Ericsson's Spider Computer makes portable computing downright creepy
By Joseph L. Flatley 
posted October 29th 2009 2:46PM
posted October 29th 2009 2:46PM
It seems like the future, as it's unveiled in prototypes, always seems much more exciting than the one we end up inheriting. Between Segway-esque unicycles, braille labelmakers, and Bluetooth-enabled gowns, the road ahead looks pretty sweet (if only in concept). Among the various ideas floated by Ericsson as part of its Life in 2020 project, the company has unveiled something called the Spider Computer. Named after the creepy spider-like legs of the initial design, the thing houses a PC, pico proj, a keyboard that's projected onto your desk with a laser, and a memory card reader. According to Pocket-lint the device, shown here at the 2009 Taiwan Broadband show, has a rather poor battery life and lacks network connectivity, but once they figure out how to pack WiFi and some reasonable juice into the thing we might start seeing a few more ultraportables that look more like Maglites than netbooks. Peep the prototypes (and some renders) in the gallery below.
[Via Pocket-lint]
[Via Pocket-lint]
Airport security nightmare
How?
lol well they have medal detectors
A medal detector? So THAT'S why they stop all the Olympic medal winners!
Looks more like a virus than a spider.. tho I suppose that's pretty bad marketing. *q:
viral marketing?
Zing!
a tripod dildo.
Looks like Batmans grapple.
Funny, I was thinking of Batman Beyond myself. Can't imagine this being especially popular among anyone but spies who value secrecy above comfort.
Anyone else think of Portal when looking at that thing?
"Among the various ideas floated by Ericsson as part of its Life in 2020 project, the company has unveiled something called the Spider Computer. Named after the creepy spider-like legs of the initial design"
So it's just some plastic mock-up?
I'm soooooo excited.
No, it's not a mock-up:
"the device, shown here at the 2009 Taiwan Broadband show"
looks like a watchamacallit
What is this, Write-off day?
looks nice, but it's not very original, i thought of the same idea already, without the spider legs of course. But it's the next logical step.
I think this will be an actual product in 2020, even though it will probably stay in a niche market.
It's not an original idea because you've "already thought of it"??? We can do that? Dibs on iPod then! I seem to recall thinking of something like that in 1996. Jobs owes me so much money right now!
Wow, you could actually stab someone with your computer.
no way they're going to beat apple to the punch on the first practicable incarnation of this tech. iphone 4GX?
actually, i doubt this will ever see the light of day since speech recognition systems will become viable keyboard replacements before this thing is mature.
Yeah, because speech recognition will EVER replace the keyboard.
it already does for some of my google searches on my hero. it works surprisingly well right now. give it five more years and who knows... then ten more years for eye-trackers to replace mice :)
haha, like you're not going to get tired of speaking to your PC for several hours at a time. just imagine how thirsty you'd get.
keyboards ftw. or brain-computer interface, that would work to
talking to inanimate objects is just weird!
Can it play Crysis?
the pictures seem misleading. i thought the small one with the legs was supposed to project the keyboard? the other pictures shows that the other unit is displaying the keyboard. is it one unit or two?
That looks more like a virus than a spider.
makes me think of something out of a Gibson novel.
I for one...
it looks like a phage
Looks like something you would kill frequently in the Halflife2 games.
I don't get why it looks "creepy". Granted these engadget "writers" are apparently mandated to crowbar in "fear", "overlords", "creepy", etc. whenever it involves anything involves the future or robots. Maybe once in a while drop the shtick because it's not funny. Same as they use "whip" all the time like hipster idiots whenever there's a car story. Stop trying so hard you're embarrassing yourselves and letting everyone down.
Always a great sign when they steal their bad ideas from a bad movie from 2002. "The First 20 Million is always the Hardest" had this thing almost verbatim, minus the legs. Laser KBD, projector and all.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0280674/
Always a great sign when they steal their bad ideas from a bad movie from 2002. "The First 20 Million is always the Hardest" had this thing almost verbatim, minus the legs. Laser KBD, projector and all.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0280674/
Looks like a gun turret from HL2. where's muh gravity gun!
The keyboard part is already here. I use a Palm Treo 680 with the cool Virtual Laser Keyboard for years now, since I had a Treo 650 ( http://www.vkb-support.com/learn_more.php ) and it works like a charm.
One step closer to my BlackRocket
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5euPZuVbbY