Clevo – More Flowers On Laptop Lids
maksim | 4:15 am | March 11, 2008 | CeBIT, Laptop Mods, Laptop News
CeBIT 2008, Hannover, Germany
Laptop brand Clevo, a dark horse from Taiwan, has big and hungry plans for world expansion, judging by this year’s CeBIT show. The company presented several lines of products, from tiny tablet-style portable laptops to big table-sized multimedia machines.
There would have been nothing special about Clevo notebooks if it was not for unusual and some might even say appealing bodywork – flowers, bamboo trees and ladybirds, mixed in with occasional hieroglyphs to make it all look wise and sophisticated, rather than childish and cheap.
It all depends on the fact that you don’t know what the hieroglyphs say, of course. The magic is ruined the moment you know what it means, and it just isn’t worth the risks. Or you may end up painting laptop black again after you find out that it is just a weird old Taiwanese proverb – “Some people prefer liquor, others prefer tofu, and some even like rotten salmon.”
Leather, Wood and Carbon From MSI
maksim | 2:55 am | March 9, 2008 | CeBIT, Laptop News
CeBIT 2008, Hannover, Germany
New laptop manufacturer MSI does not like boring laptops. After they have decorated their laptop with Swarovski crystals, the next step was to expand the range of weird, hardly usable, unusual laptop designs to new eye-caching territories – on this year’s CeBIT there are leather, carbon fiber and wood options.
MSI GX-620 Laptop made from wood:
WWW.LIBRARY.COM
maksim | 2:28 am | March 8, 2008 | CeBIT
CeBIT 2008, Hannover, Germany
The machine does everything- carefully turns the page, presses the book gently against the glass to flatten it a bit, does the scan, turns the next page… Human assistance is minimal- you only need to remove the book after the scanning is complete and then put the next book on.
This ultimate scanner will surely be a great hit with libraries- books are made of paper, and paper is not timeless. Scanned copy will be much more dependable, and it can also be indexed and used to perform content search queries, like typing in “red + umrella + rain + kiss” and instantly seeing all the books about kissing in rain under red umbrellas that were ever written.
This also means that the existence of libraries in their present form will only be justified as long as they keep their scanned files away from public internet access and make people physically come to the building. Which does not make a lot of sense. If there is a digitalized copy of a book available, surely sooner or later there must appear a service that lets you view any book you like, on your laptop, at home.
Crush Box – The Place Where HDDs Die
maksim | 12:54 am | | CeBIT, Security
CeBIT 2008, Hannover, Germany
Is a secret still a secret if you tell it to a friend? Of course it isn’t, it is a little spiky sea mine, itching to blow up every time people get drunk or fall in love. And sooner or later it explodes, killing friendships, hurting feelings.
Crush Box is a little evil machine made for one purpose only- to destroy information. There are of course better, cheaper, more advanced, less barbaric solitions to do the same thing. Crush Box, however, has one very serious advantage- it is visual. You see the holes in the harddrive and you know with absolute certainty that no one, ever, will read it again.
The Biggest Laptop In The World
maksim | 11:39 pm | March 7, 2008 | CeBIT, Laptop News
Fujitsu Siemens turned things around with the biggest laptop in the world presented at this year’s CeBIT show in Hannover, Germany. A laptop can only be called a laptop if it fits on my lap. If, instead, the whole of my body can fit on its keyboard, and the screen is big enough to kill me if it suddenly drops, it is not a laptop anymore- how about a cracktop?
