LAPTOPS OF 2018- A LOOK AHEAD

PRESENTATION BY- RAJALAXMI PRAKASH

INTRODUCTION

• The relevance of PCs is threatened by the new breed of touchscreen mobile phones, tablets and the likes.

• PC makers are trying to reintroduce laptops with the support of the drastic operating system Windows 8.

• Will try to generate excitement for laptops by introducing new hybrid designs, such as swiveling touchscreens and detachable displays.

• PCWorld spoke with chip makers, PC manufacturers, and analysts to learn more about what laptops will offer by 2018. Let’s have a look….

REFINING THE HYBRID

• PC makers admit that this laptop-tablet hybrid is still a work in progress and it would take some time to get rid of the hardware clumsiness.

• Kevin Lensing, AMD's director of notebook products, says that he's seen some of these hybrids and their conversion mechanisms already

look and behave better than

those of the initial wave of

products.

• Mark VandenBrink, chief technical officer of HP's PC business, agrees that the next 5 years of hardware development will focus on reducing the clunkiness of the laptop-tablet hybrid.

• Pat Moorhead, a tech industry analyst and consultant, who specializes in future scenarios, believes that the modular PC concept will eventually go wireless, and smart phones could one day provide all the necessary storage and processing power.

• He says that the software barriers to making this happen are already reducing due to operating systems like Android and iOS.

• The WiGig Alliance is already pushing for the use of spectrum around 60GHz, which would support speedy display connections and wireless docking.

• Moorhead says that the only challenge

will be to get device makers to agree

on a standard for wireless

communication among devices.

BEYOND THE TRACK PAD

• Mark Aevermann, a senior product manager at Nvidia, thinks that voice recognition, hand gestures, and eye tracking could take off in the next 5 years.

• Concepts like Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Kinect, and Tobii's eye-tracking technology may now seem ill-equipped to replace trackpads and keyboards, but he recommends to keep an open mind to them.

• VandenBrink expects a dynamic track pad that covers a lot more of the laptop's surface. He also sees potential for adaptive trackpads that learn your preferences and tendencies as you work.

• Synaptics has introduced a pressure-sensitive track pad and a capacitive keyboard that is thinner and lets the user disable the cursor while typing.

• Intel's Nikiski concept track pad runs

along the length of the keyboard and

uses palm detection to switch off

during typing.• Moorhead says that notebooks of the future could come

equipped with two or more high-definition cameras, working in concert to track the user's hands.

CONCLUSION

• Gary Richman, a director in Intel's PC Client Solutions division, thinks that PCs will become more context-aware, enabling them to detect other nearby devices and interact with them automatically.

• Many experts believe that hybrid devices will dominate the laptop market in the next 5 years.

• Aevermann thinks that low-cost tablets and hybrids will revolutionize the industry, but no single mode of portable computing will completely dominate in the next 5 years.

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Source : PCWorld