The Dell "Froot" Concept PC Does Away With Keyboards & Monitors
The Dell "Froot" Concept PC Does Away With Keyboards & Monitors
Posted 01/17/2010 at 2:03pm
| by Justin Kerr
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Dell, among other PC OEM's is always looking for the next big thing in PC form factors, and industrial designer Pauline Carlos thinks he has just the thing. The "Froot" does away with a traditional monitor, as well as the keyboard and mouse. The device itself contains a pair of projectors, one which takes care of the user interface, and a second one on the back of the unit to project a keyboard.
Its hard to imagine something like this being anything more than a niche product for our audience, but it certainly makes you wonder, will we ever become so comfortable with touch typing that physical keyboards as we know them today would become an unnecessary eyesore for the mainstream consumer?
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Lhot
January 19, 2010 at 5:45am
...is the absolute stupidest way to interact with any device that counts time in micro seconds. As Scotty said in Star Trek 4....."Oh a keyboard, how quaint."
The "CLOUD" is the biggest mistake this country has made...EVER !
Trooper_One
January 18, 2010 at 12:34pm
While I doubt there's going to be any immediate market acceptance with the Froot, I can see lots of future applications with this sort of thing in specific settings (e.g. on flight, marketing shows, etc...)
Let's wait and see where this goes and hopefully it doesn't die off because of a lack of general consumer interest.
dullthud
January 18, 2010 at 7:28am
I can't see this being more than a concept. The laser keyboard has been around for a while, and is not exactly flying off the shelves:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/keyboards-mice/8193/
And as for the projector/monitor you have to be facing a smooth, white wall at the correct distance, with the correct lighting to use it. Talk about jumping through hoops. You could put together a similar device with the above mentioned "keyboard", a small pico projector and a nettop pc, if you wanted to.
fullur
January 21, 2010 at 7:10pm
The whole time I was reading the comments just now I was thinking, "hasn't the projected keyboard been around for a while now?" Thanks for the link.
You're right about the concept. You could easily build something comparable today. And I think they picked a perfect name for this thing. It definitely has a "frooty" look to it.
Still, it is somewhat refreshing to see that they can think in more than just rectangles.
Quakindude
January 18, 2010 at 6:29am
I wonder if it has a single, hard wired button for entering the BIOS. Cause you sure as hell won't have that keyboard recognized by the BIOS in time to hit the Del key....
I'll be a curmudgeonly old man about this concept. I will use a KB until they come out with something that really works on the neural level.
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***The views I express are my own and do not represent the views of MaximumPC Magazine or Future US.***
COMMANDER_COOK
January 18, 2010 at 1:16am
This is what the Eee Keyboard should have been like.
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Vegan
January 17, 2010 at 11:31pm
The carpel tunnel you'll get from having to hover your fingers constantly over a surface rather than resting them is going to be awesome!
thefuzz4
January 17, 2010 at 2:58pm
While I do think that this is a cool concept I really do wonder just how hard it is to type on that. When my hands hit a phyiscal keyboard they are still trained to locate the little bumps on the j and f keys letting me know that I am on the home row. I really do wonder how hard it would be to type on a keyboard not knowing where the home row is just by touch.
jrocknyc
January 17, 2010 at 5:49pm
i suspect professional typists (writers, data entry, etc) will always use keyboards. But 90% of the world will be fine hunting and pecking for short emails on this thing. (Or will we have speech entry by then?)
Biceps
January 17, 2010 at 6:15pm
Yeah, this is a cool concept. I can think of lots of awesome places to use it. But did they have to make it look like a failed Kindergarten art project?
jrocknyc
January 17, 2010 at 2:14pm
in a decade, devices the size of an ipod nano will do this, and cost $99.
vistageek
January 17, 2010 at 3:46pm
With the dollar falling like it is, i wouldn't be surprised if that would cost $900 by then, but your point is so true. Computers become cooler by the day.
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