Wireless Laptop Computing

This concept is based on the technologies known to me as of October 2016.

I was thinking about how exactly an average consumer uses a laptop and desktop. I was wondering how the process of switching between both could be seamless.

Home / Office
The most traditional way of doing this is to plug some display cable, USB cables, eSATA cable, LAN cable, speaker cables, charger and you are almost there... until you run out of ports or patience... :(
Well, that's not all. If you use some wireless devices, making sure that they are all connected is yet another check to perform before you are up and running.
This means, if you want to use a laptop as a desktop, you would need lots of ports and also, lots of time to connect all those to get the full potential of your laptop. Because of this tedious process, many of the devices are normally left out and your digital life becomes fragmented.

On the Go
You wanted all the ports and speed you want hence you got that all powerful laptop with nice specifications. But it is consuming lot of power and depleting your battery fast. Not to mention, it is very likely that such a laptop is very bulky and a pain to carry around. You realize that you don't really need all of those features and ports when you are travelling. All you need is a lightweight laptop with basic components running in power saving mode to extend battery life.
That seems like an impossible gap to fill between portability, connectivity and performance.
Well.. That was true, but not anymore.

Solutions
Enter WiGig and Thunderbolt 3 and/or USB 3
If you have a laptop with any or all of these 3 features, you can as well say good bye to all the other ports and set up your home and office to make use of these technologies.
If you are concerned about connecting to old devices not at your home or office, you can always carry a small multi port adapter which has all the standard ports missing in your laptop.

Let us discuss how you can use WiGig, USB 3 and Thunderbolt 3 to achieve the goal of decluttering your desk and seamlessly connecting to many devices.

WiGig
WiGig is in layman's terms a much faster WiFi with a very small range. But the similarities pretty much end there. WiGig runs ant 60GHz (WiFi runs at 2.4 and 5 GHz) and has a bandwidth of upto 7 Gbps. With that much bandwidth, you can run 2 Full HD monitors and connect most if not all of your peripherals. But wait... How exactly are you going to connect all of these?
To solve this problem there are WiGig docking stations available in market. The docking station has all the ports you need (of course based on the model you buy) to connect your displays and other peripherals. So it sits on your desk and all you need to do connect to it is simply bringing your laptop in range. No cables required. The only cable you would probably connect is the charger but even that may not be necessary if you setup an inductive charger below your desk and your laptop also supports it. This means, transition from laptop to desktop mode can happen seamlessly and instantly without the need of any cable connection.

USB 3
If you don't have budget for a WiGig setup, you can achieve similar seamless transition using a Thunderbolt 3 or USB 3.0+ dock. The main difference between this approach and WiGig is that you need to connect one cable to the laptop. But that's not really a big disadvantage considering that the cable will also double up as a charger for your laptop.

Note: I am using the term USB 3 to refer to these two specigications.
USB 3.1 Gen 1 is commonly called USB 3.0 and has 5 Gbps bandwidth
USB 3.1 Gen 2 is commonly called USB 3.1 and has 10 Gbps bandwidth
Both are fully compatible with each other and also with older USB versions.

Here one important fact you need to consider is that USB 3 can come with Type C or Type A port and it will still work fine except that Type A port may not be capable of charging your laptop like Type C port does.

Thunderbolt 3
Thunderbolt 3 has a Type C connector and 40 Gbps bandwidth. It gives all the benefits of USB 3.1 Type C connection along with some more features which are not available in in USB 3. Some of these features are DisplayPort, 10 GbE and external PCIe. This means you can connect two 4K displays, run a 10 Gigabit ethernet signal and connect an external Desktop Graphics card to laptop. All of these are nearly impossible with plain USB 3 solution.

Not to mention, if you have USB Type C dock with you, it will still work with the Thunderbolt 3 port. But if you connect a Thunderbolt 3 dock to a non Thunderbolt Type C port, it may work only as USB 3.1 dock or in worst case, may not work at all. Hence it is advisable to make sure that you do have Thunderbolt 3 port on your laptop before deciding to buy a the dock. Or else, you can decide whether you need those extra features or settle for plain USB 3 dock.

Conclusions
With these modern connectivity options, all being non-proprietary standards, seamless computing is becoming a reality.
This also the first time that wireless docking is a reality without any compromise with regards to speed, latency or sheer connectivity.
USB 3 can be considered be considered as a budget option who aren't ready for WiGig but want all the features with a single cable.
Thunderbolt 3 rules them all with 40 Gbps bandwidth and has some features which neither WiGig nor USB 3 alone can offer. All of it still with just one cable.

There are more ideas that can take this concept further but I guess those deserve a separate post.

Truly wireless computing is not too far away in the future. Who knows? May be you are already using these technologies while reading this!

Changing OS in Mobile?

