The perfect laptop, take two

Readers responded to our original WorldBooks with their own inspired designs, pointing the way to a marvelously modular mobile PC.

A number of readers responded to our call to describe their perfect notebook. We were pleased to discover they generally agreed with major elements of our WorldBook design, especially the integrated smartphone and the embedded solar panel. We also learned that features we excluded for being too expensive or impractical might have enough market appeal to justify another crack at doing them affordably.

Modularity was a popular theme among the submissions. More than one reader wanted a removable keyboard, a removable screen, a detachable camera and mic, removable wireless speakers, and a removable disk drive that could be easily slipped out of the laptop and into a desktop computer....more

The birth of the InfoWorld WorldBooks

What sort of laptop could vendors create, using volume components and keeping costs to a minimum, if they were willing to think outside the boring old box? To find out, we designed one ourselves.

Not willing to accept the assumption that laptop computers have to be boring, InfoWorld assembled a team of technology experts from its staff and charged them with the goal of designing a genuinely innovative notebook. We subjected our project to the limitations that any manufacturer faces when it starts whiteboarding a new notebook. Components must either be available now in sufficient quantity to support volume production, or have component manufacturers’ contractual commitment to availability at a supportable price within the next 12 months. As you’ll see, it’s unlikely that our design could be taken from brain trust to working prototype in a year, but the time constraint was necessary to limit the number of feature options that could be brought to the table....more