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Lenovo's concept laptop is real, transparent, and ready to impress
- zecg 3y agoNice solution you have there, a shame if there's no problem it fits to be found.
- williamcotton 3y agoThis is the R&D part of the value chain. Yes, a startup should be farther up the value chain to find product and market fit, but a mature company needs to operate in such a manner.
- amelius 3y agoOne possible problem this solves is in movies, where you can now see the hacker and the screen they are looking at, both at the same time.
- TrueGeek 3y agoThis would be kinda cool (without the keyboard) to sit on a kitchen counter and show a family calendar or something
- globular-toast 3y agoYeah, for a few days before it goes in the drawer with all the other cool junk.
- TrueGeek 3y agoI'll stop buying cool looking (but useless) tech that ends up sitting in a drawer when they stop making cool looking (but useless) tech.
- masklinn 3y agoCould be useful for HUD-typ devices and components, assuming the tech is not downstream from those.
- samarthr1 3y agoAfaik, this is a composite screen, with a led matrix, while a HUD (in cars atleast) are reflective in nature.
- masklinn 3y agoBut that’s the point, if current HUDs are reflective then you’re constrained by viewing angles, the need for a projector, a sufficiently reflective surface, etc… A composite screen might have the opportunity for a much better HUD experience.
- readyplayernull 3y agoNow it's time to invent an opacity pixel, so we can define which areas of the screen will render black and which are transparent. Anyone into micromirrors?
- Loughla 3y agoSuper cool looking, but the projected keyboard will be what kills that concept. The tactile feedback is surprisingly necessary for typing on a traditional layout. Maybe integration with a smaller screen like a phone is the way forward with electronic keyboards?
- chrsw 3y agoThat keyboard looks awful. What is the benefit of this screen anyway? It seems to sacrifice the image quality of the thing you want to focus on: what's on your laptop display for the ability to see something you're usually trying to ignore: whatever is behind your laptop.
- lukas099 3y agoIf I had to design a keyless keyboard, I would start from the ground up. The fingers would stay in one place with some combination of mode-shifting and chording to select characters. Let's hope it never comes to that.
- sph 3y agoWhat is the use case of a transparent screen with what looks like terrible resolution, colour fidelity and viewing angles? Especially when laptops are so low on the desk one can see what's behind just by lifting their head. It's a decent proof-of-concept of the technology, sure, but why make a full laptop out of it? The glass keyboard is simply a terrible idea, until we invent a way to simulate the shape of a key, not just the tactile feedback when pressed. I've always wondered whether simulating the tactile presence of an object is in any way possible... Something like the magnetic repulsion effect, but needs to work on bare fingertips
- atoav 3y agoShooting scifi films that look like they are set 5 to 10 years in the future.
- logtempo 3y agoIt's a product for marketing campaign I believe. Attach a technology to a product tech-people like and you touch many people. If Lenovo made a smart mirror out of this technology (which in my opinion seems to be the most usefull), or a small SF like control panel for meeting room at companies, people would react less.
- piva00 3y ago> If Lenovo made a smart mirror out of this technology (which in my opinion seems to be the most usefull) As far as I know those already exist for a few years.
- logtempo 3y agoIt does exist with some tricks using two-way mirror. Maybe using a transparent screen can give better illusion? Idk. Smart mirrors are a super DIY gadget to do at home. I never done one because I would not use it, but it's a good way to refurbish a laptop display.
- boffinAudio 3y ago>What is the use case of a transparent screen with what looks like terrible resolution, colour fidelity and viewing angles? Especially when laptops are so low on the desk one can see what's behind just by lifting their head. I could see it being useful in an Augmented Reality context, perhaps as an overlay for an existing physical interface .. maybe this prototype has some issues that would make that unwieldy, but in general the whole concept of transparent displays has some validity. Synthesizer guys could use it to restore their patches on old analog gear with no patch memory (okay you can just use your phone for this too..) .. aquarium users might use it to analyze their fish health, and so on. Definitely some uses cases..
- nmeofthestate 3y agoPolice detectives on TV shows would love a scaled-up version of that see-through screen. Not sure real detectives would though.
