Largest laptop problem - time to get it working

I bet that the most annoying misfeature of virtually every laptop is the start up time. Rolling out and connecting the power supply wires to a wall socket, waiting for OS to start requires about ... minutes. Even taking it from a bag takes some time. It hurts much operative style of mobile computing.

This is why PDAs are much superior to a conventional notebook PC in a mean of accessibility.

Let imagine a mobile computer that does not suffer from such a deficiency. First of all it have to be built from zero time start components. No HDD to spin up, but SSD. No back lit TFT display, but a passive display like e-paper. Low power consumption especially in sleeping mode. It permits to work on battery instead of mains power. And to use such a "hibernation" mode (instead of switching the computer off) and get it later on in a second.

For me the best existing creatures for this case are HTC Advantage and Shift models though I'm not a fun of their Microsoft internals.

Location tags for mobile phone

For a long time mobile phones have "profiles" for different environment situations. These "profiles" include ring type and volume, screen brightness and similar tunings for comfortable use in the specific situation. But you have to switch profiles manually - that makes them being a feature of little use. So there should be a way for the phone to guess the environment. Or the environment should tell it.

The most obvious way is to install small beacons that transmit fixed messages such as "here is an office room". These beacons or "location tags" have to be cheap, reliable and working for a long time without any maintenance. The simplest method to transmit the tag message seems to be Bluetooth. The transmission power should be low to to limit the tagging zone size and to save energy. In this case any modern mobile phone can be used - just install the appropriate software. A phone receives a tag message about the location and acts according to the phone configuration for the location. It may obey the tag unconditionally or prompt the phone owner.

Several tag types proposed from the scratch:

Tag type	Meaning	Location	Working distance	Priority	Shape	Power source
"with me", "street"	the phone is in a pocket or clipped to the belt	worn	low	lowest	belt clip, key chain pendant, button	electrodynamic (from walk shake), electrothermal (from body warmth), button cell
"bag"	the phone is in the bag (especially useful for women)	in/on the bag	lowest	higher than "with me"	detachable pendant, button, sticker	electrodynamic (from walk shake), solar cell (if the tag is located outside the bag), button cell
"room"	living room, office, classroom, theater, etc	fixed on a wall or a furniture in the room	large (use several tags to cover the whole compartment)	high	sticker, pass-through plug to a wall socket	solar cell (uses the room illumination), a wall electric socket (power mains, computer network, phone - the tag is transparent for the transmission, it just seal some energy)

Tag meaning can be programmed. So as the tag is just a tag, and the phone is told to recognize it in a specific way.

Tags can be sold by retail stores in sets of different tag types. These end-user tags have to be linked with the phone by the owner. For other phones they are meaningless. There are also possible commonly recognized tags: theatre/church, cafe, classroom, gym, etc. These tags could be silently scattered in appropriate sites by a vendor or an operator. Such a guerrilla marketing.

Really these tags could be useful for any wearable gadget that behaves location-specific.

What is this blog for

Well, from time to time every properly operating brain produces some ideas. Not related to your current job or even life. Some of them looks neat. Some of the last could have a real world application. And often it's not so easy to throw them away in a favor to daily vital doings. This looks like a feel of a young boy, who walked around, occasionally poke up a pebble and encountered a big window. The shining glass surface and the stone in his hand are becoming tied by some vibrant link that is asking spitefully: "throw it to the window, break it!" It is not so good.

The best way to get rid of a thought is to write it. Sure not every came idea. But one that seems implementable, useful and interesting. There will be no looks for analogs, though I'll thank if someone point me to them. No efficiency analysis, market demand research or ROI calculations. But I'll try to present these ideas as useful for people and (maybe) for designers and industry. Let someone other to get a soldering iron and to make the thing solid.

Note these postings are public but not public domain. They are copyrighted by the fact of publication.