Make It Happen?

I absolutely love electronics. Especially small electronics that are portable or pocketable. In fact, any pocketable piece of nifty technology generally makes me weak at the knees.

A huge part of what makes our species so powerful is our ability to harness technology. And the idea that I could take a small sliver of that power, be it in the form of a smartphone, e-reader, or multitool, and slip it into my pocket makes me uncommonly happy.

Marvelous. Totally marvelous.

My trusty old kobo e-reader's screen cracked recently. I liked using it for book reading over my iPad when my eyes got sore from glassily gazing into the LED screen and giving me headaches. The excellent battery life of a week (or even two) between charges was the result if its super low power e-ink display. The only thing I ever really disliked about it was that:

1. It wasn't backlit, making it impractical for nighttime/bus reading.

2. It didn't have a touch screen, which rendered it difficult to use for books with footnotes or picking particular chapters.

Therefore, when I was scouting the web for a replacement reader, I got unreasonably excited over the new 'kindle paperwhite' which has an in-built easy-on-the-eyeballs screen light and a capacitive touch screen.

For those that don't know, there are generally three types of touchscreens in modern devices.

1. Infrared.
This is generally considered to be the worst kind of touchscreen, it uses a series of cris-cross infrared lasers over the screen to tell where a finger or stylus is breaking the pattern, and responding to it. The disadvantages to this are that the screen has to be set in, making the device's thickness increase. It's also not that responsive. But it has a great power consumption rate, which made it popular in e-readers and mid nineties PDA's that ran on AA batteries. A pretty clever trick, considering the comparatively pitifully short battery life of most modern smartphones.

2. Resistive.
This is form of touchscreen works by having a slightly squishy screen that can tell where it's being poked. It has a whole lot of pressure sensitive dots underneath the screen, which will react to fingers, pencils, pens, anything. My girlfriend used to have a phone with this kind of screen, and she liked it because she could text with the ends of her long pretty fingernails. This sounds great in theory, but in practice it means the screen itself is often rather ugly as it can't be made of nice clear glass, but some kind of plastic. But it worked well enough that it was the screen used in many old android phones, and loads of PDA's. Great with 'digital drawing' devices that some artists use.

3. Capacitive.
This is the kind of screen iPhones, Samsung Galaxy's, iPads, and android tabs. A very responsive, attractive glass screen, it functions by running an electric current through the glass itself. Our bodies constantly have a slight bit if electricity in them, and our fingers, when they touch the screen, zingle through it letting the device know where they're touching. It also works with electrosensitive rubber/foam, which is what the ends of iPad styli are made. Nine out of ten touchscreens are this type.

So here's what I want to make.

A touchscreen e-ink mini laptop just for writing. Super long battery life and only basic documents, email and browsing capabilities. Plaster the outside and inside with solar panels. Voila. Perfect travel companion for the writer, student who needs a reliable machine for note taking, or anyone who wants to be able to email their family back home when traveling overseas. Frequently when traveling charging devices is tricky, as you can't always get power adapters to fit foreign ports. So long as you have light, this thing will charge. Fit it with free 3G like in many kindles, and it's still low power enough for great use of the solar panels. Who needs a colour screen if all you're going to do is write on it? All flash storage, it's essentially a kindle paperwhite with a keyboard attached.

Anywho, we have the technology to make all this happen. We just need to apply it.

I love the modern age.