- Twirrim 3y agoWhat a wonderful security and privacy nightmare that is. Artist tracing through it? Make a transparent pen tablet, not the screen. Even the most ferverent of artists will be spending more time doing other things than actually tracing. If the pixels were solid, and ideally variable transparency, rather than just semi-transparent, the panel itself would have a number of applications.
- amelius 3y ago> Artist tracing through it? Make a transparent pen tablet, not the screen. Or just use some camera to make a picture, then trace in the painting app?
- SiempreViernes 3y agoNo, that's too modern and thus cheating! The artist must sketch directly in the environment they are depicting, using traditional tools like pen and transparent laptop/pen tablet! /s
- nottorp 3y ago> Would it be beneficial to be able to see your colleague sitting across from you, or would it be distracting? It wouldn't. But I'd love to see some management types at publicly traded companies use this in public places. Film it, mirror it, do stuff with your trading account.
- hasty_pudding 3y agoBut....why?
- seanwilson 3y agoFor privacy, is there a way the back of the screen could hide/obscure what's on the front of the screen? It's funny how these things look cool in sci-fi, but when it gets closer to reality the practical problems with using them leap out.
- DrBazza 3y agoSomeone has watched too much sci-fi. Next we'll have those haptic gloves and holo-displays just like Minority Report. And of course, the average human is known to absolutely not get tired or fatigued holding their arms up in the air for extended periods of time. Struggling to figure out who the target audience for this laptop is.
- masklinn 3y agoThe holo-displays is kinda there via VR assuming you can share workspaces (or subsets thereof). Also more secure, since only people you’d be sharing with have access to the content.
- diggan 3y ago> Struggling to figure out who the target audience for this laptop is. Great news! This is a concept laptop, meant to show off a particular "innovative" thing, not be a purchasable item for consumers. So no need to have a target audience, stuff like that is done just because, to have something "cool" to show off and maybe gather reactions/input. Basically the same concept as "Concept Cars" but for laptops, I suppose. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concept_car https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concept_car
- azernik 3y agoThere is no target audience. FTA: > Like its rollable laptop from last year, Lenovo isn’t pretending that it has any plans to release its ThinkBook Transparent Display Laptop as a consumer device. But Butler says he has “very high confidence” that its technologies will make it into a real laptop in the next five years and hopes that revealing this proof of concept will start a public conversation about what it could be useful for, setting a target for Lenovo to work toward.
- DrBazza 3y agoIt feels very much 'Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should', but these kind of things often have practical uses that end up being completely novel.
- silon42 3y agoSo, I'll have to watch my fingerprints all day?
- trollbridge 3y agoThere was a ThinkPad back in the 1990s which had a removable reflective panel on its LCD, and you could fold it down half-way so you could put it on top of an overhead projector. It was an interesting novelty and fun to use the "transparent screen" for a few minutes. I think it was an option on the ThinkPad 755CD?
- karmakaze 3y agoYeah it was the ThinkPad 755CV / 755CDV [0] https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:755CDV https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:755CDV
- trollbridge 3y agoThanks, I was starting to wonder if I was hallucinating. But in this case... a Lenovo (née IBM) laptop that is real and transparent is 29 years old and was on the market for years. Admittedly, the Lenovo concept laptop looks a bit brighter and appears to be illuminated. But this isn't a remotely novel idea.
- Zetobal 3y agoCasemodders are using transparent displays in their PC builds since the first LCDs showed up.
- rob74 3y agoNot only casemodders... I have a Sony CMT-CP1 stereo from the early 2000s that I still use as "PC speakers" on my desk, and it uses the semitransparent window of the cassette deck as a display (a "dual mode transparent display" in Sony marketingspeak - when you actually use the tape deck, the backlight in the window turns off and a second light behind the cassette turns on). So "transparent displays" have been possible for as long as LCDs have existed, but the applications have always been rather limited. What this display has going for it is that the pixels are luminescent, with transparent LCDs you still need some kind of backlight or you won't really be able to read anything.
- pipeline_peak 3y agoAh yes, the Lenovo SmudgePad. Comes with a microfiber cloth.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- rspoerri 3y agoI wonder who came up with the idea that removing black and replacing it with transparency would be a good idea, and would be a reasonable replacement for a normal screen. Forget about all that nice contrast and read a white font in front of a sunny beach...
