Sci-Tech watch, 3: The "Rolltop" PC, a possible future for large tablets/notebooks, with a flexible OLED screen

Just to keep breaking our thoughts on the future of the PC out of the box, here is the original concept vid for a "Rolltop":



(There is an updated vid, but I find the emphasis on the jeans clad wiggle of a model a bit too much.)

The blurb:

Rolltop is a portable computer development concept for designer, architect and everyone, who would like to have a gadget, which, from an aesthetic standpoint alone, certainly hits the mark. By virtue of the OLED-Display technology and a multitouchscreen the utility of a laptop computer with its weight of a mini-notebook and screen size of 13 inch easily transforms into the graphics tablet, which with its 17-inch flat screen can be also used as a primary monitor due to the support attached to the back of the screen.

Rolltop 2.0 is a further development of Rolltop with some visible and mostly invisible improvements (e.g. internal design, placement of certain components etc.)

OLED 55-inch display by LG  (HT: Wiki)

Just to open our minds up to other possibilities. A Rolltop would certainly be convenient for education, and if the OLED can be made big enough, that would be a valid presentation-size screen technology.

And, a 55-incher (as in the picture from a Consumer Electronics Show), is quite good enough for classrooms, conference rooms and church halls. Wiki:

An OLED (organic light-emitting diode) is a light-emitting diode (LED) in which the emissive electroluminescent layer is a film of organic compound which emits light in response to an electric current. This layer of organic semiconductor is situated between two electrodes. Generally, at least one of these electrodes is transparent. OLEDs are used to create digital displays in devices such as television screens, computer monitors, portable systems such as mobile phones, handheld games consoles and PDAs. A major area of research is the development of white OLED devices for use in solid-state lighting applications . . . .

[Long term economics/cost implications:] OLEDs can be printed onto any suitable substrate by an inkjet printer or even by screen printing,^[58] theoretically making them cheaper to produce than LCD or plasma displays. However, fabrication of the OLED substrate is more costly than that of a TFT LCD, until mass production methods lower cost through scalability. Roll-to-roll vapour-deposition methods for organic devices do allow mass production of thousands of devices per minute for minimal cost, although this technique also induces problems in that multi-layer devices can be challenging to make due to registration issues, lining up the different printed layers to the required degree of accuracy.

Flexible OLED touchscreen technology has a lot of possibilities. END