Power Developer - Portable Efika Project

This is a remarkably cool new device;

Essentially it converts any laptop or standard screen into a tablet. Obviously there's a need to have a glass-fronted screen and not just the flexible surface of an ordinary TFT to make it suitable.

Just a short demonstration of Microsoft's "Origami" interface. One of the drawbacks of a smaller display is that you lose screen estate very fast to toolbars and application icons, which I think would be solved with a MacOS style dock, or using the widescreen potential of the screen and using the greater horizontal resolution to display bars on the sides at least, rather than the bottom (this is also more 'finger accessible' if we go that route).

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/umpc/action/index_13.swf

The other solution (as above) is to present applications as full screen and use innovative menu systems to select applications and bring them to the front, replacing traditional toolbars and start bars. Click "Home" at the top, and proceed from there..

http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/hardware/soa/Intel-to-launch-Linux-powered-mobile-Internet-device-/0,130061702,339274887,00.htm

Intel are getting into the game, and targetting China..

Microsoft's UMPC format has a little following going - how can manufacturers like Samsung, Pioneer and so on really refuse to make devices around this endearing 7" micro-PC format?

A company in China has decided to bring out a UMPC "clone" based around an Intel XScale (ARM core) processor at ~500MHz:

http://www.made-in-china.com/china-products/productviewrqZJdFDbSnWO/UMPC.html

Okay how about this; I sat scribbling for an hour as a break from coding and
came up with this. I put a big red square around my little epiphany.

Why bother with a hinge? :D

(imagine you're under a glass desk :)

I really think the "flip up LCD" is becoming the best idea. At the end of the day, the current Efika case design with barely a 2cm extra height when the panel is folded *is* portable, and still useful. It does restrict us on case size to an 7" or 8" panel (8" panels I find tend to be 1cm too big for the top of the case although we could make a new case that simply has more room - this would be required for a battery anyway), which gives us a maximum resolution of around 800x480 or 800x600;

http://www.industrialcontroldesignline.com/products/196900049
http://www.osddisplays.com/tft.php

We seem to have two basic design ideas; a "suitcase" Efika Portable, which has a handle in the top and is a fully integrated display solution with a fairly large display. Another idea for the portable Efika, one I ran to after I couldn't work out the design details of an integrated panel, is to NOT have an integrated panel but instead one which is simply attached/hinged;