- OJFord 3y ago> hopes that revealing this proof of concept will start a public conversation about what it could be useful for, setting a target for Lenovo to work toward. So it's literally, admittedly, and unashamedly a 'solution looking for a problem'. Baffling. (But I'm not saying Lenovo-unique, or even perhaps that rare.)
- RandomLensman 3y agoAs a style thing - why not?
- jfrbfbreudh 3y agoWhy is this “baffling”?
- OJFord 3y agoTypically you spend time and money developing a product or service that people want, solves some problem for them, etc. - not whatever whacky thing you can come up with without really knowing why and then present it to people in the hope that they'll figure out a reason to want it or find/create a problem for it to solve.
- usrusr 3y agoBut transparency is not the reason they spend time and money on microLED. MicroLED solves real problems that aren't "this screen lacks transparency". The transparency is just a cool show piece that happens when you don't package the panel with a frame and an opaque backdrop. What they did spend time and money on is giving some of their marketing people a presumably small budget to show that useless but cool thing r&d stumbled across to the public. It would be stupid not to.
- multimoon 3y agoWhy is that a bad thing? I don’t see a problem with a company coming out with a demo of some cool tech they’ve come up with, and then asking their own consumer base if it’s something worth pursuing. This is a far better outcome than the marketing people at the company making that decision on their own, and we (the consumers) get to at least see the cool tech versus it being locked in the vaults of said companies. You have to remember that every company develops wacky stuff like this all the time to test out new concept tech, we just rarely see it as the consumers. This is the step before the money for R&D is spent to make it an actual consumer product, think like a concept car. People’s comments on this can cause tech from this concept to make it into other actual products for market. I applaud this sort of behavior from hardware OEMs, nothing is lost and a lot gained.
- d--b 3y agoThis screams car HUD, not laptop-you-can't-see-what-you-write-in
- AnarchismIsCool 3y agoNot collimated, you'd need a collimating lens and something to project the image into at which point just use a regular screen. If you stuck this in a windshield you wouldn't be able to focus on the display and traffic at the same time and it would likely be fairly headache inducing.
- DrNosferatu 3y agoReal? It’s impossible to buy a Thinkbook Plus Gen4 anywhere.
- api 3y agoI like a lot of things about the design, but not its flagship piece: transparent screens. I just don't get this. Of course it's a concept, so maybe the idea is just to explore possibilities. But this seems like slavish imitation of sci-fi without thinking things through.
- AgentOrange1234 3y agoThat’s really cool looking. Kudos to the R&D that went into this. I love that we get to see this idea without having to wait for products. I’m not sure I need a transparent laptop, but if this was cheap enough, it could make for neat microwave or refrigerator doors, vending machine panels, etc., and could be particularly neat for car windshields, showing your speed with your eyes still on the road?
- rchaud 3y agoVery cool. Nice to know that Lenovo (and Asus) are still doing new things with old form factors. The dual screen and folding screen laptops they've released are exactly what I've wanted for years....it's too bad that Windows 11 isn't available in a debloated version yet.
- monitron 3y agoRight now this display has the problem that the darkest color you can achieve is the color/brightness of the light coming through the screen. A sufficiently bright background will wash out the image entirely. Why not put a grayscale LCD panel behind the MicroLED screen to allow the display to be locally opaque? Control it with an alpha channel for the whole display. Then you could have windows or objects appearing to float in space, with full dynamic range available.
- orev 3y agoSeems like you could assemble something like a 3D volumetric display by stacking multiple displays. It would start out with maybe a few planes, then get more dense as the technology advances.
- lifestyleguru 3y agoOh god, laptops with touchscreens instead of keys are back. Not again. Behind my screen there is a wall.
- justinclift 3y agoLooks like a useful step towards 3D displays. By stacking a bunch of these transparent panels on top of each other, you could display 3D objects without needing 3D glasses: ----o----- Layer1 ---o-o---- Layer2 ---o-o---- Layer3 ----o----- Layer4 (etc) The depth resolution would be kind of crap, but there'd probably still be uses for it. Maybe layers wrapped as cylinders? Pretty sure there's an existing crowd trying something like this a few years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EA2FQXs4dw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EA2FQXs4dw They're taking a different approach, though using a stack of panels too. --- That crowd is still around: https://checkout.lookingglassfactory.com/collections/displays https://checkout.lookingglassfactory.com/collections/display...