THE FUTURE OF LAPTOP AND TABLET Computer A PROJECT REPORT Submitted by Chethan J A (PGDM-IB/05/11/04) Neeraj Sharma (PGDM-IB/05/11/09) Prasanna Venkatesh (PGDM-IB/05/11/13) Submitted to Prof. Rupesh Kumar Sinha B.Sc. (Bot Hons), GNIIT, MCP, PGDCA, M.Sc. (comp. Sc.) Electronic City Bangalore Sl # Contents 1 Introduction to Laptop 2 History of Laptop 3 Introduction to Tablet Computer 4 History of Tablet Computer 5 Technical features of Tablet Computer 6 Laptop vs. Tablet Computer Conclusion 7 8 Reference Laptop Introduction: A laptop also called a notebook, is a personal computer for mobile use. A laptop integrates most of the typical components of a desktop computer, including a display, a keyboard, a pointing device (a touchpad, also known as a track pad, and/or a pointing stick) and speakers into a single unit. A laptop is powered by mains electricity via an AC adapter, and can be used away from an outlet using a rechargeable battery. Portable computers, originally monochrome CRT-based and developed into the modern laptops, and were originally considered to be a small niche market, mostly for specialized field applications such as the military, accountants and sales representatives. As portable computers became smaller, lighter, cheaper, more powerful and as screens became larger and of better quality, laptops became very widely used for all sorts of purposes. History: As the personal computer became feasible in the early 1970s, the idea of a portable personal computer followed. A "personal, portable information manipulator" was imagined by Alan Kay at Xerox PARC in 1968, and described in his 1972 paper as the "Dynabook". The IBM SCAMP project (Special Computer APL Machine Portable), was demonstrated in 1973. This prototype was based on the PALM processor (Put All Logic In Microcode). The IBM 5100, the first commercially available portable computer, appeared in September 1975, and was based on the SCAMP prototype. As 8-bit CPU machines became widely accepted, the number of portables increased rapidly. The Osborne 1, released in 1981, used the Zilog Z80 and weighed 23.6 pounds (10.7 kg). It had no battery, a 5 in (13 cm) CRT screen, and dual 5.25 in (13.3 cm) single-density floppy drives. In the same year the first laptop-sized portable computer, the Epson HX-20, was announced. The Epson had a LCD screen, a rechargeable battery, and a calculator-size printer in a 1.6 kg (3.5 lb) chassis. Both Tandy/RadioShack and HP also produced portable computers of varying designs during this period. The first laptops using the flip form factor appeared in the early 1980s. The Dulmont Magnum was released in Australia in 1981–82, but was not marketed internationally until 1984– 85. The $8,150 ($18,540 today) GRiD Compass 1100, released in 1982, was used at NASA and by the military among others. TheGavilan SC, released in 1983, was the first computer described as a "laptop" by its manufacturer. From 1983 onward, several new input techniques were developed and included in laptops, including the touchpad (Gavilan SC, 1983), the pointing stick (IBM ThinkPad 700, 1992) and handwriting recognition (Linus Write-Top, 1987). Some CPUs, such as the 1990 Intel i386SL, were designed to use minimum power to increase battery life of portable computers, and were supported by dynamic power management features such as Intel SpeedStep and AMD Power Now! in some designs. Displays reached VGA resolution by 1988 (Compaq SLT/286), and colour screens started becoming a common upgrade in 1991 with increases in resolution and screen size occurring frequently until the introduction of 17"-screen laptops in 2003. Hard drives started to be used in portables, encouraged by the introduction of 3.5" drives in the late 1980s, and became common in laptops starting with the introduction of 2.5" and smaller drives around 1990; capacities have typically lagged behind physically larger desktop drives. Optical storage, read-only CD- ROM followed by writeable CD and later read-only or writeable DVD and Blu-Ray, became common in laptops soon in the 2000s. Tablet Computer Introduction: A tablet computer, or a tablet, is a mobile computer, larger than a mobile phone or personal digital assistant, integrated into a flat touch screen and primarily operated by touching the screen rather than using a physical keyboard. It often uses an onscreen virtual keyboard, a passive stylus pen, or a digital pen. Tablet PC is a portable computing device which looks much like a detached screen from a conventional notebook computer, or perhaps a hand-held computer that's been scaled up. History: The tablet computer and the associated special operating software is an example of pen computing technology, and thus the development of tablets has deep historical roots. Electrical devices with data input and output on a flat information display have existed as early as 1888. Throughout the 20th century many devices with these characteristics have been ideated and created whether as