Whilst we have a very few operating systems for our computers,
the mobile market is packed and jammed with a whole lot of operating systems. Thanks to a tight competition in smartphone market.

There is a whole lot mobile OSs out there.
Symbian (Nokia)
Android (Google)
iOS (Apple)
Blackberry (Blackberry)
Windows Phone (Microsoft)
Palm WebOS (HP)
Bada (Samsung)
Maemo (Nokia)
MeeGo (Nokia and Intel)
and many others to come....

However unlike our desktops or laptops we cannot just go ahead and install any operating system that we want on our mobile phone.
Life would have been so much different if the manufacturers just shipped a phone with all the hardware and leave the choice of OS to customers.
(Nokia N900 fans might argue with this but I'm only talking about official support.)

I fancy this conversation.
Customer : How much for this cell?
Seller : $300 only sir.
Customer : How much for "X" OS?
Seller : $50 without SIM. But its free if you sign "Y" contract for two years.
: Try this "Z" OS sir. Its better and costs less too without SIM.
.
.
.
.
After all the bargains, you come out of the shop with the OS you wanted!

I hope it is not too long before this comes to reality. (N900 is spot on there!)

What do you think?

Colorful Google!

I've been a user of almost 23 (Yes. 23. In fact there are many more)of Google's services and feel satisfied enough with the top notch services. The way you can customise google to meet your own tastes is awesome.

Long back, I came across a the Blackle Search Engine which at first, I thought to be a part of Google Program but it was simply using Google Search Engine with the Energy Saving Black Background.

Its obvious that some energy conscious offices and users might have already made it the Homepage.
Rightly so. That is a great step to reduce your electricity bill. Because White color uses much more energy than Black.

OK, its obvious that Google will have problems in taking these steps altogether for the Whole world.

But I would say, rather than making it all black suddenly, why can't they leave it to the users?
I mean by default they can keep it white as usual. But once you login Google should be displayed in user's favorite color (need not be black). Simple!

There have been debates and blogs around the world about this, because almost every computer sees Google for a large amount of time per day than any other site. This makes Google the most power consuming site across the world.

I was just thinking why Google itself never thought of this, which actually is a very small step for them. This will also enable those energy conscious people to shift their favorite Google to Black while other enjoy their favorite Red, Green, Yellow, Blue, Pink ...... etc.

Hoping to see a Colorful Google soon.

Ideas Click!

What do you think? Please Comment.


Here are some examples of colored search engines :-
Blue search
Green search
Pink search
Purple search
Yellow search


Reference :- ecoIron

Mobile with a Projector !

How many of us feel that Mobile screen should have been bigger.

Once you cant resist temptation, you go to the shop and buy a bigger phone.

But there are iPhones and LG Chocolates that come and go beyond our expectations.

But still they are just touching 4 inch mark. Want more?

How would it be if we could have a Mobile which can give you as big screen as you want?
May be around 10 inch or 15 inch or ......... as big as your TV for that matter?
Or even larger than that?

Absolutely possible.
And still it will swiftly slide in your pockets.

Yes, but of course the screen will be projected using an in-built projector.
Just point and project!

But what if we dont have a screen or a wall to project it?

Well in that case we will have two options.
1. Use e-goggles which will depict the screen in front of both the eyes.
        (Nah!!, What if we fall in a PotHole while walking ? !!!!!!)
2. Use a technology in which a screen will be drawn in front of the user. (Just like a "real image" we get in our Science experiments) Only thing different is that we wont need to hold something like a cardboard to see the image. Rather it will be an "in air" projection (as shown in some Intel ads).

We can adjust the size and distance of the screen to virtually anything we want.

Get the advantage of Full Screen (oops! Bigger Screen) on the go! .... In your own ... Pocket!!!!!!

Ideas Click!

Thanks to
Intel, Sponsors of Tomorrow

Read Only OS?

OK, now see this new possibility.

OS Piracy, Virus attack, System crash ...............

What if we could find a creative solution to tackle this?

Instead of shipping in DVDs and CDs the next gen OS can be shipped as a fast read-only hard disk pre-written with the Genuine OS (Hard OS) which cannot be formatted or overwritten except by an upgrade similar to a firmware upgrade.

All the user settings and installed software will be stored as a part of separate hard disk or a part of the same disk which is writable.

This move will help to kill OS piracy as it cannot be reinstalled. In fact, user never needs to reinstall the OS for any reasons whatsoever. If something goes wrong, just format the writable part of the disk and you're done! That too in a few seconds! You get fresh new OS back without any technical hassles.

Upgrades? Just return the old Hard OS for new one.
Licencing will not exist at all as you pay directly for each Hard OS you purchase.

Customers can be attracted to buy Hard OS by pricing them 60-70% of the Soft OS.

Idea derived from Linux Live CDs concept.

Ideas Click!

Thanks to
Savalo, Niketh.