16 Comments For This Post
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Laptop design weirdness but clamshell still rules Says:
September 10th, 2009 at 6:03 am[...] Source [...]
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The Strangest Mobile Gadgets Never Made Says:
September 14th, 2009 at 6:10 am[...] concepts that designers have come up with in the mobile gear space. Technologizer has rounded up 21 of the weirdest mobile gadgets from Google Patents and laid them out for our amazement. There’s the laptop with the [...]
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» Weirdest Mobile Computers Susan's Lookout Says:
September 14th, 2009 at 7:59 am[...] that were filed for patents. Most of these designs never got off the drawing board. Click here to read and see these mobile [...]
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The Strangest Mobile Gadgets Never Made « ipmINDs Says:
September 16th, 2009 at 12:49 am[...] concepts that designers have come up with in the mobile gear space. Technologizer has rounded up 21 of the weirdest mobile gadgets from Google Patents and laid them out for our amazement. There’s the laptop with the integrated [...]
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Scott Nesbitt (scottnesbitt) 's status on Wednesday, 16-Sep-09 22:37:49 UTC - Identi.ca Says:
September 16th, 2009 at 3:37 pm[...] weirdest mobile computers – http://technologizer.com/2009/09/07/weird-laptops/ [...]
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Weird (and not so weird) laptop designs | GottaBeMobile.com Says:
September 22nd, 2009 at 12:18 pm[...] up some patents for unusual portable computing devices and put them together in a segment entitled “Laptopia! The World’s Weirdest Portable Computers”. Indeed, there is some weird, wild stuff in their list, but I have to say, I’m really not [...]
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Los 21 laptops mas raros del mundo | Doctor Pereza Says:
September 23rd, 2009 at 12:03 pm[...] vieron la luz del sol, pero no por eso hay que desecharlos como inútiles. Por eso los chicos de technologizer hicieron una interesante recopilación de patentes con los 21 laptops más raros del mundo, no se [...]
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Dell’s Adamo XPS: Incredibly Thin! Unexpectedly Odd! | Technologizer Says:
November 6th, 2009 at 11:58 am[...] Classic PCs vs. new PCs [...]
September 8th, 2009 at 9:02 am
I’m not sure what the little stick the guy is holding in slide 8 is, but I want it. All laptops should come with little stick peripherals from this day forward.
September 9th, 2009 at 7:54 am
I imagine most of the labeled items in slide 8 are stink lines.
September 14th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
#13 looks like my first Nokia phone, the 6820.
September 14th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Left out the Canon NoteJet series of the 1990s which were Canon Laptops (similar to the Innova Book Line) with built in Canon Notejet printers and available scanner cartridges. interesting machines but at a terribly expensive price point at the time.
September 16th, 2009 at 8:32 pm
Ergonomic Laptop & Keyboard.
The number 6 is on the wrong side. Yes, I know that’s how MS does/did it on their early split boards. Those are wrong, too. At least, if you were taught as I was. The right index finger is supposed to type it.
September 17th, 2009 at 5:40 am
#10, the Zeos Freestyle with screen on a swivel hinge, is hardly weird.
It’s basically a convertible Tablet PC, which are far more prevalent on the market than the pure, keyboard-less slates that you may be thinking of when you hear the term “Tablet PC”.
Especially odd since you seem to know of early Tablet PC efforts like the AST PenExec.
September 19th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
On slide six, the link to the Zeos wikipedia article is used twice, and the link to ‘picoprojector’ is left out.
October 22nd, 2009 at 7:47 am
the stick in number 8 is coming to market soon. sony is making it for their ps3. though there is still no official name for it. It has accelermeters and is traced by a cammera
October 26th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
#8 in use with US military techs. Eyeball HUD very useful when upside down in tank with both hand pulling wires
November 13th, 2009 at 3:37 pm
I HATE the navigation on this site.
I really do NOT want to have to click twenty-freakin-three times just to read one article that should comfortably fit on probably 4 or 5 pages – just so you can impress your advertisers with a grandiose number of ‘page impressions’ per visitor.
Additionally, you’re totally screwing your site crawlability. To Google et. al, page 23 appears as being 23 clicks (levels down) from the article index. You don’t even have an index page that deep-links directly to the individual sub-page by name.
FFS it’s 2009, 1997.
November 22nd, 2009 at 11:17 am
#2 is a rack mounted slide out workstation.
December 7th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
#14 Appears military-intended. The ability to self-contain a corded phone and mouse with a slotted cubby space would come in really handy for all sorts of contractors.
And while we’re at it, I agree, the navigation on this website needs an update. There is a real need for it to act more modern than the decades-old patents we’re laughing and boggling at.
December 9th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
Number 9 isn’t as crazy as you may think. Check out these “ergonomic” keyboards:
Kinesis Freestyle Ascent (http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/images/solo-ascent-90_512×390.jpg)
SafeType (http://www.safetype.com/) – this one actually has side view mirrors (!!!) so you can see the keys
December 31st, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Overhead projectors are still in use. In my college, they are integrated into the ceiling of every lecture and meeting room. The screen is electrically operated, and there are connectors for the audio and video-out of the laptops. The main use is to be able to provide tutorials for applications, Powerpoint presentations for lectures and papers. Hardly anyone uses acetate sheets with handwritten text and drawings.
January 7th, 2010 at 4:34 pm
Some computers are strange in their design, but I dare to imagine that our future computer will be even more bizarre. thank you
February 16th, 2010 at 6:49 pm
The swiveling screen (#10) is in use on OLPCs and is rather nice (especially since in the OLPC version, you can flip it all the way around and lock it down to have a gameconsole-like tablet.)
Also, second the complaints about the godsawful navigation. It’s physically painful, and poorly implemented. Or perhaps that’s an implementation success – if reading your site hurts, people are more likely to click away, thus enabling you to reach high clickthrough rates without having to resort to low-grade content to drive visitors away?