An interesting concept from Sony has come to light courtesy of the US Patent & Trademark Office, deftly titled: "Image forming device, having an ejection tray, and a display is mounted to a cover." That's a lot of words to describe what is basically a
Surface-like touchscreen mounted onto a flat, clamshell printer (shown open after the break). The idea is for users to set their cameras down, view and manipulate images wirelessly, and then print them directly to honest to gosh paper. It appears to be quite a bit smaller than Microsoft's uber-table, and a lot less likely to get Al Roker's
groove on too, but it also looks rather more practical and affordable; something you might actually expect to see in someone's home in the next few years. But, don't get too excited about the real-world prospects here -- your guess is as good as ours about Sony's plans for bringing this to market.
posted Jan 28th 2009 8:04AM
seems kinda pointless. are gonna have a netbook intergrated into a printer costing $1200 now??
1:1 preview.
Which is useless also. Count me out, unless it prints benjamins for me.
Wait one second... is it "from Sony Surfaces" or "from Sony, surfaces".
2nd one i think, i've never heard of a division called Sony Surfaces :/
10 years from now when oled's can be painted on basically at the cost of materials, this will be cool. until that day . . . not so much.
Yeah, but you have to apply for the patents before someone else does. Though... will Sony still exist 10 years from now?
Why are patent drawings so... primitive?
The more ambiguity in the drawing, the easier it is to claim that someone stole your idea later.
Don't like this. I don't want massive touch screens on everything I own. I also don't need a screen to preview pictures coming out of my printer - that's why I have a computer.
Sony should stick to the brain stimulation via ultrasound tech (see: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18624944.600)
"Porcelain posterior seating device, with flushing crank and liquid expulsion of fecal matter"
Oh, wow, we can finally start looking forward to $12000 150dpi printers that show pretty pictures before you hit the "print" button.
Knowing Sony, it will come somewhere after the turn of the century...