blueprints, prototypes or commercial products, with the Dynabook concept in 1968 being a spiritual precursor of tablets and laptops. In addition to many academic and research systems, there were several companies with commercial products in the 1980s During the 2000s Microsoft attempted to define with the Microsoft Tablet PC the tablet personal computer product concept as a mobile computer for field work in business, though their devices failed to achieve widespread usage mainly due to price and usability problems that made them unsuitable outside of their limited intended purpose. In April 2010 Apple Inc. released the iPad, a tablet computer with an emphasis on media consumption. The shift in purpose, together with increased usability, battery life, simplicity, lower weight and cost, and overall quality with respect to previous tablets, was perceived as defining a new class of consumer device and shaped the commercial market for tablets in the following year. As a result, two distinctly different types of tablet computing devices exist as of 2011, the Tablet PC and the Post-PC tablet, whose operating systems are of different origin. Traditional tablet PCs A tablet personal computer (tablet PC) is a portable personal computer equipped with a touch screen as a primary input device, and running a (modified) classic desktop OS. designed to be operated and owned by an individual. The term was made popular as a concept presented by Microsoft in 2000 and 2001 but tablet PCs now refer to any tablet-sized personal computer regardless of the (desktop) operating system Tablet personal computers are mainly based on the x86 IBM-PC architecture and are fully functional personal computers employing a slightly modified personal computer OS (such as Windows orUbuntu Linux) supporting their touch-screen, instead of a traditional display, mouse and keyboard. A typical tablet personal computer needs to be stylus driven, because operating the typical desktop based OS requires a high precision to select GUI widgets, such as a the close window button. "Post-PC" tablets Since mid-2010, new tablet computers have been introduced with mobile operating systems that forgo the Wintel paradigm, have a different interface instead of the traditional desktop OS, and represent a new type of computing device. These "post-PC" mobile OS tablet computer devices are normally finger driven and most frequently use capacitive touch screens with multi-touch capabilities instead of the simple resistive touch screens of typical stylus driven systems. The most successful of these was the Apple iPad using the iOS operating system. Samsung's Galaxy Tab and others followed, continuing the now common trends towards multi-touch and other natural features, as well as flash memory solid-state storage drives and "instant on" warm-boot times; in addition, standard external USB and Bluetooth keyboards can often be used. Most frequently the operating system running a tablet computer that's not based on the traditional PC architecture is based on a Unix-like OS, such as Darwin, Linux or QNX. Some have 3G mobile telephony capabilities. In forgoing the x86 precondition (a requisite of Windows compatibility), most tablet computers released since mid-2010 use a version of an ARM architecture processor for longer battery life versus battery weight, heretofore used in portable equipment such as MP3 players and cell phones. Especially with the introduction of the ARM Cortex family, this architecture is now powerful enough for tasks such as internet browsing, light production work and gaming. A significant trait of tablet computers not based on the traditional PC architecture is that the main source of 3rd party software for these devices tends to be through online distribution, rather than more traditional methods of boxed software or direct sales from software vendors. These sources, known as "app stores," provide centralized catalogues of software from both 1st and 3rd parties and allow simple "one click" on-device software purchasing, installation, and updates. Technical features As a quasi-hybrid of laptop and palmtop computers, the Tablet PC owes much to those earlier technologies. One of the key advances that made the Tablet PC possible is the development of ultra-low power microprocessor chips by companies such as Transmeta and Intel. Another standard feature of the Tablet PC, handwriting recognition, first made its appearance in the Apple Newton palmtop computer. The moderately high resolution colours screen is suited for use with a video projector, and the large amount of on-board storage (20-60 GB or more) means that even a complicated multimedia presentation can be loaded into a Tablet without the risk of running out of space. Tablet PCs mostly work with graphical images ("ink" in Tablet jargon) rather than ASCII text. This is very convenient for creating with a stylus, but could pose problems if (e.g.) an "ink" document were emailed to someone on a slow dialup connection.