197.134_Digital Design&Visualisation: 2010

I choose to design a laptop computer for this assignment. I started to research history and different type of laptop computer to decide my concept of future laptop.

History of laptops

Lap top computer is known as small and light enough for it rest on the user's lap.

The roots of laptop computer were invented in early 1980’s such as Osborne 1 and Compaq portable. These were large and heavy compared to today's laptops.

In 1985, Toshiba launched first A4 size note pc called Toshiba T1100. It has minimum interface and large screen as desktop with portable weight 2.7kg. It is the model of current laptops.

Compaq Portable

Osborne 1 by Adam Osborne

Current laptops

In today’s laptops, it is common to have pointing device such as mouse, touch pad and pen tablet. Although quite a few current laptops have multi touch screen and keyboard that used touch panel function. It becomes more compact and convenient by using extreme technology such as Blue-tooth and LCD these days.

Through researching laptops and my experience, I found that laptop is still heavy and not compact enough. Although I think the battery of laptop is not convenient, easy to lose battery in my experience and hard to find the charging point. So my design concept is to improve these problems and make my final design as urban form.

Inspiration

Separate Keitai F-04B

The Separate Keitai F-04B is a mobile phone invented by Fujitsu in Japan. This handset can split into 2 segments, a display unit and keyboard unit, connected via Bluetooth. Each segment comes with its own Lithium Ion battery.

Solar cell

A solar cell is a device that converts the energy of sunlight directly into electricity by the photovoltaic effect. The term solar cell is reserved for devices designed specifically to capture energy from sunlight while the term photovoltaic cell is used when the light source is unspecified. Assemblies of cells are used to make solar modules, also known as solar panels. The energy generated this from solar modules, referred to as solar power, is an example of solar energy. Photovoltaics is the field of technology and research related to the practical application of photovoltaic cells in producing electricity from light, though it is often used specifically to refer to the generation of electricity from sunlight. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell